Weighing up my options

Weighing up my options

I got some land when I jumped on the weighing scales on January 3. Well, actually, I didn’t jump on them. If I did I would have broken the scales and possibly ended up downstairs the direct route, like a scene from The Young Ones. I gingerly stepped onto them because I feared the scales would confirm what I feared when I was writing last week’s column - that I was far too nice to myself over the Christmas.
When I last weighed myself in late November I tipped the scales at just under 15 stone. To give that some context I had been 14 stone in the middle of summer but like the Kerry footballers under Mick O’Dwyer, minus the ability, I was wintering well.
But it wasn’t that big a problem, I’m used to that extra stone. Nudge it down a small bit before the Christmas, keep it at 15 over the holidays and then a good January would have been right as rain.
So I left it to the back end of my brain, hustled up with memories of my time when East 17 were my favourite band and my when my outfield Gaelic football career was in front of me. Out of sight, out of mind.?Except it wasn’t quite out of sight. The need to loosen my belt my a notch should have given me advance warning. So should my struggles on the road and on Astroturf over the Christmas.
But I choose to blissfully ignore the signs.?My Christmas exams limited the amount of gym work I could do in Galway in the first two weeks of December although, to be honest, if your heart is in it, you will find the time. But staying fit was far from to the fore of my mind as I sat my History, Sociology and Politics exams.
Having finished them there was all the justification in the world to, as the tourism ad might say, ‘let myself go’. Eating, drinking and generally being merry over the Christmas was, for the first time in a long time, something I felt was deserved. Poor me, I had been studying oh so hard.
And so it came that on January 3 I was studying something I didn’t want to see anything short of my fiftieth birthday – 16 stone on the scales. Hmmm, I guess that is what you could call a good month. But the endgame showed perfectly the pleasure-pain theory.
So where to next? I have already set out and started my diet but a wicked cold has limited my exercise regime. But the bottom line is this – I need to lose two stone. Hopefully by the end of February. But by the end of March at the latest.
So I’ll likely be pounding the footpath on what local wits in Castlebar call ‘Big Arse Boulvevard’ – a derogatory term for the ring road due to the presence of walkers trying to lose weight. I’ll be well at home there.
And if you see me in any Castlebar shop about to buy crisps or chocolate, you have my permission to chase me out the door.