The Final Hurdle

Day 58

Then: 15 stone 5 pounds (215 lbs)
Now: 14 stone 0 pounds (196 lbs)

One pound and one week to go. Next Saturday Jo, Izzy and I have our family portrait taken and, if things go to plan and I don’t suddenly rediscover the joys of cappuccinos and ice cream, I should have hit my target weight of 195 pounds. When I’m dead and buried, this is how Izzy will remember me.

Yesterday my friend Justin asked me the question I’m refusing to think about: what happens next?

Well, at the moment I can’t think beyond Newcastle United’s first home game of the season, next Sunday, when I hope to be sitting in the bar with a steak and kidney pie, chips and a pint of Grolsch. Except that, after two months of abstinence, I know that will just make me feel ill – even if we beat Aston Villa, which is a most unlikely event. Jo has organised a little celebration with friends after the game at our favourite Chinese restaurant – noodles and rice have been banned along with everything else I really enjoy in life and I’m really looking forward to Mango’s fried pork dumplings and steamed scallops and prawns.

The question is, how much of this diet will continue, and where will my weight be a month or two from now? The short answer is, I don’t really know. But one thing is clear: I’m enjoying this new body. I actually feel rather more alive than I did two months ago; I don’t huff and puff climbing stairs or hills; I am more confident in my clothes.

I’m still a whole 14 pounds off my so-called (called by Dr Dukan) “real” weight, but Jo says she doesn’t want to be married to an old wrinkly. At the moment I'm gently gliding down by just a pound or two a week - I doubt this will continue.

So I’ve set myself a new target: I intend to stay below 200 pounds forever. Quite how I achieve this once my taste buds come across all the banned substances again, I don’t know. But I may well keep up the cardboard breakfasts, and even have the ghastly roast chicken-only lunches from time to time. And I shall certainly keep weighing myself – not daily, as I have been for two months, but weekly. And I’ll publish the weight in my other blog, www.blogfromthenorth.com, where today I’ve posted a more extensive version of the Size 34 jeans saga I shared with you earlier in the week. Jo and I went to Gap on Thursday and I bought dozens of Large (not Extra Large!) shirts and a couple of pairs of new jeans. It was a most satisfying feeling, quite worth all the pain of the last two months.

And to keep me motivated there will be the evidence, the Before and After photographs. I’ll be posting them as soon as the photographer sends me the evidence. And they’ll sit on this site forever, as a permanent reminder of how I was, how I became and, hopefully, how I’ll never look again.