Weight

 

Welcome to a rather grey and miserable South Manchester in the North West of England. We are still in lockdown here in England but will be released on Wednesday into a Tier system that still sees us effectively in lockdown. The only difference is that shops and gyms will be open and I will be able to go the barber for a haircut. However, we cannot go the pub or a restaurant so effectively we have really been in lockdown in my part of the country for 261 days now. 

And I am bloody sick of it, if the truth be known.

We can “socialise” for Christmas though, which means that between 23rd and 27th December inclusive we can form a “Christmas bubble” (or perhaps better a “Christmas Bauble”) with three other households. 

All this means that my two sons can come to visit on Christmas Day – so that will be good.

The problem is that I haven’t seen my friends for so long now that I have almost forgotten what they look like in the flesh.

All I can say is that now there are three vaccines about to be unleashed I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Sadly it will probably be another couple of months before we see the signs. I am so desperate to get out of the UK and travel somewhere that you wouldn’t believe it. 

Anyway – enough of COVID-19; I want to think of good things. 

I noticed that in America it was Thanksgiving last week so I couldn’t really answer the questions on that topic in Sunday Stealing because we don’t have it in the UK. But this week is different. So let’s answer some silly questions from this week’s Sunday Stealing selection. 

1. My biggest barrier to weight loss is...

My biggest barrier to weight loss is my love of food and drink. First of all, I should say that I am not a fat person, just slightly overweight. When I was younger I could literally eat a horse and not put on weight but ever since my mid-forties I have had to be more careful and now as I approach 60 years old, it is more of a struggle. I weigh thirteen and a half stones (about 190 lbs if you are American) and at a height of 5 feet 11 inches that gives me a BMI of 26.4. That puts me about 10 lbs overweight.  

2. What is your relationship with food like?

Excellent. I eat and enjoy most foods but I try not to over-indulge. I generally eat fairly healthily, avoiding burgers, pies, chips (fries), cake and other things that are supposedly bad for you. 

3. What was the last time you had fun that made you smile for a few days

I don’t think that has happened in 2020 due to this bloody virus. It was probably Christmas 2019. Actually, the arrival of Ziggy and Star has been a fun experience. As I type, they are racing around the house chasing each other.

4. What are triggers in your life that lead to eating?

When I’m hungry. Why else? 

Actually, I can see that there is a problem with things like “comfort eating” and, to be honest, this lockdown has been so desperately dull at times that there has been a temptation to just buy snacks and scoff them all day. 

In the early days of lockdown in April this year, we bought cakes, treats and biscuits (something we don’t normally do apart from at Christmas) and ate them to help cheer ourselves up. My weight increased and so in May or June we decided to stop doing it again and my weight has stabilised. Christmas is coming though so I imagine we will succumb to the festive spirit (as I usually do to be fair).

5. What inspires you to be healthier

I used to be really fit but in my mid-forties again I slowed down and actually stopped exercising until perhaps I was 47, at which time I decided to resume again but walking. 

Over the past ten or so years I try to walk every day and reach a monthly rate of a least 7000 steps a day. Last year I calculated that I had walked 1500 miles which sounds a lot but is actually quite easy (that was an average of 7500 steps a day). 

Walking at my age is a perfect way to stay active and I would love to increase that rate next year. It is a great activity that helps me clear my mind, gives me a good workout (depending on how fast I walk) as well as reducing stress. 

The healthier I am, the happier I am and that is inspiration enough.

6. Name two foods that you think are “bad”

I like to think that you can have anything in moderations, even food that is supposedly bad for you. It is perfectly fine to have deep fried food once in a while as long as it isn’t every day. 

The only food that I would say is bad is rhubarb and apricots. This is not because they are unhealthy. It is because they taste absolutely dreadful and make me wretch just thinking about eating them.

7. Are your expectations for yourself too high?

Not at all. I know what I want and what I like and what my limitations are. I occasionally step outside of my comfort zone (I should do so more often to be honest) but I certainly do not push myself to limits that I don’t expect to be able to achieve. 

8. Would you like more fun in your life?

At the moment, yes, because in this pandemic I am hardly having any fun at all. 

9. What is your one comfort food?

Cheese. I love cheese. I especially love cheese on toast. I try to limit my intake but if I am peckish, I will pop to the fridge and slice off a chunk of cheese.

10. How would you give someone encouragement?

I would talk to them and gently tell them that they can do whatever it is they need encouragement to do.

11. Do you get enough sleep?

I have been watching a few TED talks recently and I was particularly fascinated when the subject was sleep. 

My usual amount of sleep is seven and a half hours a night (almost timed like clockwork) but there are times in the past when I have either gone to bed to late or just had a poor night’s sleep and woken up feeling groggy, irritated and grumpy. The TED talks basically told me about how important sleep is because it gives your body the chance to cleanse, heal and clear itself down after a hard day. Consequently I have tried to go to bed earlier. The good news is that I have now started waking up before my alarm clock having had a great night’s sleep – still about seven and a half hours but sometimes longer. And I feel better for it. 

12. What activities make you feel more relaxed

As I said above, walking helps me to relax as does reading and listening to ambient music like this:

13. Where do you need to practice forgiveness in your life?

I don’t think I do need to practice forgiveness to be honest. I will forgive if necessary but I don’t tend to bear grudges.

14. What is one thing you have not done because of how you looked?

I’ve not entered a beauty pageant because I don’t look like a beautiful woman.

15. What would you like more of in your life?

I would like more freedom from coronavirus restrictions. More generally I would like more freedom anyway but only in terms of not being tied down to a career in the rat race. When I retire, I hope that freedom will materialise.

Hey Fatty Bum Bum

I am not obese – but I could be in the year 2030.

Experts have been hurling statistics at us again, this time terrifying the population of the United Kingdom with the horrific news that 40% of all people will be obese by the year 2030.

Think about that for a second; four out of every ten people living in the United Kingdom will be obese.

They won’t just be slightly overweight.

They won’t just be overweight.

They won’t be “pleasantly plump”.

They will be obese – they will be walking barrels of blubber – they will make elephants look skinny.

I can’t decide whether these experts who have come up with these figures have made a mistake or whether they are basing their figures on current trends.

Either way, it is enough to make a Daily Mail reader run around screaming “We’re all going to die,” or a Daily Express reader run around screaming “Where’s Princess Diana when you need her?”

When I heard this, I was intrigued. What does “obese” actually mean?

I have taken a risk looking this up because I am a bit of a hypochondriac (you can read about it here) and to look up the medical definition may involve accidentally spotting symptoms for an awful disease.

Thankfully I came across a BMI calculator and decided to work out just how fat I actually am.

I am 5 feet 11 inches tall and I weigh 13 stones 6 pounds (188 pounds). This gives me a BMI of 25.8 which is (as I already knew) slightly overweight.

Thankfully it is not massively overweight and I can reach a healthy BMI (24.9) if I lose 7 pounds.

If I were to suddenly decide to eat utter junk, on the other hand, I would reach obesity by increasing my weight to 15 stones 10 pounds (220 pounds) and attaining a BMI of 30.

Losing 7 pounds seems to be a good target to aim for and achievable for somebody like me. Gaining 31 pounds seems like madness but with a little effort it is not beyond the realms of possibility should I suddenly become possessed by an insane urge to swell my gut so big that I lose sight of my genitalia.

The problem is that it is easier to gain weight than lose weight and with all the cheap junk food available in Britain at the moment, I can see why experts are becoming concerned.

Mrs PM is very conscious of her weight and she nestles nicely in the “normal” BMI range. She is careful what she eats and, consequently, I am too by association. We eat a varied but healthy diet, punctuated by the odd mad over-indulgence, usually at the weekend and usually involving (in my case) bacon, sausage, cheese and beer.

Abstaining from such foodstuffs would see my weight drop and I have the willpower to do that (providing I can fight the urge to kill people at work and eat comfort food to console myself).

Sadly there are people who seem not to care; and I can see how experts think we are drifting towards the obesity levels of the United States. We are already the fattest nation in Europe, according to some reports.

I have seen some enormous people in my time. On a business trip to Atlanta in the US, I decided to go for a walk around the city centre and spied an enormous beast of a man. He was huge. Each leg was like a tree trunk swathed in blubber; people like that should not be allowed to wear shorts by law. His T-shirt was so big it could have housed a family of rhinos. His face was so podgy that I could barely see his eyes.

And guess what? He was eating an enormous burger.

I wondered how somebody could grow that big and then I had, what I thought, was a small lunch. There was enough food to feed a family of six and I had to leave most of it.

Back in the UK, restaurants don’t tend to serve enormous portions of food. But junk food is ubiquitous with KFC, Burger King, McDonald’s etc. on every corner. 

And the worst food is quite cheap. Supermarkets sell pizzas for next to nothing. It is cheaper to buy junk food than good food.

Take last week for example. It was my turn to do the weekly shop and I found myself at the checkout behind a reasonably large lady; she wasn’t fat but she wasn’t thin at all. In her shopping trolley she had cakes, chocolates, pizzas and all manner of food that might transport her and her family safely down the road to Plump City. She may have heard the news about obesity because it looked like she was taking steps – she had bought a load of low fat yoghurts.

I wondered about that. Why not just put back the cakes and chocolate and buy some fruit? Why not pop back the pizzas and buy some fish and some vegetables?

Perhaps she was just making a start.

After all, every little helps, so they say.

My immediate aim, knowing that I am fairly close to achieving a normal BMI is to grab my willpower and cut the crap for a week or two or three.

Sadly, given my plans for September, that might not be so easy – but if I cut down on cakes, chocolate, burgers, pizza, deep fried chicken and chips I might stand a chance. It’s just a shame I don’t normally eat any of them.

Oh well, bye bye bacon, sayonara sausages and ciao cheese – at least for a week or two.

Beer? That too – maybe*

*The Plastic Mancunian reserves the right to tell lies!

The Battle of the Bulge

I am fighting another war and to be honest it is not one that I saw coming. Consequently, I am lagging behind.

But I am fighting back.

I am engaged in the Battle of the Bulge, dear reader; me versus my expanding waistline.

When I was a kid, I was so skinny that the term “bag of bones” was a fairly accurate description. I was like a living skeleton with skin tightly wrapped around my frame, with only a little muscle to hold it in place and make me look vaguely human.

I was thin – terribly thin. Yet I had a massive appetite and a fantastic metabolism and I could, quite literally, eat a horse and burn it off without blinking, belching or farting. If I ate a crisp you could see it travel down my neck before reaching my stomach where it was napalmed out of existence and added to my energy intake.

As a kid I used to think that my inner combustion engine was like the world’s greatest nuclear reactor that could break down anything thrown at it.

“I don’t know where he puts it,” my mum used to say, and to be honest neither did I.

The food I consumed gave me loads of energy. I used to run everywhere, like a little whippet. I played football in the park, swam, played squash, badminton, rugby, athletics, cricket – you name it, I tried it. I was in the school cross country team and at the end of each race I felt alive. I had a newspaper round and I carried a bag full of daily missives around the streets, running the entire time.

And I still ate loads, my nuclear digestion giving me enormous bursts of vitality allowing me to pursue all of my sporting activities with ease.

Even at university, when I cut down the exercise slightly (only slightly, mind you), I still ate vast quantities of food, especially chocolate, crisps and other things that were extremely fattening and they were absorbed without adding anything to my body fat.

Nothing changed – even when I settled down into working and married life.

I still ate loads and only put on a little weight, which vanished whenever my ex-wife, W, decided to go on a diet. She often battled with her weight (and usually won) but whenever she made a supreme effort and ate more healthily (with whatever the latest dieting fad was at the time), I lost weight too - and very easily. It used to infuriate her. I simply ate massive quantities of whatever she was eating and while the pounds slipped off slowly for W, they dropped off me.

In my early thirties, I remember standing in front of a mirror, staring at my naked reflection, and thinking to myself “I’m still a bag of bones.”

And I was.

Even at the age of 32, I could see my rib cage and my stomach was totally flat. I had no muscle to speak of at all.

I became blasé about it all. I was blissfully unaware that at some point my nuclear digestion would begin to falter. To me, the Battle of the Bulge was something I would never have to fight. Obesity, for me, was an enemy that was too terrified to take me on. I would never be fat.

How wrong I was.

It is difficult to pinpoint the exact time that I noticed things starting to change. I have a feeling that it might have coincided with my 40th birthday.

I noticed that my weight was increasing. “Time for a diet,” I thought. I recalled that when W had inadvertently put me on a diet, my weight dropped. It would again – wouldn’t it?

Nope!! Not at all.

I ate more healthy food and the weight didn’t go. I actually joined a gym and started to exercise more, but the weight only drifted off a little. All of a sudden, I had a minor weight problem. I couldn’t believe it.

And it has been that way ever since. I have had to cut down on the amount of food I eat and have all but eliminated fattening food like chocolate, crisps, cakes etc. in favour of fruit.

People tell me that I am not fat and to be honest, I’m not really. The problem is I recall standing in front of the mirror and seeing a bag of bones.

Now it looks as if somebody has tried to inflate me. If I compare that mental image of myself aged 32 with the naked image I saw this morning, the difference is frightening.

I have moobs and a little podgy stomach. My shoulders are looking broader and my face is fatter. Things are drooping, dear reader – DROOPING.

People who haven’t seen me for a few years keep saying things like “My God – you’ve put on weight, Dave.”

And that hurts.

I have therefore decided to declare war on another front and try to rediscover the physique of my youth.

Stop laughing! Stop laughing right now!

I can do this – I know I can. I actually decided to start in December when I stood on the bathroom scales at the height of Christmas over-indulgence only to leap off in shock.

“GET OFF ME YOU BIG FAT LUMP OF BLUBBER!” yelled the contraption and it wasn’t even a “Speak Your Weight” machine.

I have to confess, dear reader, that I am not actually that fat. I am just a little overweight. The problem is that I am not used to it and I don’t like it at all.

I aim to lose a stone – then I will be happy. Nonetheless, just losing a few pounds can be difficult. The main problem is the food I like. I don’t want to give it up.

Why is it that the food that tastes best also adds several inches to your waistline? I love crisps, bacon, sausage, burgers, beer, pizza, cheese, chips, steak, hot dogs, mayonnaise, ice cream, fried chicken, curry, pies, kebabs, cheese on toast, biscuits, doughnuts, etc. etc.

It's like a sick joke.

The good news is that I am not a fan of chocolate and cakes so I can easily avoid such items. Sadly, there is one temptress that taunts me every time I open the fridge door. My nemesis is a giant slab of cheese.

“Go on,” it whispers. “Just a couple of slices of cheese on toast. You know you want to.”

I have resisted so far. Since December I have managed to lose about four pounds. I haven’t necessarily stopped eating crap but I have cut down, substituting an apple for a bag of crisps for example. Also, doing a bit more exercise has helped (though I have managed to hurt myself slightly doing Tae-Bo, so much so that I have decided to cut down on it a little on that too – don’t tell Billy Blanks).

I reckon that by spring, when the weather improves and the days grow longer, I shall be ready to get on my bike, quite literally.

This is a war I shall win – as long as I can resist the call of the cheese.

I'm Once, Twice, Three Times A Fatso

When I’ve been scared or worried in the past, people have offered me advice:

“Grow up, you sad arse!!”

“Why don’t you just grow a set?”

“Try typing How To Get a New Spine into Google.”

“Be BIG!!”

I’ve taken one of those valuable recommendations on board in the past two weeks – “Be BIG!”

Unfortunately, I have taken it quite literally; I am now twice the man I used to be. Let me explain.

I have just returned from a two week holiday to Canada and America. Mrs PM’s father suggested the trip to us last year. Mrs PM was adamant that we should go, so we did.

We spent a week on a coach touring the Canadian Rockies and a week on a cruise ship visiting a couple of places in Alaska. It is this latter part of the holiday that I want to focus on today.

I had never been on a cruise before and nobody warned me about the dangers until the day before we embarked.

The tour guide on the coach hinted that there would be a lot of food. Of course there will be a lot of food, I thought – it’s an American cruise ship. Unfortunately I didn’t appreciate exactly how much food there would be and, worse, I didn’t realise that it would all be free – absolutely totally free (when I say “free”, I don’t mean that the holiday company gave away the grub – the price of the cruise included the food) and absolutely totally freely available.

When I arrived in Seattle and saw the size of the cruise ship, I kind of got my first inkling of the gulf between my expectations and the reality of the situation. The ship was huge; it had 16 decks, several restaurants, even more bars, a fully seated theatre, two nightclubs, several swimming pools, a gym, a tennis court, a jogging track, a library, an art gallery, several shops, a casino, a spa, a simulated golf course, at least 2500 passengers and at least 1000 crew members.

It took me the whole day to explore the ship – it was like a floating town.

The cabins were smaller than your average hotel room – but only just. The one assigned to Mrs PM and myself had a double bed, a wardrobe, a desk, a TV, a bathroom with sink, toilet and shower and a safe. The shower was, shall we say, cosy but it was perfectly adequate for a slim person like me and my good lady.

On previous trips to the States, I have applied a measure of willpower and self control to my consumption of food. The sheer volume of food that you can acquire in America is colossal. In a restaurant, you can ask for a small portion and you still end up with a meal that would feed the population of a small country.

Take last year, for example. Mrs PM and I found ourselves in a restaurant in Boston and, feeling like a little piece of home, both opted for “Fish and Chips”. The meal, when it arrived, was gargantuan. It looked as if a trawler had been dispatched to the Atlantic Ocean and a day’s entire catch had been dumped on our plate. I have never seen so many chips in a single place. They were piled so high that there was snow on the peaks and I swear I could see a couple of skiers navigating the slopes.

Back on the cruise ship, I wandered around with my little guide, identifying the bars, restaurants and other interesting places and began to notice something strange; there were one or two people who, and I’ll be kind to them here, looked like walking whales. These guys were enormous.

Upon seeing them, my mind drifted back to the cosy shower in our cabin and a vivid scene began to form in my warped imagination; the walking whale trying to crowbar his bulk into a tiny shower.

I began to have serious doubts about the ability of these walking leviathans to crowbar their bulk into the bathroom, let alone the shower. One guy in particular was enormous. I suspected that he contributed to swaying of the vessel on the open sea, such was his bulk. Had he leapt overboard, the rest of the passengers would have mistaken him for a humpback whale.

My imagination began to work overtime. I began to wonder how this man would manage to have a shower. Here’s what I came up with:

(1) He strips naked in his cabin - I apologise for the image that this may conjure up but, believe me, I have had to live with this image for days now and I see no reason why you, dear reader, shouldn’t suffer with me.

(2) He asks his wife to wrap a rope around his colossal belly – this gives a whole new meaning to the question “How long is a piece of rope?”

(3) His wife pushes him into the shower with the aid of a crowbar, leaving the two ends of the rope outside the shower – perhaps she asks the crew of the ship for help.

(4) When the man has finished washing his bulk, the woman hauls his soapy arse out of the shower using the rope – again she might ask for help with this task.

I thank my lucky stars that I am not like this whale-human hybrid. I can still picture the distressing image of this man wearing shorts and a T-shirt that was a little too small for him, allowing part of amazing gut to spill over and say “Hello” to everybody. His legs were enormous and wobbled as he walked. I have rarely seen anybody so fat that their legs actually wobble.

I saw him on several occasions over the course of the cruise, once dressed in a suit. I wondered where he managed to find a shirt to cover his enormous belly – “Tents’R’Us” perhaps?

Unfortunately, the temptation to emulate the ingestion feats of the walking whale proved almost impossible to resist. Why? Allow me to explain.

On the first day of the cruise, we arrived at the restaurant in the evening and enjoyed a very rich four course meal with all the trimmings. I was stuffed. I felt like I had eaten a horse. As we left the restaurant I asked Mrs PM’s dad whether the meal was typical.

“Yes,” he replied. “There is so much food that you won’t know what to eat first.”

He wasn’t wrong. Breakfast the next day, for me, consisted of:

A melon slice, half a grapefruit and an apple, followed by a whopping plate full of scrambled eggs, sausages, bacon, hash browns, two slices of toast and a yoghurt all washed down with two glasses of grapefruit juice and two cups of coffee.

As I ate this massive breakfast, one thought ran through my head – this food is paid for and I’m bloody well going to eat as much of it as I can.

Mrs PM, on the other hand, was sensible and suggested that we eat carefully. However, when I was wondering around the ship, I spotted a pizza outlet and simply couldn’t resist a big slice.

At lunch, the buffet was enormous and I helped myself to sandwiches, meat, vegetables, chips and cake with lashings of coffee and Sprite.

In the evening we indulged ourselves once more with a massive four course meal washed down with beer and wine (thankfully the beer and wine weren’t free, otherwise I would have taken full advantage of that).

And so it went on. Every day I had a massive breakfast, followed by a snack and a massive lunch with yet another four course meal in the evening. Had I wanted, I would have been able to get up in the middle of the night and helped myself to yet more food from the night menu.

At one point, I saw the walking whale eating. He was sitting at a table on deck next to one of the swimming pools, with a massive plate full of pizza and a cheeseburger and fries at the side. And this was at four o’clock in the afternoon, just a couple of hours before the evening meal.

And there were other people eating similar copious amounts of food.

And, worse, as the cruise went on, I realised that I, too, was eating far too much.

It was six days into the voyage when my greed finally hit home.

After a couple of days, Mrs PM had mentioned that I was eating too much and that, if I had a big breakfast, perhaps I should skip lunch. She was, as usual, very aware of the side effects of stuffing your face, and had been restrained in her consumption of food. I, on the other hand, had been a idiot, convinced that I was svelte even at the tender age of 47, and that I could eat as much as I could when I was 21. I actually started to listen to her and take heed when disaster struck.

The ship was struck down with an outbreak of Norovirus.

Norovirus is a particularly nasty little bug that basically gives victims eight hours of agony with vomiting and diarrhoea. And it is highly contagious. The captain and his crew enforced a high level of sanitation when this happened, making sure that the whole ship was napalmed with every conceivable bug killer every hour of the day as well as making sure that every passenger washed their hands repeatedly, particularly at food outlets. Every restaurant had hand sanitiser fluid, an alcohol based liquid that destroyed all germs and passengers were forced to clean their hands before entering anywhere that food was present.

Unfortunately, despite the precautions, Mrs PM fell victim to the Norovirus and, after eight hours of hideous noises in our little bathroom, was confined to the cabin for a further 48 hours. Incredibly, I wasn’t confined at all and was free to roam the ship, which I did. I wasn’t alone because I had Mrs PM’s dad and his wife to keep me entertained. Alas, Mrs PM’s dad didn’t care whether I mutated into a bloated mass of flab and when I began to consume lots of food, he didn’t warn me of the consequences of my over-indulgence. Mrs PM wasn’t there to make sure that my eating habits were constrained. Consequently I welcomed the freedom, driven not by common sense but some weird concept about value for money.

So I ate. And I ate. And I ate. And I ate.

In the meantime, Mrs PM, a prisoner in the cabin, was allowed to eat only bland food during her quarantine, food which was so unappealing that she lost her appetite.

I am still puzzled by the fact that Mrs PM was quarantined and I wasn’t. During the quarantine period, a “hit squad” of cleaners came twice a day and napalmed the cabin with detergents and chemical bug killers and I was requested to wash my hands every ten seconds. By the end of the quarantine period, we had the cleanest cabin on the ship and I had the cleanest hands on the planet.

Even more incredibly, I didn’t fall victim to the virus at all. I remained in full health for the duration of the cruise and ate accordingly.

After six days, my greedy excessiveness came back and slapped me in the face because I had to wear my penguin suit for the second of two formal evenings on the ship, the first evening being on my first full day.

How did my greed slap me in the face? My trousers were too tight, telling me that I had added unwelcome inches to my waistline.

Thankfully, I was able to make the necessary adjustments but such was the shock that I took a closer look at myself in the mirror. I didn’t like what I saw. My belly, already increasing with age, had had a visible growth spurt and my boobs seemed bigger.

I am not a whale by any stretch of the imagination but my pot belly has definitely grown, nuking all my previous attempts to beat it into submission.

Damn you, cruise food, damn you!

Damn you, will power, damn you!

Damn you, bloody Norovirus, damn you!

Mrs PM has now put me on a diet. I have returned home and Jasper, my overweight fat bloater of a moggy, is now my kindred spirit. We cry into our empty plates each night.

Looking back, I should have known better.

Anyway, apart from over indulgence and Norovirus, the holiday was amazing and I shall, in due course, be posting lots of photos on The Plastic Mancunian’s Eye as well as mentioning a few other choice observations in future posts.

In the meantime, Mrs PM, now fully recovered, will be keeping me in check. She’s just gone out to do some shopping. Hopefully a crowbar and a rope aren’t on her list.

Fat Cat

I have just broken some horrifying news to Mrs PM. Jasper, the biggest of our cats, is actually a little too big.

A few months ago, Jasper was able to leap up onto the table, despite his bulk. Today, however, we watched as he thought about leaping onto the table before lazily climbing on to the chair and then struggling onto the table.

Once there he stared at us as if to say “OK then! Where’s the food?”

I couldn’t remember when we last weighed him. It was a few months ago and he was 14lbs; I recall saying then that he should be on a diet. Seeing his struggle to get onto the table I decided to weigh him again.

He was 17lbs. Mrs PM was aghast.

Consequently, Jasper needs to go on a diet. If he were our only cat, that wouldn’t be an issue. The problem is we have three cats, one of which is scared of anything that moves and another which demands food but, due to hyperthyroidism, doesn’t gain weight, despite his appetite. In the past we have watched over the cats as they eat making sure that Jasper doesn't take over and scoff the whole lot. And that has worked; Jasper has lost weight.

Recently we have lapsed and the results are there for all to see. Jasper has been cleaning up after the other two cats like a feline hoover, sucking up the scraps and converting them into body fat.

I need to take charge. Mrs PM is far too soft.

From now on I am going to overthrow my feline masters and make sure that they only eat when I allow them to. This is going to be hard on Poppy (the scared one) and Spike (the demanding one) but I see no other option.

The days of pandering to their every whim are over. Here is my plan:

(1) All cats will be fed in the morning before we go to work and in the evening when we return.

(2) Jasper will be locked in the lounge until Spike and Poppy have eaten their fill. They will be allowed to eat as much as they like.

(3) We will then free Jasper and give him his ration. Spike and Poppy will be removed from the equation. Jasper will be given less food.

(4) Jasper will not be allowed to have any biscuits or dry food or treats of any kind. He can miaow to his hearts content but I will not submit.

While this strict regime may work in theory we have a couple of problems to overcome.

(1) Mrs PM are going on a two week holiday on 2nd November, leaving the cats in the care of our neighbours. I know what will happen. They will come in the morning and put down food for three cats – and Jasper will be lurking, waiting to vacuum the entire lot into his oversized maw. My only hope is that Spike will stand his ground and keep Jasper at bay. I fear that Poppy may starve, though she does have a tendency to stand up for herself when hungry. Despite my hopes, I fear that Jasper may weigh more on our return. If that is the case then I we will just have to impose a stricter regime.

(2) Mrs PM is too soft. When Jasper is hungry he sits and stares at her with doleful eyes and miaows. She can resist but I wonder for how long. I need to be strong and authoritative and take on the cat in a battle of wills. Unfortunately my track record in this challenge is pretty poor. Jasper usually wins.

The good news is that this time Mrs PM is on my side – I feel therefore that together we can win and turn Jasper into the slimline moggy that he was at a year old. It will be tough though, especially since Christmas is coming, a time when the cats benefit from our own over-indulgence.

With strength, perseverance and a little cunning I can turn our house into a fat-fighting feline boot camp. I will prevail. I will even resort to calling him names; I’ve started already:

Fatty
Lardbucket
Lump

Jasper will be thin again. Either that or we’ll have to get a new catflap.