Fighting Fat

I’m fat, and I’m obsessed with my weight.

There, I declared it, like we’re at a Fatties Anonymous meeting. I balloon up and down like a bungee jump of pounds piling on and off. I lead a lifestyle that involves soundchecking when I should be cooking, and performing when I should be eating, and eating when I should be sleeping. And drinking beer consistently. So after getting some random Twitter advice from comedian Richard Herring (some people go on Twitter to follow and fawn at celebrities), it appears I go on to get dietary tips. Well, he was very nice and recommended www.fitday.com, where you keep a food diary and an activity diary. I learnt yesterday that just by having a professional lifestyle where I’m ‘mostly seated, with some movement’, I automatically burn 3,093 calories. So typing this now, constituting the movement of furious finger-tapping must be a good few hundred calories worth of effort. Who said blogging was a waste of time? As you have to write everything down and find the appropriate calorie profile for it (or customise your own food entry for when your mum sends you home-made samosas with your dad), you get a distinct view of your eating habits. I get to look at charts monitoring my progress and weight lost versus weight expected to lose. I have to lose 0.25 pounds a day to reach my optimum weight by the time my wedding arrives. Oh yeah, and according to the draconic measures of the fatty chart, I am narrowly mildly obese for my height. So, my optimum weight by the time my wedding comes around would be just ‘healthy.’ I’m getting obsessed, trying not to fall apart at midnight at drink loads of beer and have a chicken curry with egg-fried rice on the way home. I’m getting up 37 minutes earlier to be able to change, warm-up and do a quick thirty minute exercise. I’m up picking up foods to eat that have the calories written on the packet. I’m monitoring. I’m getting obsessed. Yesterday I went in to buy some healthy snacks from the supermarket and found myself in the Slimfast range staring at their healthy 100 calorie snacks of chocolate and peanut butter and other things and a Slimfast shake of peach and mango, and I thought why not? At lunchtime, I scoffed it all down, feeling painfully hungry and agitated afterwards, entering my stats into the website and watching the breakdowns filter down through my eyes like matrix code and I thought, holy moly dom joly, I’m due an eating disorder about 13 years too late? Now that I work with dad, and thus see my mum less because I don’t need to ever see my dad really, she keeps sending homecooked food with him so I remember her fondly. I can’t resist but according to this website, Indian food ain’t too good on the ol’ calorie front. I worked out that I can drink 20 beers in a day and meet my calorie allowance. Maybe I’ll turn to alcoholism to get me through this difficult time.

While we’re on the subject of mental obsessions, we all know Kanye West can be precious. His ‘why can’t you let me be great’ rant on his blog was a highlight, proving the man can’t really take a joke, especially about himself. His latest album, a difficult post-breakup/mum-death musing, called ‘808s and Heartbreaks’ was met with much bemusement in his autotuned vocoder singing voice and his soul-bearing confessional tone, a novelty considering his world-beating usual bravado. I won’t listen to ‘808s and Heartbreaks’ again, the listen was that painful, and I’ll never review it because the only time I heard it, I struggled to get to track 5 before turning it off. The beats were incredible. But anyway, the point is, Kanye is an immense lyricist, full of charm and charisma, and would you believe, humour. So, hearing him on the new N.A.S.A. album with Lykke Li and Santogold, on an proper electro-hop tip, destroying a beat with his off-beat drawl and sick lyrics is a real joy. It’s the obvious stand-out single. It’s absolutely incredible. I’ll be reviewing N.A.S.A.’s album tomorrow, but in the meantime, just know... Yeezy is back.