My employers very kindly gave us all the opportunity to have a quick, free health check, the highlight of which was watching someone feint after having their finger pricked for a cholesterol test.  I went down for a few minutes away from my desk, and to pick up a goody bag containing a free Company-branded travel mug.

I waited in line for my turn, then sat down for my consultation.

“Height?”

“Six three, six four.”

“Right, six three, then.  Weight?”

“Ooh, about eighteen, maybe eighteen and a half stone.”

“About?”

“Yeah.”

“Right, on the scales.”

“No, really, it’s eighteen and a half.  Probably.”

“On the scales.”

I got on the scales.

“One hundred and twenty kilos.”  Nearly nineteen stone.

“Alright, keep your voice down.”

“Your BMI’s very high.”

“Yes, I know.”

“You could do with losing a bit of weight.”

“Yes, I know.  It’s an ongoing battle.”

“You see, you’re here,” (shows me chart, points at ‘Very Obese’) “and your ideal weight is about fourteen stone.”

“I think those days are long gone.”

“But you could still stand to lose, you know, a bit of weight.”

“A stone or two?”

Lady smiles uncomfortably, “Well, yes, that would be a start.”

In the queue I had regaled my colleagues with the tale of the last time I’d had a health check.  I had my blood pressure taken and (as I recalled) the lady said, “That’s unusual.  Your blood pressure is very low.”  “Is that bad?” I asked.  “Well, no, but we’d normally expect to see low blood pressure in people who are super-fit athletes.”  Awkward pause.  “Would you…  describe yourself as…  super… fit?”  Me, deadpan: “No.”

That was two years ago and, despite being overweight I’d always told myself at least I didn’t have high blood pressure.  So, I sat down to have my blood pressure measured again, and I told the lady the story, attempting to break the awkwardness still lingering after she’d told me I’m five stone overweight.  

“That doesn’t sound right,” she said, dismissively.  “Your pulse is low though.” 

“Oh, maybe it was my pulse then.”

“Yes, that’s more likely.  Your pulse is quite low, but your diastolic blood pressure is high.”

“What?”

“Your diastolic blood pressure.  The bottom number.  It should be between sixty and ninety.  You’re 140 over 102.  I suggest you go and see your GP.  You need to lose some weight.”

“Yes I know.”

“Would you describe yourself as active?”

Unconvincingly, “Well, yes.”

“Do you do exercise that leaves you breathless for half an hour, three times a week.”

“Yes, I play cricket on Saturdays.  And, erm, cricket training once or twice a week.”

“And cricket, that’s, well, it’s not exactly continuous exertion is it?”

“It’s a bit stop-start, but…”

“And is that for the whole year?”

“Well, no, obviously, erm…  I walk to Sainsbury’s for lunch most days…”

Looks at sheet with three categories: Active, Walking, Inactive.  “I’ll put you down as a walker.”

“Thanks.”

“Your cholesterol level is fine; you just need to lose a bit of weight.  But do go and see your GP as soon as you can.”

“Right.  Can I have my free travel mug now?”

So, to surmise, I am twenty-nine and a half, five stone overweight and have high blood pressure.

Ladies, form an orderly queue.

The advice I was given was to get plenty of RICE (Rest, Ice, Compression and Elevation).  Perhaps unwisely I’ve been online a few times to try and get a better understanding of what I should and shouldn’t be doing.  I should apparently only follow the RICE theory for a couple of days after the injury, and I should only apply ice for twenty minutes at a time (with a rest in between ‘icings’—although the suggested periods of rest differ from website to website, from twenty minutes to four hours).  Wednesday night, immediately after feeling the pop in my knee, I should have done the RICE thing immediately.  Instead, I walked nearly 3 miles to get home (stupid male pride prevented me from asking for a lift home), and, thinking I’d walked it off, slumped on the sofa watching Flight Of The Conchords on BBC4.

Thursday night I should have done the RICE thing again.  Instead I went to the pub for my mate’s birthday (sausage, egg and chips, a few shandies and a couple of hands of poker — it was worth it).  I also forgot about my fucked knee whilst running across the pub car park in the rain.  All told I’ve done nothing much to help the situation, and when I have tried to help the situation I’ve got it completely wrong.  Friday night I sat with ice on my knee for two hours solid.  TWO HOURS.  That’s a bit more than the recommended twenty minutes.  (Apparently this can lead to nerve damage.  That may explain the aforementioned anaesthetised sensation.)

Not my knee

Despite considering myself to be fairly unfit and not especially active, being unable to do the little bits of exercise I previously took for granted is getting me down.  Wednesday night 5-a-side football was fast becoming the highlight of my week and I was really starting to enjoy running (ME!  ENJOYING RUNNING!).  At lunchtime I went for a short walk to the shops just to get out of the office, and found it really tough.  I’m wishing I hadn’t bothered now, as my knee is throbbing.  It’s not painful but it’s uncomfortable.  I feel so pathetic.  I feel old.

On the plus side, there isn’t much swelling around my knee.  I read that swelling is a tell-tale sign of damage.  Plenty of rest is the order of the day (or the order of the rest of the year, to be specific).  It’s demoralising that I’m still hobbling around though, and I’m annoyed I can’t walk a couple of hundred yards without feeling like my leg is going to drop off.  This does however give me an excuse to be a lazy fucker for the foreseeable future.  Every cloud…

If your hand is in the air you are a) wrong, and b) a bit simple for putting your hand up.  Saturday night the missus and I found ourselves in a lovely restaurant overlooking Trevaunance Cove in St Agnes, Cornwall.  After a very nice starter — squid and chorizo salad — my main course arrived; moules marinière with a side bowl of chips.  There’s a rule (I don’t know if it’s true or not and frankly I don’t care, but it makes sense) that if a mussel hasn’t opened during cooking, you shouldn’t eat it.  I found an unopened mussel and lifted it up.  I shouldn’t eat that, I thought to myself.  It might give me the shits.  Hang on, that might help me lose weight…

Trevaunance Cove, St Agnes (C) http://www.consolsoils.co.uk/

So I ate it.  I prised open a mussel and ate it, full in the knowledge — hoping, in fact — that it would give me a stomach bug which in turn might help me lose weight.  That’s right, people — after all my bluster last week about doing some ruddy exercise I (unsuccessfully) tried to give myself food poisoning as an alternative to doing any exercise.  That aside I lived up to my greedy tag, polishing off my moules, the accompanying baguette and bowl of chips, despite the fact that finishing the chips was a real struggle.  I sat there, stuffed full, neither needing nor really wanting any more food, but there it was in front of me — food that hadn’t been eaten.  So I had to eat it.  It’s a compulsion I have.  A disease.  I blame my parents for all those times as a child they wouldn’t let me leave the table until I’d eaten my brussel sprouts, bribing me that I’d “grow up big and strong like He-Man.”  Sorry ma and pa but I went too far.

He-Man (this is how I perceive myself in my mind)

I say I did no exercise; we walked a few miles each day along the cliffs.  Saturday we walked from Porthtowan (we stayed in a cracking B&B overlooking the bay) to Portreath, about a six mile roundtrip.  On Sunday we walked to Trevaunance Cove (five and three quarter miles according to the sign outside the pub where we stopped to call a taxi to take us back to the car because the walk had taken us twice as long as we thought it would and we wanted to go home).  So I did *some* exercise.  I got my heart rate up on a couple of occasions (the Saturday walk featured a couple of very steep inclines) and got a bit of a ‘dab on’ (anyone who knows me will tell you that it really doesn’t take much to make me sweat though).  I just think walking doesn’t feel like *real* exercise, you know?

Tonight is Wednesday night, and you know what Wednesday night is?  No, it’s not the night “we’re gonna make love” (Flight of the Conchords reference.  Not sure it works to be honest but click on the link anyway) — it’s the night I waddle around a school gymnasium sweating, gasping for breath and trying to kick lumps out of the worst (and preferably weakest) footballer on the opposing team.  I’ll make no promises regarding my calorie intake afterwards, but please keep your fingers crossed (metaphorically of course, just in case you put your hand up at the start of this blog).

Why is this important?  Well, it isn’t, really.  Not on the grand scheme of things.  It did however mean that last week I had to walk a bit more than usual every day.  My fifteen-minute drive to walk was substituted with — on a good day — an hour’s walk/bus ride/walk/train journey/walk.  On one particularly bad day it was an hour and three quarter’s walk/bus/walk/sit waiting on cold train station the one day I didn’t wear a jacket/train/walk.  The plus-side of all this was that I got a bit more exercise than usual, and I managed to read the whole of Kevin Sampson’s book ‘Freshers’ (which, to be fair, was OK.  Nothing special — just OK).

I did however miss my Friday weigh-in as I spent my lunchtime collecting my car.  Today when I finally managed to weigh myself I found that the weekend’s excesses had undone all the good of my additional walking.  It may also have been something to do with the 1.5kg tin of chocolate biscuits a work colleague brought in last week (I conservatively estimate I ate about a third of the tin).

And even after an excessive day/night out on Saturday, I still thought I might have lost a bit of weight.  OK, so I drank somewhere in the region of fifteen pints, but on the flipside I only ate two slices of cheese on toast, a bag of nuts and a packet of quavers.  Unsurprisingly — given those combining factors — I vomited pretty much all of it up all over the bathroom floor at about ten o’clock.  So all things considered I thought I’d done OK.  And I’m not admitting to being bulimic either (or advocating bulimia as a weight loss tactic), I’d quite clearly had far too much to drink and not nearly enough to eat.  Yet again I found my Saturday night coming to a premature and embarrassing end; this time however I can’t blame weight loss.  I’ve stayed at 18st 8lbs for three weeks now, and I really need to do something about it.

As much as I don’t want to admit it, I’m going to have to start exercising.  Last week I played 5-a-side football on Wednesday night — something I’m planning to do every week throughout the winter.  That should help.  I might also have to go for a jog.  And I really really fucking hate jogging.  I need to be far healthier than I have been so far.  I just need to do better, basically.

My next weigh-in will be Friday, by which time I guarantee I’ll have lost some weight.

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