Or Would You Rather Be A Duck?

How are you feeling today?

Still rough, huh? I wondered why I didn't see you around yesterday. Look, I don't mean to intrude on private grief, but you know I've been away from the devil's brew entirely these past five months, and I'm feeling better for it.

I don't want to come on all churchy or anything, but I'd like to share with you something which has given me strength in my moments of doubt and darkness, the inspiring words of The Reverend William Claude Dukinfield delivering his immortal Temperance Lecture (incidentally, an even more inspiring studio recording exists of this, but I couldn't find it on You Tube, so you'll have to save your soul to this live version. It'll do just fine.).

Now the fog and haze of the festive period is clearing, and the walking wounded have removed themselves from the battlefield, it's just you now, with your immediate family and your immediate cravings. Have you allowed yourself too much slack these past few weeks? If so, you can and must stop it now. I hate to use the expression given what we've all had to go through in the name of domestic and familial harmony, but it's time to go cold turkey, and re-establish the regimes, routines and patterns of eating you need to get those pounds once more melting away, and making sure it happens for keeps. It's up to each of us to ensure that, however much we need to shift, the new year we're heading into is our last year of fatness, and - equally importantly - it's our final year of weight loss. Ever.

It's going to happen for me. Will you make it happen for you? Really?

It ain't magic, and it's not going to be an easy ride. But starting here and now we can each of us make it work.

Every one of us is human and that means we are each one fallible. We can and do get things wrong, make poor decisions, fail to think things through, get fat. We allow addictions to develop and sometimes encourage unhealthy patterns of eating and thinking to develop and spoil our enjoyment of our lives. Your life is precious (maybe not as precious as mine, but still pretty damn' precious), and there is no point spending this short amount of time we are on this jumping green sphere doing stuff which harms us and our enjoyment of what the world can offer. This isn't anything to do with money, or success, status or even power. We experience this world through our bodies, and why should we allow our bodies to slide into poor health, premature exhaustion, and early death.

That's what fat people do to themselves. Face facts and change. Only you can do it. Others can help, but it has to start with you. And if you've read this far, you're ready already, so get your plans laid. Whatever diet path you have chosen to follow, get clear what you're required to do, and what results you can expect to see. Remember the old adage, 'failure to plane is planning to fail.' If you don't get your rules and guidelines set from the start, nothing significant and worthwhile is going to happen for you. Maybe you'll lose a few pounds, but you'll soon fall back. Dilettante yo-yo dieting.

What you need, and what you can give yourself, is a good rigorous diet, that keeps you well fed while shedding the pounds. But you have to be grown-up, responsible, and stick with it. No snacking, no junk food fixes, no just this once justifications. Be honest with yourself, for a change. You got fat by being careless of yourself (for whatever reason - we've talked about this elsewhere on the Boot Camp, and are bound to discuss it again, ere long!). Now it's time to start loving yourself a bit.

Loving yourself a bit, can easily involve denying yourself a lot. Just remember the cravings you have to face down every day are not intrinsic to you, you were not born with them. What's the point of dying for them? We are each of us having to challenge and change acquired and highly dysfunctional behaviours. And you just thought you wanted to drop a dress size or two? Don't go confusing cause and effect. When you stop (and I recommend that you do so stop) and ask yourself the question 'how did I get to be fat?', invest in a bit of New Year introspection seasoned with a large sprinkling of honesty. When you start to understand why you got fat, then you'll be effective at losing that weight. Not easy, certainly not comfortable, but the only way we're any of us going to make this thing stick.

For my part, (and my LighterLife counsellor will be overjoyed to read this) I've decided to go back to being strictly VLCD for a couple of months to speed the process along. While I delight in the 108lbs gone, there's still another 116 of the bastards awaiting destruction. I'm committing publicly, here, and now to reclaiming my life.

What about you?

Till the next time, when I for one will be thinner than I am today!,

Your old pal,

Fred