The To-Do List (16 page)

       
‘I’m Dr Anwar. Please follow me to my office whenever you are ready.’

       
At this point my heart really was racing. Even if you manage to convince yourself that everything will be okay, there’s always a small part of you that’s ready for bad news. In my case, that small pessimistic/terrified/worried part is actually quite big and it’s the reason why I don’t smoke or take drugs, jump out of planes or snowboard, play the stock market, walk across train tracks at level crossings unless the lights are green even if there isn’t a train for miles. Because when it comes to bad news I don’t think, ‘Why me?’ No, when bad news comes my way the first words out of my mouth are invariably, ‘Gah! I knew it!’

       
‘So,’ said Dr Anwar, opening my notes, ‘before we take a look at your earlier examination results I will finish off this part of the morning with a physical exam. Just slip off your trousers and lie on the examination table.’

       
I nervously did as instructed. Dr Anwar fixed me with a firm stare and asked: ‘Mr Gayle, do you check yourself?’

       
Although this was a euphemism with which I wasn’t familiar, his deep, doctoral tones left me in no doubt as to what he was referring to.

       
‘As part of today’s examination, we like to show clients how to check correctly for testicular cancer. May I have your permission to proceed?’

       
‘Yeah, fine,’ I said in squeaky voice. This was possibly the most bizarre interaction that I’d had in a very long time.

       
Dr Anwar nodded and took some rubber gloves from a box on his desk. I hopped off the table and dropped my underwear. Ever the professional, Dr Anwar turned his head slightly so that we weren’t making eye contact, then reached down to my groin area and began gently rolling first my left and then my right testicle between his fingers.

       
My mind during this whole process was a blank; I knew that if I entertained a single thought I’d end up collapsed on the floor laughing uncontrollably like an overgrown school boy. So I thought about nothing. Zero. Not a thing. Once it was over, I slipped my pants back on and got dressed. I probably would’ve given myself a round of applause for the amount of restraint that I had shown but then I remembered that there could still be some bad news coming my way and sobered up in a flash.

       
The best of the good news was that my HDL cholesterol count (that’s the ‘good’ cholesterol to you and me) was way above normal and I wasn’t dying of anything horrible. In fact my overall risk of coronary heart disease in the next decade was just two per cent compared with an average of five per cent for a man of my age.

       
Before I could give myself a high five, however, he gave me the bad news: my Body Mass Index, body fat percentage and waist–height ratio were all too high; on top of that my lung function wasn’t great (although this was to be expected with my asthma); my triglyceride count was quite high; and there was a trace amount of blood in my urine indicating a mild kidney infection.

       
In short, if I wasn’t going to fall apart in the near future I would have to do the following:

1. Reduce my calorie intake.

2. Maintain healthy eating patterns.

3. Increase aerobic exercise.

4. Reduce my saturated fat intake.

5. Reduce my intake of refined simple sugars.

I left the Institute somewhat stunned by how unfit I was. Making my way to the car park, I reached for my car keys and discovered the packed lunch Claire had made for me in lieu of breakfast. Under normal circumstances I would’ve wolfed the whole lot down in a second but I barely glanced at it. Instead, I started up the car and told myself that this time things really were going to change. Fortunately for me Item 70 on the To-Do List was ‘Start losing weight before you end up in a Channel Five documentary about fat people so huge that they have to be winched out of bed by helicopter’.

Chapter 14: ‘Go on a diet . . . because at the rate you’re chowing down extra large Mars bars, mate, you’ll be in trousers with elasticated waistbands before the year is out.’

Before turning thirty I had been something of a beanpole. There are pictures of me in my early twenties where I had real cheekbones despite the fact that I’d think nothing of inhaling a family pack of crisps for breakfast, cracking open a Pot Noodle for lunch, chowing through a plate of pasta around tea time and polishing off a post-pub bag of chips on the way home. Blessed with a metabolism that appeared to burn off pretty much everything that I shovelled in meant that I never had to fear the consequences of my eating actions.

       
Cut to a decade later and things couldn’t have been more different. Having bagged myself a lifetime commitment from a member of the opposite sex (‘for better or worse’ should have been exchanged for the words ‘for thicker and chunkier’) I got very comfortable very quickly (‘Shall we go out and meet up with friends or stay in, phone up for a takeaway and watch this brand new TV series called
Property Ladder
?’). This, combined with a sharp turn-down in my metabolism, soon meant that my body, instead of burning off that second helping of Wall’s Viennetta, was turning it directly into fat and gluing itself to my midriff.

       
Getting rid of those extra pounds I’d been carrying around for the past four years called for a two-pronged attack involving both eating less and regular physical exertion but I decided to concentrate my initial efforts on controlling my calorie intake. My first action under the new regime was to eliminate temptation by removing every last fattening item (chocolate, biscuits, cakes) from the house and dropping them all into a bin bag to take to my parents’ house with the specific instruction not to release this food back to me even if I begged. My mum, as is her way, looked at me as though I was mad, mumbled something about not wanting ‘fatty foods’ in
her
house and handed me a leaflet for a local weight watchers group called FatBusters! taking place at the community centre.

       
‘It doesn’t look like my kind of thing,’ I said.

       
‘What does that mean?’ tutted Mum. ‘You should go if you’re serious about losing some of this.’ She patted my stomach and laughed. ‘Look, it’s wobbly just like a water bed.’

       
‘Fine,’ I snapped wondering why it was okay to give me a hard time about my weight. ‘FatBusters! here I come.’

The following afternoon I picked up my mum for the afternoon FatBusters! session. I’d pictured a bunch of middle-aged women sitting on uncomfortable chairs in a draughty church hall extolling the virtues of cottage cheese and, although it was a draughty community centre rather than a church hall, pretty much everything else was spot on.

       
FatBusters! main clientele appeared to be retired women, middle-aged women and younger women with children.

       
As the only man in the room it was hard not to feel like some kind of an interloper. I could see from the looks I was getting that some of the other participants felt my presence was impinging on their freedom to express themselves as though fat really was a feminist issue.

       
Part of me wanted to lift my T-shirt thereby revealing that I too suffered from ‘muffin top’ but I feared that might create the wrong impression. So when it came to my turn to talk about myself, I decided to expose myself mentally instead.

       
‘My name’s Mike, I’m thirty-six years old and I’ve come to FatBusters! because I think I’m addicted to food.’

       
Linda, who was leading our course, nodded sympathetically. ‘In what way do you think you’re “addicted”, Mike?’

       
‘Well, put it this way, I’ve got this friend called Gary, who’s a bit younger than me and is stick thin and sometimes when we go out for a drink I find myself fantasising about swapping bodies with him and then spending a whole day just eating and eating.’

       
I paused to gauge how I was doing with my fellow FatBusters!. They seemed more baffled than threatened by my presence.

       
‘For instance, wearing my friend’s body I imagine starting my day with a massive full English breakfast, followed by a couple of packets of crisps at around eleven, with maybe a spot of candy floss followed by a doughnut chaser around midday. Around one I’d probably have a pub lunch . . . something like steak and kidney pie and chips and then around three-ish I’d probably eat a bit more  . . .’

       
I tailed off because Linda was staring at me intently. I briefly wondered if I’d over-egged it somewhat. I had indeed fantasised about swapping bodies with Gary but it wasn’t as though I thought about it all day, every day.

       
‘I’m going on a bit, aren’t I?’

       
Linda shook her head. ‘No, Mike, I’m sure we can all identify with those kinds of obsessive thoughts.’

       
‘Great,’ I replied. ‘Should I carry on and tell you what I would have had for tea?’

       
‘I think we’ve got the idea,’ smiled Linda. ‘Now moving on to Janet  . . .’

After everyone had ‘shared’ with the group we were introduced to all the FatBusters! materials and products, the most important of which was the Star calculator. A handy reference guide on how to take the pleasure out of eating once and for all. The first meeting took just over three quarters of an hour and I still felt as though FatBusters! wasn’t going to be for me.

       
‘What did you think of that then?’ I asked Mum as we filed out of the community hall.

       
‘I don’t think I’ll be going back.’ Mum shook her head and pulled a face. ‘It wasn’t really my kind of thing. I can’t be bothered with all that faffing around with booklets and eating their special brands of foods. I’m going to follow my own diet.’

       
‘Which is what exactly?’

       
‘To eat less and exercise more.’

I had tried diets before. A few years earlier Claire and I had tried the Atkins diet for a month and then the South Beach Diet. And while Atkins worked for a while (I think I lost around half a stone) and to a degree South Beach did too (I lost a couple of pounds) they both ended up with me falling off the wagon. When I say falling, what I mean is crashing and burning to such an extent that I’d find myself walking, nay, sprinting up to the newsagents at the top of my road and then, confused by a flurry of red lights and white noise blocking out my senses and my conscience I’d eventually open my eyes to find myself back at home, lying naked from the waist up on my bed, with chocolate smeared across my face, empty crisp packets surrounding my body, and an intense feeling of self-loathing in my heart.

       
This time, however, with my mum’s homespun philosophy of ‘eat less and exercise more’ still ringing in my ears I decided that I would find my own way of losing weight and began referring in public (without the faintest degree of irony) to the ‘Mike Gayle Sensible Eating Diet Plan and Exercise Regime’. Better known by its snappy acronym MGSEDER this was my no-nonsense contribution to the world of diet and exercise and basically consisted of bits of well-known diet knowledge, a reduced alcohol intake, the bits of Atkins that I got on with best and a vague plan to ‘walk more’ and engage in ‘other’ physical activity.

Diary excerpts from the first ten days on the Mike Gayle Sensible Eating Diet and Exercise Regime (Part 4)

Sunday 1 April

First thing in the morning I make my way over to my local Marks and Spencer food hall and begin stocking up on ‘healthy foods’, which include the following: one tub of low fat macrobiotic yoghurt, five apples, five low GI ready meals and a two-litre bottle of mineral water. Standing in the queue I don’t dare look to my right for fear of catching sight of rows of sweet-based impulse buys. Even with my eyes fixed firmly ahead I imagine that I can see packets of Red and Black gums just within range of my peripheral vision and I’m so distracted by this that I fail to see the grumpy-looking cashier scowling at me because I’m holding up the queue.

Monday 2 April

Although it’s only day two of the diet I can already see that losing weight is going to be more difficult than I imagined. Yesterday I commenced my diet by consuming the first of my low GI ready meals in lieu of breakfast. How did it feel to be eating vegetable lasagne just before nine o’clock in the morning? Weird. Very weird. And around 11.00 a.m. (my usual snacking time) I was as hungry as ever.

Tuesday 3 April

The downside of having all this specific diet-related food in the house is that now I know it’s in the fridge waiting to be eaten it’s pretty much all I can think about. As I’m eating the GI meal for breakfast I’m already thinking about my first apple and when I finally eat the apple mid-morning it’s all I can do to hold off on my ‘handful of brazil nuts and raisin chaser’. Once I’ve scoffed those, I fantasise about the macrobiotic yoghurt that I’m having for lunch. Every now and again I find myself thinking, ‘Surely I’m doing an awful lot of eating for someone who is trying to lose weight.’

Wednesday 4 April

Today I’ve decided that I’m focusing too much on food and too little on exercise. Having lost in my time enough money on unused gym memberships to actually buy my own gym, this time round my exercise regime is going to be a lot more straightforward. After work in the morning, armed only with an apple and half a bag of brazil nuts, I walked all the way into the centre of Birmingham. The good news is that this was forty minutes of low impact exercise that allowed me time for that ‘personal reflection’ and ‘growth’ type stuff that Mark Forster had spoken about. The bad news is that by the time I reach the city centre I’ve convinced myself that I’ve burned off the M&S low GI chicken and rice breakfast meal plus the apple and nuts too. Reasoning that I am now in some kind of calorie deficit I allow myself to have my MGSEDER treat of the month so head to Subway and order a six-inch meatball marinara sandwich on healthy Italian bread
without
cheese. Though sacrificing Subway’s infamous processed cheese triangles makes me more than a little sad I have to say it still tastes utterly amazing.