The Fitness Dividend

The surgeon told me I might still be concussed so forgive me if, this week, I don’t talk politics or culture or even bemoan the state of the railways. Let me instead take it easy as I learn how to type with this broken body of mine.

You see, this whole unfortunate episode goes back to when lockdown ended. I’d seen the ads. I’d read the articles. I’d even been impressed when Mr Motivator relaunched his career around the whole post-Covid fitness boom. People were buying bicycles and, in fact, so many bicycles that bicycles were attracting prices normally attached to wardrobe-sized flats in Clapton. And I admit: I bought into the hype. Lockdown had been hard. My life had been flipped in so many ways. This was a chance to start again. I was going to get myself as fit as Joe Wicks (albeit with a bit more hair on my body, a little less on my head).

It began quite simply. I cut sugar from my diet for three months before I even started to think about exercise. People started to say I was looking slimmer. I couldn’t tell. I never weighed myself at the start but after a few months of basic dieting (transitioning to honey made it easy), I was “down” to eighteen and a half stone, which at six feet two is still classed as “obese”, even if I carried it more like a rugby player rather than, say, a TV astrologer.

Then I began to exercise, which in my case was on a magnetic resistance spin bike I bought on Amazon. It meant I didn’t need to embarrass myself by taking my panting, sweating, corpulent self out into public. And it worked. 30-40 minutes of cycling each day (usually whilst reading a book), with a little portion control around my meals, and the weight began to tumble off. A few life crises and a long period of grief between then and now set me back a bit but, this past week, fifteen months later, I finally hit my goal. I’ve now lost six stone.

I’m also immensely miserable, in a little pain from multiple fractures in my face, numbness where I crushed a nerve (it might take months or years to heal… if it heals), a sprained wrist, grazes across my right knee and shoulder, still probably concussed, and my right eye is black. And that’s been the lesson I’ve learned on this journey. What they don’t tell you in all the ads for getting fit is that there’s a good chance you’ll end up at some point sitting in A&E.

In my case, that was two weeks ago.

Remember those wonderful two weeks of summer we enjoyed back in June? I’d been exploiting the sunshine to take my outdoor bike on my local cycle network every day, but when the rain came that Monday, I refused to be one of those fair-weather cyclists. I’ve cycled all my life, except for a few years before and then during lockdown. I’ve ridden in every kind of bad weather. A little summer rain was nothing…

And it was nothing until my rear tyre hit a white road marking and slid out from under me. My body carried on forward and I exfoliated my face using Warrington’s High Street. The next thing I know I’m sitting in an estate agent’s office with a gaggle of estate agents typing away, shouting things about contracts and viewings, and occasionally asking if I’m feeling better.

I wasn’t. I had been wearing a bike helmet, but I knew I’d still done something very weird to my face and thought it probably sensible to get to A&E, which is where, after a mere five-hour wait, a doctor explained how I’d fractured my cheekbone in multiple places. The fractures were stable, however, and I would be treated as an outpatient at Aintree Hospital in Liverpool.

Get fit.

Look good.

Witness young children’s faces when they notice your resemblance to an orc from Mordor.

This is the stuff that convinces that small part of me that suffers from OCD that it’s better never to change my routines. Because although there’s so much to recommend about losing weight (my knees feel better), there are a lot of downsides to it as well. This is the stuff you never read about in the brochures.

And I don’t even mean the facial trauma. I mean things like seats and, in particular, wooden chairs. You first lose weight in your face and neck, and then the process moves down your body until it reaches your posterior. And it doesn’t take long before you discover that weight was fulfilling an important job. It was your portable cushion. You miss it when it’s gone. I have never been so uncomfortable in my life. I constantly feel like I’m riding a couple of small turtles.

And I also look bad as I’m riding the turtles because I now possess an entire wardrobe, amassed over many years, all of which is four sizes too big. My regular size used to be 3XL. Now I’m buying clothes marked “M” but clothes are expensive. You can’t just throw them out. I only own two pairs of trousers in my new size and about eight cheap T-shirts. Most of the time I resemble a laundry basket walking down the road. A laundry basket with a bony arse, a black eye, and a craving for food I can no longer eat because my metabolism isn’t how it once was.

Eat too much and my stomach complains. It also complains if I eat anything but decent food, but decent food is expensive, especially when you’re buying it for one. On social media, people assume I know how to cook or (even worse) want to learn how to cook (I don’t!). They tell me to sprinkle wine (I never drink wine) or grate a little Parmesan (not at those prices!) on my meals. Add this. Throw a pinch of that in the pot. They want me to spend a fortune on fresh ingredients I’ll use only once or has a short shelf life.

And yes, I know fruit and vegetables are cheap, but I’d like to do something else with my life other than constantly nipping to the shop to buy yet more fresh fruit and veg which I can’t eat quickly enough before it turns into mould. I don’t know what kind of world they inhabit but it’s not mine. There are two red onions in the cupboard which have been there for weeks and for which I’ve still not found a use.

And the single most depressing fact about losing weight is that the absolute worst foods for causing obesity are crisps and Pot Noodles: the very foodstuffs that constitute about a fifth of your typical northerner’s diet.

I miss crisp butties so badly.

I wish I could report an upside to all of this: greater job opportunities, interviews with the media, more luck in romance… But I can’t. People used to make room for Big Me. Now people say things like “Oh, you’re thin, you can squeeze in there” as if I relish the chance of sitting on three inches of seat, which happened recently when I had to share a bench at the theatre. A couple took up almost the entire row and spent the first half of the show grabbing even more territory until they’d forced me to a sliver of a ledge at the end. And what could I say? The guy was enormous and I’m now a twelve (and a half) stone weakling who looks like he’s been punched and is still taking painkillers to ease the pain for the places where he’s not feeling total facial numbness.

Lose weight if you want but caveat emptor: you really miss the cushions.

@DavidWaywell

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