I am 45 years old. I am 5 feet 8 inches tall. I weigh 17st 5lbs. I register as 38 on the BMI index. I am obese.

So here we go again. Back on the roads, slogging through the wonderful NHS Couch to 5k series of podcasts. After many false starts last year I have finally managed to get to week three of the series and rather than bore you with tales of aborted attempts to get into this running lark I wanted to be firmly ‘in the programme’ before I reignited this blog. 

There’s an added bonus this time. Having seen two work colleagues return from last year’s summer holidays looking a very different shape from when they departed six weeks previously I realised that they must have done something drastic in order to fight their way out of the marshlands that occupy the 17 to 18 stone man. Throughout the year, I have marveled that these two, who were both close to my size and shape but a year ago, have lost even more weight and look spruce and healthy, as I’ve never seen them before. 

Finally putting aside my masculine pride I ventured to ask one of them how he had achieved such a remarkable transformation. “Paleo!” he replied. Now, only being exposed to such language in the more extreme episodes of Time Team I didn’t quite know what he meant. “The Paleo, or caveman, diet,” my colleague offered, furthermore pointing out the omission of grain and dairy from his diet. He’d undertaken no exercise, due to a longstanding knee injury, and had simply let the weight slip away from a balanced diet of fruit, nuts and meat. He was happy to report that the diet had revolutionised his life, not only in terms of fat loss but most importantly in terms of allowing him reserves of energy that he thought had been lost to his youth. 

Inspired by his abundant enthusiasm I have been busily researching various forms of the Paleo diet and for the past week I’ve been finding my inner caveman. I have always been a bugger for the bread, from cheeses sarnies to bread and scrape to pitta breads and all forms of naans and flatbreads inbetween. Well, no more will I be bound by the grain. Luckily I’ve never been a big drinker, preferring wine and rum to grain or hops based beers. So far, so good. I’ve been enjoying the delights of pork chops with peaches (and the obligatory sweet potato). I thought I might fall off the Paleo wagon at the weekend when I was invited to a BBQ at a friend’s house. Even this precarious obstacle was easily overcome; I simply didn’t have burger buns, the burger and a plain salad sufficed. 

As for the running, I have overcome two hurdles that got in the way of progression last year: firstly I have learned that I can run in the rain without ending up like a drowned rat but most importantly I’ve been consistent in keeping up with the runs. Once I got out of the pattern last year it was back to square one and not once did I get past week 2 of Couch to 5k. Today, on day one of week three, I completed two 90 second runs interspersed with two three minute runs. Yes, that’s three of your GMT minutes. And I did it. I ran for three minutes. It was a strain but more than that it was an achievement. 

So, the next target is to say goodbye to 17st and move into the realms of sixteen stone land. Alongside this I will be looking forward to more delicious caveman food and anticipating a time in the not too distant future when I will feel the same renewed energy levels that my inspirational colleagues are benefiting from at the moment.

It’s been a tough week, food-wise, with nobody but myself to blame. All best intentions were pushed aside as my wife’s re-organisation of the left over Christmas chocolate stash did not prove sufficient deterrent to my grasping hands and sweet tooth. Quite sensibly, my wife chose to put the surplus chocolate into sealed lid, opaque containers. Out of sight, out of mind one might believe. No such success in my case. Even without being able to see the sweet delights I knew where they were and what they would taste like. And so, even in the midst of re-enforcing to myself the desire not to want to partake, I have been surreptitiously been downing 2 or 3 Cadbury’s Heroes during regular visits to the kitchen during the week.

As I mentioned on Fat of the Land #1 I believe that an individual has a relationship with food and it is this that acts as the key to understanding our eating patterns, and thus being able to change that relationship. We all know that relationships can be abusive and our relationship with food is no different. 

The first question to ask ourselves is ‘are we the abuser or the abused?’ This is not always an easy question to answer. On the face of it we can always perhaps argue that we are in the box seat; after all, it is us humans who make choices regarding what we consume, in what quantity we consume, and when and where we consume. This model of response does not take into consideration the complexities of food consumption and the external influences of consumption as either learned behaviour or forced behaviour.

A study into the early development of human flavour preferences by Julie Menella and Gary Beauchamp (1996) argue that ‘functioning chemosensory systems and their feeding and expressive behaviors are modulated by taste and smell stimuli’ from the stage of fetus into the stage of new-born child. In simple terms our eating habits begin to be pre-programmed in the womb. 

Once in the active world social influences take precedence in our developing relationship with food. The primary transference of social norms and values centered on food consumption comes from adults (in most cases parents) to their offspring. In simple terms part of the make up of our relationship with food is learnt behaviour. 

As the father of a 5 year old I take this aspect of developing a healthy relationship with food very seriously. Shared family meals are well planned and take into consideration our daughter’s developing relationship with food. For instance, vegetables and fruit play a large part in our shared family meals. Now she is at school our daughter is beginning to build some aspects of resistance to food. Drs Capaldi and Privitera (2008) contended that children are pre-disposed to sweet over sour, having little tolerance for the latter. Furthermore the conducted research that determined that children who were exposed to sour or bitter food in juxtaposition to sweet tastes build a tolerance of bitter and sour much more quickly than children fed on a predominantly sweet diet. An extension of this hypothesis comes from Dr Gwen Dewar (2009) who believes that children may be ‘pre-wired to select the most energy rich foods available’. Inevitably these foods contain those high in sugars and fats.

I’m afraid I do not practice what I preach. My own relationship is one has long been complex. Let me explain some decisions I made this week. On Monday I returned to work, after a two week break from teaching. I try to regulate food at work but time and again I fall foul of my own imposed regiemes. 

Breakfast is usually fine. Monday to Thursday I have 2 Weetabix, a small handful of bran sticks, a splash of golden syrup (I know, but it is my gesture to my sweet tooth and takes away the feeling that I’m eating simply for the sake of taking on fuel), moistened by semi-skimmed milk. My New Years resolution was to try and forgo lunch. Monday lunchtime I went into town and bought a cheese sandwich. Tuesday I managed to abstain but by Wednesday I was making a lunchtime beeline to the local chippy for a chip butty. Thursday lunch was a microwavable macaroni cheese. As soon as I had finished each of these I felt a sense of revulsion that I had chosen to eat incredibly unhealthy fayre. 

So, were there any achievements this week? Well, for the past 18 months I have regularly (at least three times a week) stopped off at a local supermarket near my school and bought either 3 doughnuts (rarely does one see broccoli advertised as a 3 for 2 offer) and bottle of diet Pepsi or even a full blown sandwich, to pass the time on the journey home. This was absolutely eating for the sake of eating, empty calories on a car drive. If I can maintain this break, I’ve done it by taking a different route home, hopefully, quite soon, I will begin to find a difference, as I was taking on an excessive amount of calories via this practice.

The change in my relationship with food is under discussion. It is a relationship I am determined to change but it will require a whole change of lifestyle and wholesale changes to diet and mindset. 

Today I am 44 years old. I am 5 feet 8 inches tall. I weigh 17st 13lbs.

I am 44 years old. I am 5 feet 8 inches tall. I weigh 17st 11lbs. I register as 38 on the BMI index. I am obese. 

This blog is not intended to be a woe is me, nothing I can do about it type of thing. Instead, I intend this blog to be a record, over the next year, of my attempts to address the problem I have created for myself as I try to lose weight, exercise and hopefully become a healthier and more balanced person.

So, how did I reach this state. As a youngster I was never administered what could be be referred to as a balanced diet. I was brought up on a profusion of takeaways, a distinct lack of fresh fruit and vegetables and gallons and gallons of fizzy drinks. It got to such a ridiculous extent that my Grandad, a pub landlord and himself a man who stood at 5 foot 5 and weighed in at around 22 stone, even arranged for my school milk to be replaced with a bottle of cola that he would send with me to school every day. This gave me very unhealthy set of tastes from a young age.

When I started school in Bradford I was mercilessly bullied by a number of lads. Even at the age of 6 I was embarrassed by my size, but unable to do much about it. Those scars of bullying began to evaporate in 1977 when my family moved to the much more tranquil setting of Haworth. Children there were less judgemental and accepted me for my personality and not for for my size.

My teenage years didn't fare much better. At least I had the balance of playing rugby league and growing up in Haworth, affording as it did countless hours of moorland ramblings with mates. I also walked 3 miles to school, and the same return journey, every day. Although my diet was still calorie heavy I was almost always out of the house and active and this kept the weight to the lower end of extreme.

A lot of people in my family are large framed (I think that's a polite way of putting it). I've never viewed this as an excuse for my own surfeit of weight. Although my general diet began to improve in my early 20s, moving out of home meant that I took more control over my diet and being on the dole meant that I had to eat frugally and sensibly, I did drink most weekends; the definition of weekend being from Thursday til Sunday. It was a calorific liquid diet as well. Strong lager and Thunderbird wine were the mainstays. 

My life settled down in my mid-twenties when I began university and also worked part-time in Keighley. Being a non-driver I regularly walked the 4 miles from Oakworth to town. The reverse journey, and anyone who knows the route will tell you it's a hell of a climb, helped keep my weight in check. By my late twenties I was a size 32 waist and generally hovering around the 13 stone mark. Too heavy for my height, but not of any serious consequence. 

In 2002 I passed my driving test. I was determined that I would never be one of those drivers who jumps into the car to pop to the corner shop and for the first few months I abstained the lure of becoming a disciple of the dreaded automobile. I still walked the 2 miles there and back to the school I taught in at the time. The problem arose in that I was in a relationship with a women who lived the other side of Keighley, by now I was living and working in Leeds. Of course I'd stay over at hers at least a couple of nights during the week and this led to me using the car as a matter of normality. Soon, justified by the fact it saved time, I was using the car to drive one mile to the local supermarket. 

That was the start of the slippery slope that has led me to where I am today (January 1st 2015).  I am 44 years old. I am 5 feet 8 inches tall. I weigh 17st 11lbs. I register as 38 on the BMI index. I am obese. 

What am I going to do about this? 

I am going to take responsibility. I will not blame any condition, any external factors or anybody for my weight. I will take control and I will do something about it.
I will change my relationship with food. In future blogs I will explain more about how I feel that I have a relationship with food and when that relationship is thriving I eat better and I feel better.
I will exercise more and not find 1001 excuses for not going for that run, or not leaving the car at home and walking to the shops.

These small, but manageable, steps will hopefully allow me to address the issues associated with my weight in an honest productive way. There are many people out there with a range of reasons for being obese; some medical, some psychological. These are often the people we hear about and celebrate as they overcome their own demons on the road to better health. I'm not one of those people and I have nothing to blame for my obesity other than a poor relationship with food and a lack of exercise. It should be simple to do something about it then, shouldn't it? I'm not setting myself targets or timescales, I just want to begin to get my weight down and feel healthier. This is not going to be some emotive, life affirming journey in which I overcome the demons that haunt me in my struggle with food. Rather, this blog will just be a middle aged man trying to put things in order. There are a lot of us out there. I hope we can do this together.