Waisting Away

Aaargh! Why is it that after a great 10 day break over Christmas and New Year I feel sh*t?

Three reasons stand out:

1. Being cooped up with family and relatives is a trying time for most and particularly for menopausal men. We are hoping to relax and enjoy the fruits of our last 12 months labours, only to find that the worry over presents (she doesn't know what she wants so what chance have I got!), the relatives (so that's why we only see them once a year...), and the sales shopping (are the January sales the new Christmas for many people?).
2. Going back to work gets harder the longer you are away. Rather than feeling refreshed, I spent most of my first day back blearily going through the pointless emails sent by people who worked through the holidays and wanted you to know it.
3. The Christmas bulge – you begin looking like Jack Skellington from The Nightmare Before Christmas (at least in your mind's eye), and end looking like Fat Bastard from Austin Powers. It's not just the food (lots of fats and sugars with only the Brussels sprouts for fibre) and drink (I'll just finish this open bottle of Madeira before it goes off), but also the irregular trough times.

The consequence of the Christmas bulge is to accentuate the already paranoid feelings about my weight, and more particularly about my waist. There is nothing more humiliating for menopausal man than to find that the 36" waist trousers I bought last year (as I couldn't squeeze into my 34" jeans without passing out) are no longer adequate to contain my growing girth. It was humiliating, and expensive even in the sales, to have to go out and buy some 38" trousers so that I could appear in public able to both breathe and sit down without crushing my crown jewels.


While I am talking about trousers, why don't the designers realise that when menopausal men put on weight, we don't turn into the Michelin man with the fat evenly distributed about the body. No, we look as if we are we are faking pregnancy or pretending to be Santa with a cushion shoved up the jumper. Designers seem to think our legs will turn into tree trunks therefore added acres of material in a straight line between the knees and the waist like an inverted circus tent. It is certainly quite airy in there (especially after the sprouts) but I'm too old for baggies and too young for jodhpurs.


Anyway back to the waist. I did what every menopausal man does in this situation. I bought a copy of Men's Health (Special Lose-Your-Gut issue! - I kid you not) and sat down with a beer to read it. Once you get past the intimidatingly ripped gay icons and the quite explicit sex advice thoughtfully accompanied by undressed fashion models, there is loads of sensible advice on losing your flab and looking like Daniel Craig as 007. As I have always known, losing weight is just eating less and exercising more. It is amazing that a whole host of fitness magazines have built empires on just telling us this in increasingly ingenious ways (towel curls anyone?).


At the risk of demeaning the intelligence of the fairer sex (no, take your mind off Daniel Craig now) why is it that the equivalent women's "health" magazines just concentrate on diet, i.e. Eating less. Now call me simple, but selling women glossy mags full of food porn (but less than 200 calories per portion!) would only encourage me to eat more and therefore need more diet help from the magazines... (I've always been fairly skeptical but I am definitely moving on to cynicism as I get older - sorry more mature.)


The catch is that you still need a magic ingredient to lose weight. Which I will discuss in the next blog...


Essential viewing for Menopausal "Chef" Man: Heston Blumenthal: "In Search of Perfection" where he uses a blowtorch to crisp up a massive rib of beef - Primal!