I am the Walrus

First off - very funny responses to yesterday's blog. 'You had us all VERY EXCITED and then disappointed again!' was a fairly typical reaction. 'Tell him to be more DANGEROUS and BROODING and then perhaps you'll fancy him?' was good advice - I imagined texting the MMMC and demanding that he stand atop Arthur's Seat, toss a caber off it, then bellow madly at the elements, before striding in a manly fashion down the steep, rocky slopes and picking me up bodily, with his wind-whipped kilt swirling round his knees like William Wallace (preferably without the woad). Either that or he should just ignore me for a week, and then I'll probably decide I passionately want to see him.


Anyway, news of the Other Man in my life, Cheerful James the PT. CJ and I have not had a date in some time, because I was flitting round the country (and France) and he was off on a course in Copenhagen. So I was almost excited about our session last night. Which, yeah, is pretty tragic, but now the Festival's over, and it looks like the weather is about to default to 'perpetual precipitation', a gal's gotta take her excitements where she can get 'em. But it turned out exercise was off the menu - instead, I was going to be CJ's guinea pig for all his new book learnin'. He'd been studying some bio-whatsit (I keep wanting to call it 'biomechanics', but it's not - I think it's called 'biosignature') which basically tells you why people store fat in particular areas, because of different hormone imbalances, etc, and how you can change that through diet and exercise.

In case anyone wants to try it, first off, you have to prepare for the mortification of having 12 - yes, 12 - fat sites around your body measured with those horrible calliper things. This included the mortification of having my chin(s) pinched by it, one of my boobs wrangled with (Me: 'James, is this just an excuse to grope ladies - whilst they're actually paying for it?') and him explaining that my back fat measurement of 28 should really be 17. Which meant that I have insulin problems and basically have to give up carbs. NOOOO! Why did I know this was going to be the result? Although, let's face it, the outcome was highly unlikely to be, 'The reason you're chunkier than you want to be is because you're eating too much fibre. Your body doesn't metabolise that at all well, unless you combine it with a lot of sugar and cake icing. I'm going to give you a programme of a slice of carrot cake every day, and then you'll need to top up with a brownie every Sunday - with Ben and Jerry's ice cream on top of it. It's the protein from the cream, combined with the sugar, that'll really work for you.'

No, apparently I have to ingest enough fish oil to rival a walrus. 'I eat loads of fish!' I said. Turns out for this plan, I'd have to eat about 30 of the fuckers a day. So I have to shunt down some crazy number of teaspoons of specially procured fish oil (lemon flavoured - like that makes it better) and drink buckets of water. Having tried downing as many cod liver oil capsules as I could get my hands on, and as much water as I could carry today, the regime is already pretty unwieldy. My work colleagues probably think I have cystitis as I need the loo every quarter of an hour. It's tempting to just take my laptop into the loo and work from there. CJ has let me off Phase 2 for the moment (giving up gluten, dairy and eggs, which will make breakfast a challenge. Not to mention every other bloody meal), so let's hope the Omegas and the H2O do the trick. Because it's very mean to suggest that you give up pasta and toast just as you're heading into winter - especially as, judging by the force 10 gale that was blowing up here last night, I'm actually going to need that insulating layer of fat.