Andy Richardson: Being pea head is a small price to pay for weight loss
I looked at the crisps. The crisps looked at me. ‘Do you fancy it?’ they winked, as they shimmied in their golden packet?
Nah, I thought, as I maintained my calorie deficit and continued my journey to the promised land: yes, a size 30 waist, the sort of thing I haven’t enjoyed in the best part of 20 years.
It’s been three months since my quest began to return to being, well, less unhealthy and less fat. An aquamarine-coloured app on my phone shows a slow, steady, downward curve as the weight has fallen away consistently. Bye. Won’t miss you.
I’ve enjoyed compliments and endured bad jokes – the worst of which, I think, was being called pea head, a sobriquet that I still don’t understand. Apparently, it was something to do with having a head that looked bigger now my stomach doesn’t look so round. But whenever you have to explain a joke, you know it’s fallen flat.
Clothes that had embarrassed and revealed the full volume of my butter chicken intake me now fit just right. In just three months, I’ve progressed more than halfway to the promised land.
Of course, we’ve been here before. After beginning lockdown by rooting myself to the sofa and eating my own bodyweight in Walker’s Sensations, I made the most of the time at home by exercising more than I had in years.
Two stone was shed in a relatively short time – only for it to return the moment I’d hit an arbitrary target and decided to celebrate by gorging on all the stuff I’d not eaten for six months. Yoyo, rather than peahead, would have been a more apt nickname.
