I just don't get this weight loss thing

I just don’t get this weight loss thing.

I skipped my fat fighters' meeting on Monday because I was sure I had piled on about half a stone last week.

Due to one thing and another my diet consisted of a Chinese take away, a pizza (large),  at  least two nights out on the booze, and the office Christmas do. That was mainly liquid but did include a three course meal, finished off much later by a dodgy burger and chips. In between those two meals there was the consumption of a lot of cider and red wine.

Then I had to work late on Sunday and the last thing I wanted to do was cook so it was a trip to the old junk food shop once more for a slice of fat and calorie overload.

And my gym kit is in the same pile of unwashed clothes that have sat at the bottom of the basket for a good two weeks now.

So I guess it must have been the skimpy portions at the restaurant on Saturday night, or the fact that liquid is less heavy than food, but when I hopped on the shonky old scales I have in the bathroom, I was just a pound over what I was last week. And that weigh-in followed six days of rushing in and out the bathroom in a running battle with a stomach bug.

All this means that I lost just as much weight partying like loony let out for the week, than I did torturing myself counting every calorie. It makes no sense.

I can only think that it was probably the two bouts of Christmas shopping that I bravely subjected myself to at the weekend.

It really is exhausting, and not as much fun as the films make out. I never saw Hugh Grant dragging half a dozen shopping bags round M&S looking for a bloody cheese selection for some aunt he hasn’t seen all year. Not only is there the distance covered, but the obstacle course of the millions of seemingly blind and deaf people who clearly have no clue that you are trying to walk past them in a busy shop. Why else would they stop right in front of you in the middle of the aisle for no apparent reason, forcing you to take emergency evasive action into the ladies hosiery section, which is really no place for a fat sweaty man like me.

Or, perhaps it is simply the stark horror that is still running through me thinking about the amount of money I have managed to spend - for no other reason than to give some people I hardly see a few bottles of below-par wine – giving me a festive fit of the sweats and pouring calories off me at the same time.

But don’t get me wrong, I do love Christmas, of course. Bring on the Pogues.