An Irishman's Diet: Week 5 - Events take an unfortunate turn
The single most important requirement for anyone contemplating weight loss is to be occupied.
The French knew it, the Poles knew it and now the Iraqis know it.
Monotony is the enemy, ingratiating itself into your confidence, taking you for walks to the fridge or on fly-bys past the chipper and prompting the dreaded "Jesus, I'm bored - think I'll drive up to the fast-food reservation and liberate the Black Hills of Dakota's hamburger mountain."
So, this week, I've been occupied, relentlessly occupied, and by Jove I think it's worked. No more greasy cardboard-tasting hamburgers for you, I hear you say, and you're right.
So what did I do all week? Well, I spent most of my spare time making soup or going to the shops to stock up on as many of those little cute veggies that don't look like they've spent the early winter on a sunbed and the rest of the hibernation on extraordinary renditions - over-coloured, soft, and on their death-beds - it's no wonder many people couldn't be bothered eating vegetables.
The rest of the week, I spent in pain.
Pain? Yes, in pain. What caused the mother of all ailments?
Well, it's difficult to say. Difficult to say in the sense that my diet is a coalition of the willing, a road map to a better me, and involves everybody digging in and encouraging me to shed the pounds.
And, as any coalitioner will tell you, you don't necessarily want to distance yourself from the minister for justice because you don't necessarily agree with everything he says, even if he does appear to be overbearingly intolerant, a little abrasive and has the type of digestive system that's particularly suited to renditioning vegetables.
And likewise, it's difficult to ostracise any member of my little coalition of prunes, oats, carrots, tiny potatoes and all the various little seeds I eat with my breakfast, even if one of them has a habit of being a little too vigorous.
Trouble is, however, we've been infiltrated by a rogue agent, possibly one of the seeds, who's holed somewhere disagreeable. Constipated and suffering from backache I had to go to the doctor.
The doctor, having asked incredulously, his face disappearing for a moment, "you've not eaten un-ground seeds have yeh?" diagnosed a rectal tear, and prescribed a week's supply of suppositories and a gallon of laxative.
Five minutes later, down the road, the chemist's assistant handed over a rather large container of loosing agent, while the chemist discreetly passed me a box lowering his voice worryingly, sympathetically inquired "have you used these before?".
At home, the games really got going when having swigged on the laxative I went about the delicate procedure of inserting the damn suppositories.
Now, I'm not sure whether this is the best place to discuss how a fat bloke with a wine barrel for a tummy, genuflecting, assuming the position and holding onto the bath for dear life, handles one of these things.
So I won't, save to say, three hours later I felt what Buzz Aldrin must feel everyday - all that bloody effort and I'm still remembered as the "second bloke to stand on the moon".
However, aside from all the medical mishaps of the week, the good news is, and I'm not sure whether the soup or the embedded seeds deserves the Oscar, but I'm down a whopping half a stone, and now weigh 17 stone three-ish. And I'm also down a trouser size, down from 42-waist to number 40.
It's still parachute class but it's progress.
Next week I'm taking up something called exercise - can't imagine what it's like but I'm looking forward to it.