fpb | Incredible

Now, as my friends may have heard, I am fat. And I mean really quite fat. FAT. Fat as in "my stomach enters the room ahead of me" fat. Sidney Greenstreet fat. Orson Welles fat.

However, in the last few months I had begun to steadily lose weight by the simple expedient of only eating while I was hungry. I will not tell you how much my top weight was - I am a bit sensitive about it still - but I will tell you that I shed five kilos in three months, and that in spite of the huge frustrations I suffered last year. (My eating is mostly a reaction to frustration.)

Then came the Christmas season. A Christmas season in Italy. Visiting friends and relatives nearly every day, and being visited, and on each occasion a special meal. And on every occasion so damned good it would have been a sin to refuse it. I was relieved that, during these three weeks, I had no access to scales.

Now I have come back. And I found my scales waiting for me. I ignored them for a while, but I got a feeling that they were grinning at me.

So I clenched my teeth. Ready for a humiliating experience, I stepped on them.

And I found that I was nearly a kilo lower than my lowest estimate last year.