Weighty Issues

Back in June, I was lamenting my expanding waistline. Fortunately, the six pounds I'd gained over my 'acceptable limit of chubbiness' have evaporated thanks to the rigors of baby wrangling - but I'm still packing some porkiness I'd rather not have.

To be honest, I'd pretty much abandoned my quest to return to the weight I was in my early twenties. Back then, I was subsisting on a diet of dry martinis and cocktail peanuts and walking five miles a day through the streets of Paris or New York.

Now I'm a 'grown up' - this means I can afford to eat on a regular basis and my work life consists of extended periods sitting on my rump. That equals a surplus of calories and a deficit in exercise and nothing short of a drastic lifestyle change is likely to change that.

That is, until I discovered this website: Calorie Count Plus.

It's a free website that lets you sign up and keep track of the two most important things in a weight-loss regimen - the amount of calories you eat as compared to the amount of calories you expend. It's got a neat little database so you can 'point and click' at brand name food and quickly calculate your daily intake.

Not only that - it also calculates how nutritious your diet is (and I was gratified to find out I scored a 'B' which wasn't too bad for a vegetable-phobe.) I know it says 'alcohol intake 0%' but I think that's because the ethanol contained within the two beers I drank with dinner didn't equal a percentage point. Either that or the 'smart' database thinks Heinekin is non-alcoholic.

This all sounds pretty clever and flashy, but doesn't actually help you lose weight... Except it does. By looking at the instant analysis, I see that I consumed 2,977 calories and burnt 2,909 today. That gives me a daily surplus of 66 (which equates to gaining about a pound every fifty days.)

By looking at the foods I consumed, it's easy to spot what I need to remove to turn that surplus into a deficit. If I skipped those delicious Oreo cookies I had for elevenses and ditched the late-night glasses of chocolate milk, I'd save 665 calories and THAT translates to losing a pound in just five days.

I think the benefit of cataloging your consumption - and working out how many calories you consume - makes it much easier to snip off the bits and pieces that might make all the difference to losing weight or not.

Will it start me on the track to becoming a slimmer, trimmer Roly?

Only time will tell!

Tipping the Scales...

The other day, my boss affectionately patted me on the stomach and said: "Puttin' on some weight there, Roland..."

Aside from obliterating any pretense at professionalism in the American workplace, it highlighted something that I'd suspected for the last couple of months - that Tina wasn't the only one growing a little rounder in the Hulme household!

My boss suggested it was because Tina was expecting - apparently fathers-to-be gain a little baby bulge in sympathy. Hopping on the scales this morning confirmed it. Over the last six months, I've gained six pounds.

The question is - what am I to do about it? Ironically, since the beginning of the year I've been trying to lose weight, not gain it!

Unfortunately, living in America is not conducive to staying trim. I have a sedentary job, I drive to work and there's really nowhere to walk to, like there was in England. New Jersey is the dominion of the strip mall! In fact, with a heavily pregnant wife to look after, it's not unheard of for us to actually drive from one end of the strip mall to the other...

In fact, the most exercise I get is when I'm working in New York city, where I get a brisk two-mile walk every day as I yomp from Penn Station to Avenue of the Americas. This is why very few New Yorkers are overweight.

I've been considering this situation and haven't quite found a solution yet.

Suggestions have included 'get your ass in a gym' and to give up alcohol / carbohydrates / sugar / food. None of these really seem very sensible - because in all honesty, short lived diets and exercise regimes simply don't work.

There's a simple reason I've gained 6 pounds in six months. Over the last half a year, I've consumed 21,000 more calories than I've expended - and those surplus calories have added up to six pounds of body weight (it takes 3,500 calories to gain (or lose) a pound.)

This isn't actually too daunting. Breaking it down, that means I'm eating about 150 calories a day more than I'm burning. If I can just tip the balance from surplus into deficit, I'm going to reverse the bulge-building and head towards a slimmer, trimmer Roly! [In theory - Editorial Bear]

And that doesn't sound impossible! I mean, what does 150 calories add up to, anyway?

A can of Coke? A packet of crisps? A half pint of beer? A bread roll?

Or, looking at it another way, 25 minutes riding a horse, 40 minutes strolling in the park or less than 20 minutes of vigorous weight lifting (or, using this Conservative calorie counter, 1 hour and 45 minutes of praying in church!)

Unfortunately, living in a quiet street in New Jersey's equivalent to Mexico City, horses aren't all that common (except in the 'carne' section of the local bodega.) And while we've got a lovely park just yards away from our front door, Tina's far more interested in moving furniture and dousing everything in bleach than going for a stroll with me at the moment.

In order to lose my gut, I've got to come up with a practical, realistic way to change my lifestyle and get some exercise in...

I could bicycle to work (1,400 calories burned) but that would take four hours - assuming I survived the sociopathic drivers on Route 1. Plus I don't have a bike.

Joining a gym is too expensive and, being brutally honest, I'm not sure I'd go regularly if I signed up. The trick to losing weight is to integrate a calorie burning activity with your regular lifestyle - not fork over cash with good intentions, but over-ambitious demands on your time/laziness.

Cutting down the calories is an option - although I honestly don't tend to eat a huge amount in the first place - and considering how grumpy I get when I'm hungry, I don't think my marriage would last a week if I cut out dinner!

There's the idea of giving up alcohol - although I'm with Dean Martin on this one. 'I pity the guy who doesn't drink. When he wakes up in the morning, that's the best he's gonna feel all day.'

A glass of wine with dinner is, sadly enough, one of the highlights of a dreary working week and I don't feel any shame in admitting that.

I've lost interest in people criticizing those who drink every day. Is it more sensible to self-medicate with Vin de Table? Or accuse virtual strangers of borderline alcoholism while scoffing prescription mood-enhancers like Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft or Xanax?

In all honesty, I'm not sure what the answer is - but I do know this. In just a few days, Tina's going to pop a baby out and after that, my lifestyle's going to change dramatically whether I like it or not. Perhaps I ought to hold off plotting any domestic enhancements until I've found out what life with the lil' tyke is going to be like.

But that being said - when I unpack my sandwich for lunch today, perhaps I'll reach for a 'diet' soda instead of the regular stuff. That's 150 calories - and my daily surplus - right there.

Jennifer Love Hewitt - Hot or Not?

She was voted 1999's 'Sexiest Woman in the World' by Maxim magazine - and has been in various magazine's top 100 no less than 14 times since then.

Yet for some reason, the Internet is abuzz with articles attacking Jennifer Love Hewitt after candid shots of her in a bikini were released on the 'net.

It's a lot like the attacks levelled at Britney Spears when she made her MTV Music Awards appearance earlier this year. The modern media is incredibly hypocritical. One minute they're paying lip service to the campaign against unrealistic expectations for women's bodies - then they're attacking beautiful, healthy looking women for not being anorexic stick figures.

Maybe these aren't the most flattering pictures of Jennifer Love Hewitt - but then again, they're not airbrushed, photoshopped and silicon enhanced, like most of the cover models these days.

But whatever way you look at it, Jennifer Love Hewitt is still an astonishingly beautiful woman and I'd take her over a 'conventionally attractive' Barbie doll any day of the year. I've mentioned my affection for her here (where I exposed her curious habit of prescribing her dog Prozac.)

It's about time the media started accepting women for being beautiful on their own terms - instead of pressuring them to conform to an unrealistic standard invented by other bitchy women and homosexual men.

Argueably, the only standards a woman should conform to are her own - but for the record, I believe 9 out of 10 men like a woman who doesn't look like she'll snap the first time you give her a hug.

Jennifer - don't listen to your critics. You're absolutely beautiful just the way you are.

The Ugly Truth About Beauty

America’s Top Model. Nip/Tuck. Extreme Makeover. How to Look Good Naked.

Switch on a TV anywhere in the western world and you’re confronted with images of beautiful people. Toned butts. Firm abs and teeth so sparkly you can see them from space.

All those lovely people - plus adverts for diet pills, exercise equipment and facial creams being crammed into our inboxes and mailboxes each and every day – make it easy to assume that The Way You Look is wrong and The Way They Look is what you should aspire to. After all, isn’t the message behind movies like The Devil Wears Prada that LOOKS are far more important than WHO you are?

In that movie, brainy Andy Sachs heads to Manhattan to begin a job at fashion magazine Runway. But before her boss Miranda takes brilliant Andy seriously, the brainy brunette has to shed the pounds and squeeze her size six butt into a skinny pair of Dolce and Gabbanas.

I mean, is it just me, or is the premise of a movie in which ridiculously gorgeous Anne Hathaway is considered fat just plain wrong?

But that’s the way the world is at the moment. Beauty is all important and if brainless-but-beautiful models like Miss Teen USA 2007 candidate Caitlin Upton have taught us anything, it’s that pretty people can achieve things regardless of their intellectual limitations.

But the result of this obsession with looks?

Scores of beautiful young men and women now think that they can succeed on looks alone.

That belief is flawed for many reasons – the main one being that beauty isn’t exactly uncommon.

If you’re willing to skip school to spend hours in the gym, or spend your savings on a boob job and teeth whitening, you too can become one of the ‘beautiful’ people.

Youth, exercise and diet are generally the foundation of good looks and the rest is just icing on the cake. But even after you’ve become ‘beautiful,’ the opportunities out there are limited.

There can only be one ‘America’s Top Model.’ James Bond only auditions for the next ‘Bond girl’ every three years or so. Sometimes, beautiful people have to take the opportunities on offer, whatever they are.

And that’s where you’ll find the real tragedy in being beautiful.

One infamous radio ‘Shock Jock,’ has beautiful young actresses on his show all the time (which seems pointless. Surely all cats are grey over the airwaves.) There’s a huge line of beautiful models and aspiring actresses clamoring for the chance to get into his studio and maybe hit the big time. But what is the price of this opportunity?

An example: A few months ago, he had beautiful young women on their hands and knees, attempting to catch meatballs (dripping in pasta sauce) between their buttocks. The audience whooped and hollered and the girls played along in good spirits – but what was going through their mind?

It must have been depressing. Their media ‘breakthrough’ involved kneeling like a dog with cold spaghetti sauce dripping down their thighs – and if they’d turned their nose up at this opportunity, there would have been a hundred other girls willing to do it in their place.

It seems in this looks obsessed society we live in, the only thing we love more than beautiful people is degrading them. It seems there’s no shortage of television programs, made for TV movies or raunchy frat-boy magazines willing to lead beautiful people through the meat grinder with the fleeting promise of fame. And worst of all? There’s no shortage of beautiful people willing to follow them.

If reading Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister has taught me anything, it’s that beautiful people risk their beauty becoming their defining feature.

So what’s the secret of the truly successful ‘beautiful’ people?

Being beautiful has never been their primary characteristic. It might have opened doors for them, but it’s never been the secret of their success.

Whether it was talent as an actress (like the wonderful Meryl Streep) or skills as a firebrand (like vile political pundit Anne Coulter) the ‘beautiful’ people who’ve made their mark had something going for them other than just their looks. That’s just the icing on the cake.

So if you’re a ‘beautiful person’ and you want to make it as a model, actress or just a diva like Paris Hilton, take one piece of advice from me (a fully qualified non-beautiful person.)

Have something that sets you apart from the rest. Skills. Talents. Opinions. Or a very rich daddy.

Be your own person. Set your own standards. Never let your (beautiful) reflection in the mirror reflect everything about who you are.