Not even Joe Wicks can get rid of my love handles
TOBY YOUNG, 54, is a journalist and writer. He lives in London with his wife Caroline, a travel writer, and their four children – Sasha, Ludo, Fred and Charlie.
I’VE been on a diet for the past three months with the enthusiastic support of my wife and four children.
‘Are you clinically obese?’ asked my 14-year-old daughter at the beginning of the year. No, actually, I wasn’t.
My body mass index was 27.4, which is 2.6 points short of clinical obesity. But still. If you’re only 5ft 8in, weighing nearly 13st is not a good look.
It had got to the point where if my shoelace came undone, I would carry on walking until I spotted a bench rather than suffer the pain and indignity of bending over.
I started going for runs at the weekend with my 13-year-old son. ‘I’m not sure that’s actually running, Dad,’ he said the second time we went out together.
The breakthrough came when I bought a Nokia Body+ scale. Not only does it produce reams of useful information every time I step on it, it then beams this information to the Nokia Health Mate app on my iPhone. I can pull up a graph at the flick of a button tracking my
MY WIFE IS WORRIED I’M TURNING INTO A MANOREXIC
weight loss – and I am obsessed. If the line on the graph is dipping I feel happy; if it’s climbing, I feel depressed.
I had intended to stop the diet when I got down to 11½ stone, but when I reached that target and my moobs and love handles were still stubbornly in place, I decided to keep on going.
Today, I’m 11st 5lb and my BMI is 24.2, but I hope to get down to 11st and break the 24 barrier. I’ve given up running – too humiliating – and work out before breakfast to a Joe Wicks exercise video.
Caroline says I’ve become ‘manorexic’ and worries I will pass on my anxiety about my weight to the children. Like her, they’re skinny minnies – so there doesn’t seem much danger of that. At least, I hope there isn’t. About one in a hundred female adolescents suffers from anorexia and if my 14-year-old daughter succumbs, I’ll never forgive myself.
I can now fit back into suits I haven’t worn in 20 years. And I can not only tie my own shoelaces without the need of a park bench, I can tie my children’s too. With a bit of luck, I’ll soon be able to play football with them without running out of puff after the first minute.