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Oh! Are you on the jabs?

I have never been a slender man. No one has ever looked at me and thought "oh, he needs feeding up". It's a good job for me that I was already in a relationship by the early noughties as I was never going to carry off the wasted rock star in skinny jeans look. No one has ever mistaken me for Noel Fielding.

This is not to say that I'm entirely a corpulent mess. I have, at various times in my life, been in pretty good shape, but it takes a lot of hard work, and a lot of vigilance, particularly in my line of work, where temptation is never far away. Also, I reason, I have only one life to live, so have the cheese, ffs.

I have often wondered what it would be like to be effortlessly in good nick, to not have to stop and think how much I really want that pie (quite a lot, obviously, pie is great), but I've long since come to terms with the fact that my default form is "lived-in". I do try to keep things under control, but I also put weight on at the mere mention of a danish.

As it happens, I'm currently in one of my shrinking periods, where work is stable enough for me to actually keep an eye on what I'm eating, I'm not rushing around covering everybody else's shifts and I'm able to make time to train properly. I assume there must be some sort of visible difference because someone asked me if I was "on the jabs".

I am not. Not for any ethical reason, more for practical ones. They're expensive, and you have to stay on them, or you'll just put it back on again. Nah. Not for me, thanks, I'm already married, and I've got three kids, that's quite enough in the way of lifelong commitments.

This is in no way a criticism of people who are. You do you. There's a lot of snobbishness surrounding use of weight loss drugs, some sort of puritanism that holds that unless the weight loss is accompanied by spectacular self denial and a punishing exercise regimen, then it is somehow cheating, somehow lesser.

This is, if course, bollocks. I've been fat, and I've been possessed of a physique that drew compliments. Option two is nicer, it's just not terribly practical. If people's desire to lose weight is such that they're happy to submit themselves to the drugs regularly, I have no problem with that.

What I do have a problem with is that if you do lose weight the old fashioned way, people's first thought is "ah, Ozempic". No, watching what I eat, and a lot of running. But this in itself is at odds with me not minding how folk get the weight off, it doesn't matter, but it grates.

Ah, Coastalblog, it's better than therapy this. So I suppose what I'm saying is I'm anxious that people should know I'm doing it the hard way, so they think better of me, needy little praise hound that I am, proper Beggy Mitchell. But really, it doesn't bloody matter. Jabs or no jabs, so long as you're reasonably at peace with yourself eh? 

And on that homespun homily, I'm off for a pint. Own worst enemy, me.

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