by Mike Gayle
The week before I began writing the To-Do List, mail belonging to my arch nemesis and next-door neighbour, Derek, had mistakenly been delivered to us and among it was a BUPA renewal form. At the time I thought, ‘Typical! He’s so grown up that he’s even doing stuff to make him live longer!’ and I determined that looking after my health would be something that I did too.
Uninterested in joining BUPA I opted instead to find a way of getting a complete health check that would allay my burgeoning hypochondria. Typing ‘Body MOT’ and ‘Birmingham’ into Google led within a few short minutes to my credit-card details and an online booking form to secure the next available appointment for the Health First Institute’s Silver grade ‘Health and Wellness Examination’. The gold was too pricey and involved needlessly scary MRI scans. Verily I was about to join the ranks of the media phenomenon known as ‘the worried well’.
On the morning of my examination I felt distinctly agitated. So far, much that I’d attempted on my list had been frustrating, wearisome or even plain boring, but at least never life threatening. As I was forever pointing out to anyone who asked, the List wasn’t a ‘parachute out of a plane’ kind of affair and I certainly wasn’t a ‘parachuting out of a plane’ kind of guy. Life-threatening activities just weren’t me. In fact I was the polar opposite of an adrenaline junkie. My stimulant of choice was Ovaltine. Therefore if there were any life-threatening activities to be had I preferred to experience them third hand, ideally within the pages of a good book or on a TV screen. But this was different. I was voluntarily pushing myself to the very outer edges of my comfort zone by submitting to an unwarranted medical examination that could result in me discovering I’VE ONLY GOT SIX MONTHS TO LIVE.
‘But wouldn’t you want to know if you’d only got six months to live?’ asked Claire as I explained my fears.
I looked at her as though she were mad. ‘Of course not.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because when you’re a man, ignorance isn’t just bliss. It’s also the stuff that keeps the walls from falling down.’
‘I’m sure you’ll be fine,’ said Claire kissing me on the cheek and handing me a plastic bag.
‘What’s this?’
‘Something to eat after the examination because, in case you’ve forgotten, you can’t eat anything until after your blood test.’
My heart sank. I’d been really looking forward to breakfast and now even that small delight had been snatched from me.
‘I might as well go,’ I sighed. ‘Maybe if I get there earlier they’ll see me earlier which will mean that I’ll get to eat a bit earlier too!’
From the outside, the Health First Institute had something of the air of an upmarket dental surgery, with its frosted window and official-looking logo of an eagle perching on an outstretched hand. Buzzed in through the large black front door I entered a reception/waiting room where the dentist theme continued with pale cream walls, framed arty prints and comfortable seating.
The receptionist smiled warmly and took my name and credit card details in case I died during the examination. I sat down and waited to be collected.
In her uniform Tracy resembled a small child playing dress-up rather than a fully qualified medical professional. Were private medical care centres governed by the same rules as public ones? Did the nurses have to have training or would anybody do? I needn’t have worried. In a quiet yet forceful tone she demanded that I provide her with a ‘mid stream urine sample’. You don’t get much more professional than that.
I took the container into the loo but wasn’t one hundred per cent sure what she meant. Common sense suggested she was referring to the bit that was not the beginning or the end but not knowing how full my bladder was might make it difficult to tell. I opted to leave a couple of seconds before starting my collection and then, displaying hitherto undreamt-of skills in bladder control, provided intermittent blasts of what I hoped to be quality stuff.
Next Tracy introduced me to nurse practitioner Alison who would be conducting my initial examination.
‘Right,’ she began. ‘I’m going to take a few measurements, collect a few samples, conduct a few tests and then once we’re done I’ll take you upstairs for something to eat before your consultation with Dr Anwar. He’ll take you through the results of your examination.’ She paused. ‘How does that sound?’
‘Great.’ What else to say?
Alison measured my weight and height then got out a device that she informed me was a more accurate way of measuring my body mass index. A cursory glance at the chart showed that my body and I were quite clearly in the ‘need-to-lose-some-weight zone’, although this news was somewhat tempered by the fact that I had a relatively high muscle ratio. It was all I could do not to punch the air and whoop like a game-show contestant. I might be overweight but I was officially deemed muscularly well endowed.
With the tests over, Alison pointed me in the direction of the upstairs waiting room and said Dr Anwar would come and collect me when he was ready. The upstairs waiting room was nothing like an upmarket dental surgery; it was more like an upmarket snack bar. There wasn’t just one kind of breakfast moment on offer on the counter that spanned an entire wall, there were dozens of items: fruit, mineral water, cereal, muesli, pastries, croissants, milk, tea, coffee, fruit juice and all free! I was more than a bit peckish and tempted to have a go at pretty much all of it. But mindful of where I was and what for, I restrained myself and selected a cereal bar. No sooner had I taken the wrapper off and jammed the whole thing into my mouth when a tall man in a white coat entered the room.
‘Mr Michael Gayle?’
I nodded, frantically trying to swallow my cereal bar.
‘I’m Dr Anwar. Please follow me to my office whenever you are ready.’
At this point my heart really was racing. Even if you manage to convince yourself that everything will be okay, there’s always a small part of you that’s ready for bad news. In my case, that small pessimistic/terrified/worried part is actually quite big and it’s the reason why I don’t smoke or take drugs, jump out of planes or snowboard, play the stock market, walk across train tracks at level crossings unless the lights are green even if there isn’t a train for miles. Because when it comes to bad news I don’t think, ‘Why me?’ No, when bad news comes my way the first words out of my mouth are invariably, ‘Gah! I knew it!’
‘So,’ said Dr Anwar, opening my notes, ‘before we take a look at your earlier examination results I will finish off this part of the morning with a physical exam. Just slip off your trousers and lie on the examination table.’
I nervously did as instructed. Dr Anwar fixed me with a firm stare and asked: ‘Mr Gayle, do you check yourself?’
Although this was a euphemism with which I wasn’t familiar, his deep, doctoral tones left me in no doubt as to what he was referring to.
‘As part of today’s examination, we like to show clients how to check correctly for testicular cancer. May I have your permission to proceed?’
‘Yeah, fine,’ I said in squeaky voice. This was possibly the most bizarre interaction that I’d had in a very long time.
Dr Anwar nodded and took some rubber gloves from a box on his desk. I hopped off the table and dropped my underwear. Ever the professional, Dr Anwar turned his head slightly so that we weren’t making eye contact, then reached down to my groin area and began gently rolling first my left and then my right testicle between his fingers.
My mind during this whole process was a blank; I knew that if I entertained a single thought I’d end up collapsed on the floor laughing uncontrollably like an overgrown school boy. So I thought about nothing. Zero. Not a thing. Once it was over, I slipped my pants back on and got dressed. I probably would’ve given myself a round of applause for the amount of restraint that I had shown but then I remembered that there could still be some bad news coming my way and sobered up in a flash.
The best of the good news was that my HDL cholesterol count (that’s the ‘good’ chol
esterol to you and me) was way above normal and I wasn’t dying of anything horrible. In fact my overall risk of coronary heart disease in the next decade was just two per cent compared with an average of five per cent for a man of my age.
Before I could give myself a high five, however, he gave me the bad news: my Body Mass Index, body fat percentage and waist–height ratio were all too high; on top of that my lung function wasn’t great (although this was to be expected with my asthma); my triglyceride count was quite high; and there was a trace amount of blood in my urine indicating a mild kidney infection.
In short, if I wasn’t going to fall apart in the near future I would have to do the following:
1. Reduce my calorie intake.
2. Maintain healthy eating patterns.
3. Increase aerobic exercise.
4. Reduce my saturated fat intake.
5. Reduce my intake of refined simple sugars.
I left the Institute somewhat stunned by how unfit I was. Making my way to the car park, I reached for my car keys and discovered the packed lunch Claire had made for me in lieu of breakfast. Under normal circumstances I would’ve wolfed the whole lot down in a second but I barely glanced at it. Instead, I started up the car and told myself that this time things really were going to change. Fortunately for me Item 70 on the To-Do List was ‘Start losing weight before you end up in a Channel Five documentary about fat people so huge that they have to be winched out of bed by helicopter’.
Chapter 14: ‘Go on a diet . . . because at the rate you’re chowing down extra large Mars bars, mate, you’ll be in trousers with elasticated waistbands before the year is out.’
Before turning thirty I had been something of a beanpole. There are pictures of me in my early twenties where I had real cheekbones despite the fact that I’d think nothing of inhaling a family pack of crisps for breakfast, cracking open a Pot Noodle for lunch, chowing through a plate of pasta around tea time and polishing off a post-pub bag of chips on the way home. Blessed with a metabolism that appeared to burn off pretty much everything that I shovelled in meant that I never had to fear the consequences of my eating actions.
Cut to a decade later and things couldn’t have been more different. Having bagged myself a lifetime commitment from a member of the opposite sex (‘for better or worse’ should have been exchanged for the words ‘for thicker and chunkier’) I got very comfortable very quickly (‘Shall we go out and meet up with friends or stay in, phone up for a takeaway and watch this brand new TV series called Property Ladder?’). This, combined with a sharp turn-down in my metabolism, soon meant that my body, instead of burning off that second helping of Wall’s Viennetta, was turning it directly into fat and gluing itself to my midriff.
Getting rid of those extra pounds I’d been carrying around for the past four years called for a two-pronged attack involving both eating less and regular physical exertion but I decided to concentrate my initial efforts on controlling my calorie intake. My first action under the new regime was to eliminate temptation by removing every last fattening item (chocolate, biscuits, cakes) from the house and dropping them all into a bin bag to take to my parents’ house with the specific instruction not to release this food back to me even if I begged. My mum, as is her way, looked at me as though I was mad, mumbled something about not wanting ‘fatty foods’ in her house and handed me a leaflet for a local weight watchers group called FatBusters! taking place at the community centre.
‘It doesn’t look like my kind of thing,’ I said.
‘What does that mean?’ tutted Mum. ‘You should go if you’re serious about losing some of this.’ She patted my stomach and laughed. ‘Look, it’s wobbly just like a water bed.’
‘Fine,’ I snapped wondering why it was okay to give me a hard time about my weight. ‘FatBusters! here I come.’
The following afternoon I picked up my mum for the afternoon FatBusters! session. I’d pictured a bunch of middle-aged women sitting on uncomfortable chairs in a draughty church hall extolling the virtues of cottage cheese and, although it was a draughty community centre rather than a church hall, pretty much everything else was spot on.
FatBusters! main clientele appeared to be retired women, middle-aged women and younger women with children.
As the only man in the room it was hard not to feel like some kind of an interloper. I could see from the looks I was getting that some of the other participants felt my presence was impinging on their freedom to express themselves as though fat really was a feminist issue.
Part of me wanted to lift my T-shirt thereby revealing that I too suffered from ‘muffin top’ but I feared that might create the wrong impression. So when it came to my turn to talk about myself, I decided to expose myself mentally instead.
‘My name’s Mike, I’m thirty-six years old and I’ve come to FatBusters! because I think I’m addicted to food.’
Linda, who was leading our course, nodded sympathetically. ‘In what way do you think you’re “addicted”, Mike?’
‘Well, put it this way, I’ve got this friend called Gary, who’s a bit younger than me and is stick thin and sometimes when we go out for a drink I find myself fantasising about swapping bodies with him and then spending a whole day just eating and eating.’
I paused to gauge how I was doing with my fellow FatBusters!. They seemed more baffled than threatened by my presence.
‘For instance, wearing my friend’s body I imagine starting my day with a massive full English breakfast, followed by a couple of packets of crisps at around eleven, with maybe a spot of candy floss followed by a doughnut chaser around midday. Around one I’d probably have a pub lunch . . . something like steak and kidney pie and chips and then around three-ish I’d probably eat a bit more . . .’
I tailed off because Linda was staring at me intently. I briefly wondered if I’d over-egged it somewhat. I had indeed fantasised about swapping bodies with Gary but it wasn’t as though I thought about it all day, every day.
‘I’m going on a bit, aren’t I?’
Linda shook her head. ‘No, Mike, I’m sure we can all identify with those kinds of obsessive thoughts.’
‘Great,’ I replied. ‘Should I carry on and tell you what I would have had for tea?’
‘I think we’ve got the idea,’ smiled Linda. ‘Now moving on to Janet . . .’
After everyone had ‘shared’ with the group we were introduced to all the FatBusters! materials and products, the most important of which was the Star calculator. A handy reference guide on how to take the pleasure out of eating once and for all. The first meeting took just over three quarters of an hour and I still felt as though FatBusters! wasn’t going to be for me.
‘What did you think of that then?’ I asked Mum as we filed out of the community hall.
‘I don’t think I’ll be going back.’ Mum shook her head and pulled a face. ‘It wasn’t really my kind of thing. I can’t be bothered with all that faffing around with booklets and eating their special brands of foods. I’m going to follow my own diet.’
‘Which is what exactly?’
‘To eat less and exercise more.’
I had tried diets before. A few years earlier Claire and I had tried the Atkins diet for a month and then the South Beach Diet. And while Atkins worked for a while (I think I lost around half a stone) and to a degree South Beach did too (I lost a couple of pounds) they both ended up with me falling off the wagon. When I say falling, what I mean is crashing and burning to such an extent that I’d find myself walking, nay, sprinting up to the newsagents at the top of my road and then, confused by a flurry of red lights and white noise blocking out my senses and my conscience I’d eventually open my eyes to find myself back at home, lying naked from the waist up on my bed, with chocolate smeared across my face, empty crisp packets surrounding my body, and an intense feeling of self-loathing in my heart.
This time, however, with my mum’s homespun philosophy of ‘eat less and exercise more’ still ringing in my ears I decided that I
would find my own way of losing weight and began referring in public (without the faintest degree of irony) to the ‘Mike Gayle Sensible Eating Diet Plan and Exercise Regime’. Better known by its snappy acronym MGSEDER this was my no-nonsense contribution to the world of diet and exercise and basically consisted of bits of well-known diet knowledge, a reduced alcohol intake, the bits of Atkins that I got on with best and a vague plan to ‘walk more’ and engage in ‘other’ physical activity.
Diary excerpts from the first ten days on the Mike Gayle Sensible Eating Diet and Exercise Regime (Part 4)
Sunday 1 April
First thing in the morning I make my way over to my local Marks and Spencer food hall and begin stocking up on ‘healthy foods’, which include the following: one tub of low fat macrobiotic yoghurt, five apples, five low GI ready meals and a two-litre bottle of mineral water. Standing in the queue I don’t dare look to my right for fear of catching sight of rows of sweet-based impulse buys. Even with my eyes fixed firmly ahead I imagine that I can see packets of Red and Black gums just within range of my peripheral vision and I’m so distracted by this that I fail to see the grumpy-looking cashier scowling at me because I’m holding up the queue.
Monday 2 April
Although it’s only day two of the diet I can already see that losing weight is going to be more difficult than I imagined. Yesterday I commenced my diet by consuming the first of my low GI ready meals in lieu of breakfast. How did it feel to be eating vegetable lasagne just before nine o’clock in the morning? Weird. Very weird. And around 11.00 a.m. (my usual snacking time) I was as hungry as ever.