fat bodies

There was a programme on last night called embarrassing fat bodies.

It's part of a series that basically gets people on who have medical problems. I remember watching the first series, which was more general.

I didn't watch anything after that first series for a couple of reasons. First off it was clearly bordering on exploitative telly. It fell just the wrong side of the line where shows are basically the equivalent of gawping at carnival freaks.

I mean, it was also trying to act in a public information way, giving medical advice and highlighting conditions and stuff, but the actual people featured on the show tended to have extreme versions, which was the other reason I stopped watching.

So, for example, there would be someone on who had athlete's foot. Only the person featured didn't just have it, they'd had it for years and instead of visiting their GP or even going down boots/superdrug/tescos and getting some over-the-counter creams or whatever, they'd left it. And of course it had gotten to the stage where their nails had become a deformed mess and it looked like their feet were being eaten away.

Then the doctor would prescribe them some simple treatment like a pill or a cream and that would clean it up in a couple of weeks I'd just end up wondering why the hell they'd let it get so bad.

Of course the ironic element to this is that I essentially did the same thing in regards to my weight. I just kept 'leaving it' for my entire life until I got to the stage of being 24 and a half stone.

Anyway, the version I came across last night was all about being overweight, so I thought I'd watch and see what was going on. Quite a lot of the stuff I talked about I already knew, but one thing they did have on there was a woman who'd lost more than half her entire bodyweight, having dropped some 14 stone and been fat her entire life. Which, broadly speaking, is what I'm doing.

Her problem was what I think I'm actually most worried about now, which was that she had huge amounts of loose skin. She was only about 40, but her skin drooped down like that of someone more than twice her age. She looked okay clothed, but it meant she had to be fully clothed all the time.

She ended up having several rounds of plastic surgery to trim all the spare skin away. Obviously what I worry about now is ending up with similar piles of loose skin.

My hope is that the big difference was that she lost all that weight very quickly, where my plan is to shed it quite slowly and steadily. In reality I think it's inevitable that I'll end up with excess skin. In the programme they basically said that if you're really big for a long time, when you loose that weight the skin basically doesn't go away and surgery is the only option.

I could use the above as an excuse for this month's weigh in - that I'm taking it gradually - but that wasn't the reason I didn't loose any weight this last week. The reason was because I had the bad boozy weekend before and I ate too much bad stuff.

I have to say that, knowing what I did eat, I'm actually a little bit relieved the weigh in was no change, but still, I need to make sure I get back on track.

I'm more worried about putting the weight back on than I am having a lot of loose skin.