Mom Test: Results: Fuck's Sake

Mothers Cause Obesity and Tequila is a Superfood

03/09/24 95.9 36.83 0 0

02/09/24 96.4 36.51 0 0

01/09/24 97 36.98 0 0

31/08/24 97.3 36.92 0 0

30/08/24 96.9 36.77 0 0

29/08/24 97 36.85 0 0

28/08/24 97.6 36.44 0 0

27/08/24 36.7 0 0

26/08/24 36.8 0 0.25

25/08/24 36.9 0 0

24/08/24 36.8 0 0.25

So a couple of weeks ago I wrote:

Weight-wise I have no idea. I'm not measuring it and I don't have any intuitive sense that it's going up or down. It doesn't feel like I'm eating more or less than usual, my appetite is normal.

And that carried on, I had a lovely time at home, I didn't think I was eating too much, the hypometabolism I seemed to suffer in the last week there was fixed by a couple of quarter-grains of desiccated thyroid.

I felt fine coming home, nice conversations on the train, I even stopped off in Leicester to see my Aunt whom I haven't seen in years, we talked for about three hours in a nice café opposite the station ('The Merchant of Venice', really friendly, not terribly expensive, and the best coffee I've had in years (and I drink a lot of coffee)) and we were both full of beans.

I got home very late and pretty much had to rebuild the boat before I could go to bed but I was really lively and pretty much thinking 'Yay, fixed!'.

And then the next morning I woke up at 0730 for no reason whatsoever all bright and shiny¹ and weighed myself and I was 97.6 fucking kg. The previous measurement before I left was 92.7.

That's literally 5 kilos of fat piled on in four weeks. A quick back-of-the-envelope calculation with body fat at 7.7kcal/gram implies that I was eating 1375kcal/day in excess of expenditure, and my expenditure was likely a bit higher than normal because those one-and-a-half-hour walks in fairly steep hills take up a fair bit of energy. Kate reckons about 800kcal, but you've got to weigh that against usual bike riding and walking in Cambridge so maybe a bit less. Also I was feeling far too hot for a lot of it.

Anyway apparently I can eat maybe 2000kcal extra every day for four weeks without even noticing. But I had a look at myself from the side in a mirror and yes, I've very obviously got a lot fatter since I last looked. I wonder why it wasn't just obvious from my feet hitting the ground harder. I look pregnant.

A friend of mine actually is pregnant, and we were comparing notes and I think I gained a lot more weight over the last month than she did. Five kilos in one month is some sort of all-lifetime record, although I don't have records from the time I came back from France painfully thin in a state of mild starvation and put on three stone as quick as boiled asparagus. But certainly it's a recent PB.

So I'm thinking, Oh For God's Sake, a bout of ex150ish is immediately called for.

But I'm also thinking, hang on, this is just weird, just before I left for home I equally mysteriously dropped 1.5kg, equally for no reason at all.

I didn't touch alcohol or tobacco all the time I was home for some reason, so if all I had to go on was the last six weeks' data I'd be tempted to believe that getting scandalously pissed and watching plays promotes leanness, and if you stop doing that and eat healthy nutritious food and go for walks a lot you'll be on a mobility scooter within the year.

So I am thinking, Don't Just Do Something, Stand There, as a very wise man once said.

And this week I have just followed my heart's desire, which appears to be to eat cheese on toast and pizza mainly, with odd bits of porridge and black pudding thrown in and some shortbread biscuits and honey for vitamins, and a couple of tubes of tomato puree and a block of butter, at one point I found myself eating toast buttered with coconut oil, and actually a load of vitamin C because I have been reading about why Linus Pauling went mental and it doesn't look like he went that mental to me. Also one night I dragged myself to a party and drank two thirds of a bottle of neat tequila and stayed up dancing until about two in the morning.

And now I have enough data to take a seven-day moving average. 96.9kg since you ask. But on my new graph it looks like my weight is in free fall.

I provisionally confirm the predictions of my new theory.

My mother causes obesity, and it is fixed by drinking and bad living.

1. This is literally impossible. Six hours sleep and out of bed in the middle of the night isn’t really ‘me’. I did pay for it later though.