I've been very fat for about 8 years. Morbidly obese.
When the doctor told me this 8 years ago, I stopped going to see him because I thought he was rude. At no point did I think, actually, I'm incredibly fat.
In my head, my image of myself has always been as a slightly chubby teenager with a bit of puppy fat that I can burn off in a weekend.
To compensate for the reality, I'd come up with tricks to avoid facing the truth - not letting people photograph me, not looking in mirrors, and assuming that the plus size clothes I'm wearing are temporary - I'll trade down in a few days once I've kept off the bread and booze.
But now at 52, nearly 53, I've suddenly realised, I'm really really fat. I can't hide the reality any more. My face is the giveaway. My eyes have shrunk - surrounded by fleshy cheeks and heavy jowls, weighed down by layers of fat.
So - having spent 8 years being fat, I need to take radical action to stop being fat.
I'm going to have to diet.
Dieting is incredibly boring. It's slow and it's not fun. And as everyone always says, mostly skinny bastards, it's not about the diet, it's really all about a lifestyle change. Yawn.
I've been on successful diets - not in the last 8 years admittedly. And not sustainably. But the one thing that kept me going was some element of jeopardy if I didn't go the distance. Competition helps. And financial loss.
So my plan is this. To lose 4 stone (25 kilos) in the next 12 months or sooner, posting a daily cartoon of my quest, and collecting the resulting outputs into a book which I shall give to EVERY subscriber to this blog for free if I fail to lose the weight in this time.
If I don't do a cartoon per day, I lose. If I don't lose 25 kilos, I lose. Otherwise, I win - and my prize is to be a skinny Dad god.
My partner Iu is dieting too. But she is so much skinnier than I and really just wants to get back to her undernourished Romanian days. Different order of ambition. No one would know she needs to diet.
So for me, the challenge is on. Now that's not a boring diet.
Good luck.