I AIN'T HEAVY, I'M
ALL BLUBBER...
NOW that I’ve made it to the New Year, I’m about to get a huge weight off my mind. And off my chest. And off the equine girth that used to be my waist.
Because this fat filly has had a ’mare of a festive season on holiday in Manchester trying to prove that she really can eat a horse.
I would NOT normally reveal my weight under any circumstances. But even allowing for the fact that I am, to use a colloquial expression, ‘big boned’, I’m ashamed to admit that in the last 12 months or so, my weight has mushroomed by some 16 kilos. Or around two-and-a-half stone in old money.
In mid-2011 I tipped the scales at a bit over 12st, still far too much for a 5ft 5in woman and considerably more than I weighed five years ago. Now I am well over 14 stone…and that is way, way heavier than I have ever been.
Many expanding expats in their 60s would put the increasing corpulence down to the good life and do nothing about it. Which has been my strategy until now.
I also have too many friends who enjoy the occasional Indian or Chinese banquet at least eight nights a week – and who refuse to take my incessant screams of ‘no, no, NO’ for an answer. (OK, that’s a little weight lie).
Anyway, I have devised an ingenious plan (well, I think it’s ingenious) which will encourage me to lose weight and also raise money for a charity that means a lot to me.
I’ve been in the UK over Christmas and the New Year, but when I return to Spain next Tuesday (January 8) I plan to get myself weighed professionally and then launch the official Dumpy Old Gran Diet 2013 in The Courier, the newspaper I edit, next Friday.
If you want to join in the fun (not that I’ll be having any!) I’m looking for sponsors. All the sponsorship money will go to CICRA, a charity dedicated to creating a wider understanding of Crohn’s Disease in childhood. Crohn’s is a chronic inflammatory bowel disease - and incurable. The choice was easy for me because two of my granddaughters have Crohn’s, and one of them, Daisy, has it so severely that she has been off school for two months, much of that time in hospital.
For my own health’s sake I simply MUST lose weight – and what better way to do it than to raise money for a good cause at the same time? I already have three stents keeping my coronary arteries open while my leg muscles and joints are becoming increasingly weaker as Parkinson’s Disease begins to its toll. Great fun, this life.
Never mind a Prima Donna, I want to be a Leaner Donna…and the quicker the better.
Because, to paraphrase the old Hollies hit…She Ain’t Heavy, She’s All Blubber.
IF you would like to sponsor my Dumpy Old Gran weight loss campaign, details are on https://www.justgiving.com/Donna-Gee