It isn’t. It is morbidly obese. I know that and I am still embarrassed I let my body get in this condition. But it is three pounds better than last week.

The workouts this week have been frequent and intense. In total I’ve been six times in the gym this week – four circuit training sessions at Lochend Amateur Boxing Club plus two weekend sessions at Virgin Active. If you are really fussed for seeing how anal I am about recording the full details you can view the full details of the workouts on my exercise tracker.

But despite all the workouts I was still hesitant to get on the scales this weekend. I made sure I squeezed two more gym sessions in before I stepped on, purely because I would have been majorly pissed off If I had stayed above 19 stone.

Taking a step back from it, three pounds is pretty good. That’s bigger than a bag of spuds, it’s half a baby….a decent sized trout. In a week. It’s..alright.

But the real victory is that when I input the new weight on the grid I’m (give or take half a pound) right back on track.

I knew I looked like a dick, but so what? I didn’t know any of these people, and what should I care if they giggled at a fat, middle-aged man in an outsize version of a boxer’s sweat suit puffing away on a cross trainer?

All I know is that it felt like the sweat suit worked, and I didn’t kill myself using it.

I confess that when I walked from the changing room at the Virgin Active gym, the polyester of my black shiny suit crinkling audibly as I went, there was a tiny voice at the back of my head that said, ‘what are you doing, you arse? look at the state of you!’

But gyms are a great leveller. Everybody, stick thin or gargantuan, loses whatever veneer they had when those first beads of sweat start to form.

After 70 minutes in the sweat suit I was drookit with perspiration and when I took it off…well, you really don’t need to know.

All in all it has been another pretty good week for me. I have been focused again on Two Fat Laddies, and I’ve even managed a rare proper weights session in among trips to Lochend Amateur Boxing Club and the regular cardiovascular training.

But more importantly my partner in crime Shaun seems to have rekindled his own weight loss quest with a real bang. Reading about bis efforts on our twitter account has spurred me on.

So while I am a little disappointed with today’s results I will take them all the same.

Two pounds off in the five days since I last weighed myself is not a bad return all told.

After all of last week’s efforts I was hoping for a much better return.

The chart doesn’t lie though. A measly pound off since I last weighed myself.

Now I am perfectly happy to admit that my diet is still a problem (as my food photos here make it pretty clear) but my workrate of late has been good. The seven sessions in the gym last week should have translated to a better result.

I had hoped for more.

But, after reading Shaun’s last post I suppose I should be more positive about things. He appears to be where I was at a few months/weeks ago. He has finally admitted to himself what I, and I suppose others, had noticed for a while, that he was getting bigger and bigger again.

So now I find myself in the highly unlikely position of being the half of the Two Fat Laddies giving encouragement and hope to the other.

I am not sure if Shaun has turned a corner, I hope so, but if I can plough on and get my own results, and if that helps him in any way, so much the better.

I have a feeling thing are about to improve for both of us.

All those workouts, all that sweat in the gym, and the scales didn’t move at all.

This is going to be a long year.

After last week’s success I had hoped to have lost at least another five pounds or so, my reasoning being that it should be much quicker to shift the weight now, near the beginning of 2013, than later on.

And, to be fair, there had been a few signs over the last few days to give me hope. The belt has come in a notch, my clothes are looser, I can feel more tone in my arm muscles, my tree trunk legs aren’t quite so thick – I feel healthier.

Three pounds would have been a mediocre return for my effort, two a minor disappointment, but I really hadn’t factored on losing absolutely nothing. Not a bit.

After stepping off and on, off and on, and getting the same reading time after time, I checked the internet for answers.

There are plenty of explanations offered by all kinds of snake oil salesmen for early weight loss plateaus from water retention to muscle growth.

But the truth of the matter remains simple – if you burn more than you take in, you will lose weight.

I have been pretty good with the burning bit with five gym visits over the course of the week but my intake – the beers I had last night with former work colleagues, the odd sausage here, the teeny bag of crisps there – is still too much for a serious weight loss push and I know it.

From here on in I will clearly have to watch my diet much more closely. I am sure it is the missing component and among all the drivel and hocus pocus I read this morning one soundbite line did stand out for me – You can never out train a bad diet.

In the meantime I am cheating a teeny bit today by not entering my weight in our graph nor taking photos of my still corpulent frame for the Flickr stream because I want to get to the gym tonight, have a monster session, and log it all in the morning instead – it is, of course, completely barmy and unrepresentative I know, but I could really do with watching that line head in the right direction.

The shame of not having weighed myself in so long, given all our Two Fat Laddies promises and blogs in 2011 and 2012, was strong.

And to find out I was still more than 20 stones – 20 stones and 3lb to be exact – was extremely disappointing.

But a lot can can change in a week.

This has been a good few days. The first stirrings of Spring in Scotland have been marked with a noticeable improvement in the weather. The days are definitely getting longer, I am starting to see snowdrops by the roadside verges on the way in to work. Next it will be the crocuses and after that it will be Easter.

On a beautiful sunny day last Sunday I rode the 38km along the south bank of the Firth of Forth from Edinburgh down to North Berwick. It was simply magic being on the bike on a windless morning wending my way through East Lothian. I wasn’t trying to break any records as I ambled along the flat coastal road through the dunes and lush farmland so I was surprised when I parked up on the seafront at North Berwick to find out it had only taken me two hours to do it. It was as enjoyable two hours as I’ve spent on my own in months.

Since then the workouts have been regular too, with only one day missed since last weekend. I have been logging all of them on my exercise tracker as faithfully as I can.

Despite a few blips – two nights on the peev and some stupid food choices – the results when I stepped on the scales this morning were heartening.

It appears I have managed to lose five pounds in a week. I’m not sure that that is true, but I will take it. I feel better in myself, I really enjoyed the ride and the boxing club circuit training on Monday and Wednesday but I shipped a fair amount of wine on at least two nights last week…5lb? I don’t quite believe it.

Still, it is going in the Two Fat Laddies 2013 weight tracker and it means I am now beneath that disgusting 20 stone marker for the first time in months.

There are currently only three lines on the chart, because Shaun is still crook and hasn’t weighed himself yet in 2013. I know he has been frustrated by his gammy knee and I hope he gets it together soon. I’m looking forward to seeing him in the gym so we can fulfill this bloody challenge together.

If nothing else the result, phoney or not, has given me the confidence to kick on now and properly plan for this week and beyond.

Onwards and upwards.

I have avoided weighing myself for nigh on two years. Which would be fine had I not promised publicly to lose weight. It kind of goes with the territory.

There are no excuses except that after the blog lost steam there was a fear that I would be beyond my original starting point weight (20 stones 11lb), and that all of that time since January 2011 would have been wasted.

But I have been in the gym pretty steadily of late, and feeling a tiny bit better about my fitness and body. I can do two hour sessions on the gym machines and then go for a good long swim, I can manage 60 minutes of really high intensity cardio workouts at the boxing club.

I must have lost weight, right?

So I decided to wise up and step up to the plate this morning and find out exactly how big I really am and how hard the task ahead is going to be.

What I was confronted with has sobered me up.

As I said before in an earlier post, I am not really sure if the Nintendo Wii is the most accurate device for measuring weight but it’s what we have in the house, and it’s what I started with back in 2011, so I will stick with it.

When I fished the thing out from under the sofa this morning it was pretty dusty. In fact it was so long since I’d used it I had to reset the damned thing, which, when you are standing in your scants in the front room, is a pain in the hole.

It is pathetic to recount my genuine trepidation as I stepped on and waited for the result.

I expected to be under 20 stone. Under 19 would have been nice. Here is what I got.

my first weigh in far too long

Never in my wildest dreams as a young man did I think I would ever be 20 stones, but here we are.

There is something about 20 stones, the figure itself, which horrifies most right thinking folk. It is the River Styx of obesity – the kind of territory where Channel 5 documentary makers are going to think about putting you on the telly. Wrong side of 20 stones and you are in real trouble; the other, the situation is still tricky but not irretrievable.

On the other hand, like I said, I can hold my own in the gym, and I am improving. I don’t feel like someone who SHOULD weigh 20 stones. And, if I am really scrabbling for positives – it is at least seven pounds lighter than I started.

Now I know the size of the task in hand I can plan and set goals accordingly. The plan now is to step on the scales every Saturday morning from here on in, and to post the results on the weight tracker again (if I can find it)

I’m away to play with the kids.

I am not back on track quite yet, I still have an awful lot of beef to shift, but things are looking up.

There are a few reasons for the gear shift. I have taken my diet seriously for the first time in months, thanks largely to the help of Angie McAvenna, and I have upped the training regime.

The prospect of disappointing so many folk by not actually fulfilling my part of the bargain and at least trying to properly lose weight was also brought pretty sharply in to focus by a look at the calendar. Time is running out.

So all in all it has been good, and friends and colleagues have been quick to notice with fresh words of encouragement.

Stepping on the scales yesterday for the first time in a fortnight I had secretly dreamed of pushing down through 18 stone. I would have then been just a few pounds short of 3 stones weight loss…which will be a big psychological hurdle.

It wasn’t to be.

But 4lb off is not to be sniffed at. I’ll take it. The weight tracker looks better again. (Click here to view it.)

I’d like to aim for another 4lb this week so that means being very strict with diet and proper gym sessions. Bring it on.

Not good. Not good at all.

The result was 18 stone 6lb. In other words exactly the same as the end of February, according to our weight tracker

I had put it off and off for weeks, worried about how too much partying and not enough graft over the last while would have translated. It had become an issue that I daren’t confront. The scales became – to mix a metaphor – the elephant in the room.

But, inspired by Shaun’s continuing success and with one eye on the calendar, I had had a good week in the gym, I felt champion. At least I did until I stepped on the Wii fit board scales.

It would be easy to be disheartened by the results but in a funny way it was a release. I have caned it over the summer, had some great times which I will remember fondly for ever, but they didn’t really fit in to the – this-is-the-year-to-lose-five stone plan. In many respects, given the carousing I have done, the reading could have been a lot lot worse.

As my wife, with the directness I love, pointed out – ‘well, what did you expect??’

Shaun too has been a great support. ‘Dig in, work hard. We will get there’ and he is right. I know he is.

Somewhere in the back of my mind I thought I might have dipped beneath 18 stones. OK, so I haven’t, yet, but there is still a lot to take out of the results. I have still lost two and half stone, I feel good – I am back in the gym working hard, watching my food and drink intake. It’s all good. It will happen.

It just means I will need to crash off those extra pounds quicker to get back on track. I am off the pace by a stone, so I will have to just crack on and get it off. Simple as that.

I told myself there was no way I could let the result ruin my weekend with the family, so after the weigh-in I trooped off with family and friends to the Trampoline Centre for our little girl’s fifth birthday party.

It was great to spend time with nearest and dearest and to have a wee jump and bounce myself.

One of the kids there took a deep interest in my belly and kept slapping it.

‘Oooh, look at the size of your tummy’ he said, wide-eyed, as he raised my t-shirt to inspect it for himself. The scamp.

After the jelly and cake had been cleared away and the kids were trooping off with their goodie bags he looked over his shoulder at me and waved ‘Goodbye, Mr Fatty!’

My brother-in-law looked at me, raising an eyebrow and trying not to laugh, and said ‘you should use that in your blog!’

Today’s exercise is going to be more mundane. The rest of the family is getting packed off to the seaside to granny’s, I meanwhile will be donning my boiler suit and getting on my hands and knees to scrub our tenement stairs – each one individually – top to bottom. Another job I have avoided for far too long.

It is a dirty, mawkit, sweaty job, traipsing up and down stairs to fetch fresh water and then giving it laldy with the elbow grease…and it will burn a good few calories. I reckon it will take between three and four hours to do it properly. If I have the inclination I may even polish the brass panels on our tenement front door. (My wife couldn’t care a fig about it but I can’t betray my lower middle class credentials. It pains me to the core to have a dirty close.)

Goodbye Mr Fatty indeed.

So, even though I somehow managed to put a pound on last week despite a 10k and three or four long gym sessions I am pretty upbeat tonight as I write.

Looking at the graph in the long-term it’s still good, and Shaun has clearly got through his plateau which was threatening to take him above the target weight for the first time this year, which is great for him.

Since yesterday’s weigh-in I’ve already done a half marathon on the rower and I am contemplating a wee 10k as soon as I finish writing this. If I watch what I eat between now and next week and also get a few more sessions in, I’m confident it will head south again.

Onwards and downwards.

But last week we had a good week’s training. I was in the gym every day, sometimes twice, and we both topped it off with a mammoth bike ride.

So when I stepped on the scales yesterday for the Week 18 weigh-in I had the temerity to believe it might be some rare good news.

I was still surfing on the elation of having cycled from Edinburgh to Glasgow the previous day so I was thinking I might be lighter by something in the order of 4lb, maybe even 7llb.

Given that I have a wedding in three weeks time in France for which I had hoped to be a stone lighter that would have fitted me perfectly.

But in reality this is what I got.

1lb off.

One sodding pound.

It was enough to make me cry.

But. but, but. I hunted for a positive. Clothes still feel looser, my waist is coming down, and the weight is still heading the right way.

Yet I can’t lie. It is a pain in the rear to still be in the ‘Obese’ section on the Nintendo Wii fit thingy when we are just a few weeks away from the halfway point in this challenge.

Anyone looking at the food diary can see the all too evident lapses. Food and booze.

I have half an eye on Shaun’s chart now and he is in the same predicament. A month with no weight-loss at all, just (at best) re-distribution.

People have been quick to gee us up, pointing out that muscle is heavier than fat and that our forms are certainly changing.

I accept that, and I welcome encouragement, but the Two Fat Laddies challenge we set ourselves is clear. To lose 5 stone in 12 months.

Looking at the chart, and knowing it’s only going to get harder as the months roll on, my positive nature is being sorely tested.

But we’re going to give it our best crack.

And with that…I’d better join Shaun in the gym.