No Beer. No Bread. 1 Year.

“I quite like peaches in sugar. Will dipping them in sugar add any syns?”

Misha, the lady running our Slimming World induction manages to keep a straight face as she answers. The enquiry came from Linda, sat to my right in our welcome circle, who is now thumbing through one of the 5 books we’ve received looking for evidence to support her argument that fruit rolled in sugar is fine. I scan the rest of the circle for a kindred spirit who finds this question as absurd as I do, but only see that debate has broken out amongst the group regarding the nutritional value of sugar. They’re discussing syns, the backbone of Slimming World designed to encourage portion control. A chocolate bar is 8 syns, Guinness 12. “Peaches rolled in sugar isn’t in here.”

It’s August 2017, and this is the first time I’ve been to anything like this. The first time I’ve realised I have a problem.

They’ve started talking over Misha, the only credible source of knowledge in the room. I try to make eye contact with her, but I’m lacking the emotional nuance to make my face express “I’m not like these people, please assume I have a basic knowledge of the impact of sugar”.

This might seem self-important, maybe even mean, but imagine you’d paid £5 for a group driving lesson and the first question was covering how to open the car door. And then the lesson became about if you need to open the door or not, because somebody read online once that you actually don’t need to open the car door and that we evolved to go through the sunroof.

I sit back and disengage, nodding when appropriate, and feeling lonelier than when I first stepped into the meeting. I’m not like these people. They can’t help me. I say it over in my head until they line us up to get on the scales, the truth dawning on me that I am like these people. We all eat too much. We all don’t do enough exercise. We all take our shoes and jackets off before getting on the scales, hoping this will make a difference. I am the same as these people. This is our first weigh in, and then we will sit with the rest of the slimmers, the newbies placed into general population.

One by one we go around the circle discussing what we think our weaknesses are. I have some guff lined up in my head about cycling when I can and how I try to eat healthy, and I’m definitely not telling them I do stand up comedy, but when it gets to my turn I blurt out “I drink too much”.

Wait….what? Brain, you didn’t run this past me, you’ve gone rogue….. my mouth starts describing my drinking habits to the room despite my objections. I hear every word and start to realise I’m telling these people I’m an alcoholic because I spend every night in a pub, but I’ve not told them it’s to stand on a stage in a basement and try to make a handful of people laugh. Despite the omission about doing stand up, my numbers are accurate, I work out on the spot that I’m drinking between 25-30 pints a week. That’s 180-220 calories per beer, so around 6,000 calories a week. Times them weeks by 52, then by a decade, and ….. Jesus …… I’m Oliver Reed.

Misha tells me I can have three pints of Guinness on a day and it falls within my syns. Any Guinness lover will tell you the fourth pint is the second best, making way for the champion – the fifth pint.

I decide to stop going after my fourth visit. It’s the first week I’ve put weight back on, the pubs in which I do my stand up taking its toll, and the hangovers they produce leading to pizza, chocolate, and sandwiches which stretch my creativity to its limit (baguette with ham, cheese and Birdseye waffles, baked beans placed in the gaps like a modern art advent calendar).

It’s hard to describe the feeling after a particularly gluttonous meal. You know when Bruce Banner transforms back from The Hulk, and mourns the damage he’s done? It’s almost like that, no village on fire, but an empty Domino’s box to create the figurative and literal pangs of guilt in my chest.

Maybe that’s the problem, I’m just one guy. Mr Hyde will always beat Dr Jekyll in a fair fight. But what if I wasn’t one guy? What if I was an army of friends, family, comedians, coworkers, strangers? Would that work?

I set myself a challenge…. 1 year, no beer. No bread. From birthday to birthday. Everyone in my life will know. Whether they want to or not. Most of them do not. But if they see me with a beer in hand, they’ll be able to knock it out of my hand. I set up an Instagram account (https://www.instagram.com/allertonjamie/) ready to document all of this. This isn’t portion control, it’s abstinence. Now it’s a project! Diets are boring….. but projects? Projects are fun.

It’s September and my birthday is in a month. You have 4 weeks Mr Hyde, make the most of it you sonofabitch.