It starts here.

It's worse than I thought! When I got up this morning I took some measurements. I apologise for my non-accommodation of the various continentals among my hordes of readers by only publishing these in the imperial codes and British format but here's a quick guide; 1 lb (a pound) equals 0.454 kilo and for my US friends a stone is 14 lbs. One inch (1") equals 2.54 of your little Napoleonic centimetres. However, it doesn't matter what format the measurements are because when all's said and done, I just want the buggers to get smaller.

Now the scary bit. My weight was 14 stone 11 lb. I'll save you the conversion - that's actually 207 lbs. I am 150% the weight I was when I left college over 25 years ago. But where am I carrying it? I expect to be a bit more thickset than I used to be but it's quite obvious where lots of the lard resides: round my waist. I took two measurements this morning, one around my navel and one where my trouser waist would be. The latter was 41". The other a touch over 43". How I managed to fit into a new pair of 38" trousers on New Year's Eve, I don't know. I'd be interested to see where clothing designers take their measurements from (the same place gentlemen placing 'personal' ads on the internet do I suspect - a vivid and optimistic imagination).

I've done a little research to find my ideal weight. There doesn't seem to be a great deal of consensus on this and for my height, 5'11" and medium frame size there's a hell of a lot of leeway (good!). This site, Changing Shape, suggests that I could be anything between 11 stones and 12 st 2. Intriguingly, were I Pakistani I'd have a better chance of gaining my ideal weight as this site, Paktaste.com only starts at 11 st 6 and goes to a whopping 13st 11 lbs! So it's a run round the block and off to the Mogul for plate of ghee for me tonight then. No, I think I'll settle for aiming for 12 stones. It seems a fair target weight, setting a challenging 2 stone 11 lbs to come off but allowing a gentle nod to middle age.

So what have I done today? Well, I've only eaten crispbread so far. With topping. Yeah, well I like cold meats and patés and stuff and it's got to go hasn't it. And it IS all I've eaten so far. But, here's the interesting thing - I've been taken in already: I read all the nutritional info and was rather stunned to see that a slice of Multigrained Ryvita is 37 calories. Pardon? Yes 4 I had. Well, they're nice. This isn't going to be easy.