The Hidden Cost Of Dieting

Well, I'm happy to say it's all over- the diet that is. In the twenty weeks of dieting I have lost 2st 10lbs and almost six inches off my waist. But, as you can see above, the diet has its downside and nothing fits me anymore. And strangely enough I never considered myself to be really fat just a little overweight. So yesterday morning I emptied the wardrobe and tried on all the trousers.

And ended up with this lot in the charity shop pile. Then I thought that I had better check out the shirts and jumpers.

I can only say that it's a good job that I won't be needing any suits following retirement in a few weeks time or I would have to pile the weight back on or risk financial penury. Nobody mentions this aspect of dieting when they sell you the idea. Even shopping at Debenhams or M&S where trousers and shirts average around forty or fifty quid there would be well over £1,000 replacement value in this pile and, as a lot of them were from Hugo Boss and Farhi, if I returned to those shops you could double that figure. If you happen to be a "slightly overweight" fifty something bloke pop into Oxfam Southport and grab yourself a bargain - some of these (bought haf way through the diet) have only been worn a couple of times

Here at Instanta the Safan engineer is busy installing the new press brake that arrived on Friday in time for the lads to start learning how to use it tomorrow.It seems that once they have programmed it properly it will do the job perfectly every time. No change there then. Just like we did with the old manual one eh lads?

I am indebted to the Guardian Guide on Saturday for drawing my attention to this great ad from Thinkbox TV. It advertises the power of TV advertising and does so quite brilliantly in my opinion.





And to prove Thinkbox's point, here's the latest IKEA ad that I saw during X Factor on Saturday night. Excellent. Much better than 100 cats.Oh and by the way, some people say these videos don't show properly in this blog layout. If they don't fit, double click and they will open in a new window.





But I think that this one, which took up a massive two minutes during another X Factor break fails to hit the mark. I love Yeo Valley yogurts but rapping farmers?