Belly's gonna get ya!

Days to unemployment=27

7:16 am and I’m drying myself after my shower. I look down. I frown. I walk over to the mirror and look at my naked body. I turn myself sideways. I suck it in. I let it go. I suck it in again. I stare for a moment and realise that I can no longer deny it. It’s there. I have a paunch.

As a teenager, I was always skinny and wiry and at medical school I filled out and often got told during pillow-talk that I had a “great body.” Nowadays, there are some bits of me that are holding their own (arms, legs, bum) but the middle bit’s definitely much saggier than it used to be.

With these thoughts in mind, I took a good look at the other doctors and nurses I bumped into at work today. I have to say, it wasn’t pretty – on the whole doctors and nurses aren’t in good shape at all. Other health professionals like pharmacists and physiotherapists fare much better than we do. Considering our business is healthcare, you could say that it’s deeply hypocritical ironic that we are so unhealthy ourselves. Thinking about it, it’s easy to understand why. Long hours spent at work, shift patterns, working evenings and nights mean that it’s difficult to find time to prepare healthy meals and even harder to join a sports team or go to the gym regularly. The total lack of healthy food facilities in Town Hospital for staff means that when you’re on a tough part of the rota like I am now means that often on call you have a choice between getting a take-away and going hungry… blah… blah… blah…

I could think of 100 excuses reasons why I am now officially a “man with a paunch” but I think at the end of the day, it comes down to my motivation (or lack of). Remember those old Reebok adverts that went “Belly’s gonna get ya! Belly’s gonna get ya!” It seems like Belly is catching up with me but I’m not going to let it catch me. So, at 7:16 pm, I was running down the city streets, through the pouring rain and now, as I sit here typing this – I feel tired but fantastic.