Here's the basic plot... I'm 50lb overweight. Have been for some time now. Certainly is a shame that they don't come off as easily as they go on! Whenever I try to lose the excess weight, I inevitably run into one of three obstacles:
1) A lack of motivation
2) A lack of discipline, or
3) A lack of energy
The latter has a fairly straightforward explanation: depression, the nasty, really-difficult-to-diagnose kind. We're getting there now finally (after seven long and dark years) but there are still times when even getting out of bed seems like a marathon. Needless to say, I can lose a pound or two fairly quickly, but have never been motivated enough for long enough to actually keep it off.
Until now that is... There's an organisation that I hugely admire called Comic Relief, which has been raising phenomenal amounts of money for vulnerable people around the world over the last twenty four years. It was started by Richard Curtis, the acclaimed British comedy writer.
I remember seeing the same news reports he saw in 1985 - images like that stick in your head - of tiny African children, flies buzzing around their faces, their bellies swollen with hunger. The famine in Ethiopia was killing thousands of them through starvation and disease every single day. Curtis and his team got together to do something about it the best way they knew how: by televising a comedy spectacular, as well as encouraging people to do whacky sponsored events to help raise money.
I got involved there and then and went to work. I think I raised about £5 in total - I was so proud! For an 8 year old that was a lot of money in those days! Now as an adult, it doesn't seem all that much, but here's what a fiver in the hands of Comic Relief can do...
That £5 has saved at least one person's life from the certain death that is malaria. Knowing that I had helped, gave me a massive buzz. It still does now. I might not be able to change the world and alleviate all of its suffering, but I can ease some of it. That right there is one person's life that I have changed forever. I'd love to meet them one day and just listen to their life story, to hear everything that was possible because I did something daft for a few hours and raised a measly £5.
It's been a while since I did anything more than give a donation and I think it's high time that I did. I want that feeling back, today, tomorrow, and every tomorrow for the rest of my life, however long that might be.
One of the symptoms of my depression is comfort-eating, hence the fifty solid pounds of lard I drag around every day. But another is that I frequently can't sleep and end up writing down a mind-melting list of incredibly creative ideas. You're now reading one that was conceived somewhere around 3am on the 23rd March 2009....
You see, I have fifty pounds of weight to lose before I reach a healthy weight, and I got thinking: Wouldn't it be brilliant if I put a pound in a jar for every pound that I lose, then when I've reached my goal, I can give it Comic Relief.
If £5 can save one life from malaria, then £50 can save ten. £100 can save twenty. £500 can stop one hundred broken-hearted mothers from burying their children next year. I'm going to do this whether you join me or not. But it would be great if you did, it would be life-changing. In fact it would be more than that - it would be life-saving.
