The formerly second fattest and I were fishing just before Christmas when we heard the call of the pub and he clambered out of the river and shimmied up the steep little bank and I clambered out of the river and attempted to shimmy up the steep little bank but fell back into the river.
"Ha ha," said the formerly second fattest and then he offered me a hand up which I reluctantly accepted and when I made it, gasping, to the top of the steep little bank he looked at me with something in his eyes that looked alarmingly like pity, and said, "Keto, Joe, you really should do keto."
I told him that I'd had a crack at several martial arts when I was young and found they simply weren't my thing, but he said keto was a diet.
I asked him whether he was seriously suggesting that a 63-year-old male with a proud history of eating and drinking whatever he could afford and an equally proud history of mocking diets and dieters and the billion dollar dieting industry because the truth was so spectacularly obvious, being that if you eat more calories than you burn then you get fat and if you burn more calories than you eat then you get thin, should go on a diet?
"Yes," said the formerly second fattest, "I did, and look at me."
I looked at him. He was two-thirds the size he used to be and noticeably better at shimmying up steep little banks. Furthermore there was none of the gasping as he bent to lace up fishing boots. I'd taken over the gasping mantle.
"Go on then," I said, "tell me."
"Do you like steak and eggs?" he said.
I liked steak and eggs.
"Do you like bacon?"
I adored bacon.
"Do you like butter?"
"Butter," I said, "was churned by god himself to make his children happy."
"Then keto's for you. You can eat all those because they're full of fat. Fat doesn't make you fat."
"It doesn't?"
"No. Carbohydrates make you fat, things like spuds and bread and rice and sugar. Cut them out and the body has to find an alternative source of fuel and burns your belly fat instead and you become like me, a shimmier up the steep little banks of later life."
"And the catch?"
"Only the carbs in wine. You'll have to forgo your nightly bottle or two."
"Forget it then," I said, and off we went to the pub.
But I did not forget it. Back home a few days later I consulted the internet. It had a lot on keto. It had before and after pictures. And it had a calculator thingy.
Into it I typed my age and height and weight and inside leg and the weight that I would like to be, which was my weight when I was 20, and I pressed a little button and the electronic cogs went round and then announced that if I went full keto I would reach my target weight on - wait for it - my birthday.
This thing was meant to be. I bought a set of electronic scales and, reader, I went keto.
It's been a week, now, a week since I ate bread or spuds or rice, a week since I ate fruit, a week since I put milk in coffee, a week of steak and salad, chops and roast asparagus, bacon, eggs and avocado, chicken strips and mushrooms fried in butter, a week of late night scotch because it has no carbohydrates, and the only cheating's been a glass or two of ruby-red shiraz - or what's the point of being on this earth?
And I can now report that in that time I've gained 200 grams.
