Counting Calories

I’ve never been very good at maths. The closest I’ve come to doing algebra since GCSE is in typing XXX into Google, so it works in my favour that calculating calories only involves working with numbers in the very low thousands.
It’s an unavoidable fact that all of us living in 21st century have mirrors in our homes. I can’t help but lament this turn of events. Before the advent of the compulsory bathroom mirror, you would only ever have seen yourself in still pools or, if you were an Eskimo, glaciers, meaning that the sheer data you’d have about your own day-to-day appearance would have been quite limited. I think most of us could do with a little less data. That freckle on the underside of your left peck isn’t going to be the straw that breaks the attractive woman at the bar’s indecision.
But there we have it. Mirrors are everywhere and, apart from foiling the best-laid plans of ghosts and axe murderers, their main job is to make us all feel flabby. And their damn good at it, because they have science on their side. Stupid, always-has-to-have-the-last-word-science, with its photons and wavelengths and facts.
I’ve been counting calories for a week now, and I’ve lost two pounds. It’s actually enormously satisfying to see a weekly loss, and I’d recommend this underrated technique to anyone looking to give mirrors and science what for. I know exactly how many cans of cider (four), bars of chocolate (five), and piled-high plates of pan-Asian cuisine (zero you twat) I can afford to cram into my food-hole to maintain my current rate of concession to mirrors. And knowledge, as they say, is power.
In exactly seven weeks, I’ll be a somewhat thinner man. Perhaps I’ll even shave, safe in the knowledge that my chin will be just that. Until then, I’ll find other ways to shut my ego up. Now if you’ll excuse me I’ve just remembered that there’s a small mirror near the toilet in my girlfriend’s house which, angled just so, provides a rather flattering framed shot of my junk.