This ad is my pet hate at the moment. You've got this supposed teenager who actually looks about 29 trying to show his middle-aged Dad all this technology stuff and then thrilling him with a Gillette Fusion razor for Christmas. Now most middle-aged men that I know are gadget freaks would rather chew their own arm off than admit that the younger generation had anything to teach them about technology. Mind you, judging by the expression on this particular Dad's face it looks as though he might have had his intelligence blunted by a frontal lobotomy earlier in life, so maybe that explains it.

As for the product itself, I'd have thought that it's obvious that the more blades you add to a razor the more cumbersome it gets and the harder to get a good shave in all those nooks and crannies. What do they do to get around this? Add a sixth blade, of course! A triumph of marketing over common sense.

Personally I find I get a quite adequate shave with a two-blade razor. At least I do when I've taken a Stanley knife to that ridiculous lubricating strip that swells up and stops the blades getting into contact with your face.

Rant over!

I don't know how many weight loss blogs there are in operation, but it looks like an interesting one is about to be added. This page on the BBC web site tells how two Vice-ministers in the Japanese government have pledged to shed at least 5kg and their results are going to be published in a blog on the ministry website over the next six months. One of these ministers has the Health portfolio, so you can see how he ought to be setting a good example.

He says that he will walk for 10 minutes every day and stop using elevators. Hmm, it might take a bit more than that, I'm afraid. Is Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle available in Japanese? Perhaps it ought to be.

But, anyway, good luck to them. Can we expect our government to follow suit, perhaps with John Prescott taking the lead? Somehow I won't hold my breath waiting for that to happen.

I'm fascinated by words and how they evolve. The word 'diet' is a word that seems to have undergone such a change. Originally your diet was what you ate. Now when we speak of 'Mary's diet' we assume that's a temporary state of affairs whilst Mary loses a few pounds. That only applies to people though. When we say 'the panda's diet consists mostly of bamboo shoots', we don't assume that the panda has got a bit tubby around the haunches and is laying off the pizza and cream cakes for a while.

Anyway, the issue with conventional diets is that inevitably you end up back where you started. You eat less food, you lose some weight for a while then you hit a plateau, you get dispirited, you fall off the wagon, you start eating more food again, you regain the weight. Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle tells you in detail why this is inevitable.

Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle isn't a diet. It does have a lot of advice on nutrition, but it's a lifestyle change, not a temporary matter. And you get to eat plenty of food, so that's good.

Totally off-topic today, but as a life-long West Ham supporter I can't let the occasion pass without commenting on Pardew's sacking. I think it was inevitable after the last three defeats. The team appeared to be clueless and he seemed to have run out of ideas on how to shake things up. The new owners were never going to entrust the January transfer budget to him in those circumstances.

Nevertheless, I'm sad to see him go and it's another demonstration of how any football manager's career hangs on a thread of good and bad fortune. In Pardew's case it would have been hard to predict during the summer that he would be hit by:
1. Dean Ashton's injury
2. The arrival of Tevez and Mascherano and their struggle to adapt to the Premiership style of play.
3. The unsettling effect of the takeover.
4. Most of all, the massive drop in form of key players such as Reo-Coker, Konchesky, Harewood, Zamora, Benayoun and Etherington.

All in all I think he did a great job over those three years. He slashed the wage bill whilst keeping a good squad of players together, got us promoted, kept us up when nobody gave us a prayer and took us to a memorable Cup Final. I wish him all the best and much better luck in his next job.

I've reached a significant milestone today, three months into the regime, so it's time for a progress report and a review of my goals.

Goal: I eat five balanced nutritious meals per day.
Result: I've kept to that pretty well, there's only been a few days where I've had only four meals.

Goal: I avoid all foods on the bad list except, occasionally, white bread and bacon.
Result: My diet is now a lot healthier than it was and in particular my sugar intake much less than it used to be. I eat more saturated fat than the regime recommends. I will get my cholesterol checked after Christmas and if that's not showing any issues then I'm not going to worry about it.

Goal: I exercise daily (except for Sundays), with cardio and weight training on alternate days and I record my results.
Result: I haven't missed a day. I'm up to 29 minutes high intensity cardio on the rowing machine and my weight training is showing good progression through the reps and weights.

Goal: Every week I weigh myself and check body fat and I record these figures.
Result: Achieved.

Goal: I am on track towards reducing my body fat by 3% by December 15th 2006.
Result: I have achieved a 3.7% reduction.

Goal: My improved nutrition and exercise regimes are giving me considerable improvements in motivation and energy.
Result: I certainly noticed this in the early days. Now I think I take it for granted.

Goal: By April 2007 I have lost my spare tyre and am needing to replace all my trousers.
Result: My trousers have certainly got looser. Luckily they've all got belts, so they're still usable at the moment.

Goal: By June 2007 I have a body which I am proud to display on the beach. It is the envy of most 40+ men.
Result: I'm a lot happier with my body shape than I was at the start of the program.

Goal: I am progressing well towards my long term goal of 12% body fat.
Result: I think from now on it's going to be a case of slow but steady process. My revised goal is to lose 1% body fat every three months over the course of 2007, arriving at my new target figure of 11%.

I don't know whether anyone else heard the item on the Radio 5 Live breakfast show recently where some academic was claiming that there was no obesity epidemic and that the health risks of being seriously overweight were overstated. Well no doubt he has some statistics to back up his claims, but I suspect it's just a case of trying to get his five minutes of fame by being controversial.

Perhaps the word epidemic is not appropriate when discussing obesity but any trip around my local Asda supermarket makes it pretty clear to me that the problem is quite widespread. And speaking of supermarkets, why is it that as soon as anyone sets foot in one of these places they start moving at a pace that I would describe as 'snail-like', but that would be a major insult to gastropods everywhere? Add the fact that it's Christmas and the stores are jam-packed and what you have is a real problem of near gridlock for those of us with busy lives who want to get around the shop in the minimum time possible.

Anyway, this juxtaposition of thoughts lead me to a solution that will give everyone some much needed exercise and will also considerably reduce the overcrowding - supermarket aerobics. The idea is that everyone rushes round with their trolley trying to beat their own personal best. That way everyone would get round in half the time and the shop will only be half as crowded. The really keen participants could stop off at the beer aisle to do some bench presses with a couple of cases of Stella Artois. As a final twist, supermarket staff would move your car to a new random location whilst you were shopping, so you would have to do a few laps of the car park with your trolley to find it.

Remember, you heard it here first.

Christmas is nearly upon us. Normally I'm not too easy to buy for and this is made worse for my beloved by having a birthday that falls just eight days after Christmas Day. This year though it's been easier with stuff for my home gym topping the list. Here's what I have requested from Santa and the Birthday Fairy:

Kettler Vital Back Trainer - for doing hyperextensions. I'll blog about this bit of kit when I've had a chance to test it out.
Marcy Spotter Catchers - so I can do bench presses without the fear of dropping the bar on my chest.
Cable machine attachment for doing cable rows and tricep pulldowns.
Cable machine single hand handle.

That should keep me quiet for a while and they'll all get pressed into service when I start on a two-day split weight training regime in the new year.

Merry Christmas everyone.

Christmas Day has been and gone. At the end of it my beloved surveyed the house and declared it to be a bit of a mess. At this point I conjured up a gin-assisted theory that this was in keeping with the true meaning of Christmas, as a celebration of one of the fundamental processes of the universe, namely the progression from a state of order to a state of disorder.

Scientists call this entropy. Through processes which are poorly understood, bits of the universe get organised into small pockets of organised matter in the shape of galaxies, stars, planets and lifeforms such as people, turkeys and brussel sprouts. Over time this organisation breaks down, so that eventually all that remains is dust and radiation. At Christmas we mimic this process by carefully organising nicely wrapped presents, beautifully prepared food and a well-stocked drinks cabinet. Then our friends and relatives descend on us and transform this into discarded wrapping paper, dirty plates, half-finished drinks, stains on the carpet and other waste products which I won't mention in a polite blog such as this.

Anyway I hope that you all had a nice Christmas and that your entropy levels were kept at manageable levels. Then, of course, there is the question of expanding waistlines, but I won't dwell on that just yet.

Well that’s Christmas out of the way and now we turn our attention to the New Year. No doubt many of you will be pondering New Year resolutions and these will include such things as “lose some weight”, “improve my diet” and “get to the gym regularly”.

Now I don’t want to discourage you from this, but let’s have a quick show of hands. How many of you have ever made a new year’s resolution that was still intact by the end of January? Hmmm, not too many of you!

The problem is that January is a really depressing month for all sorts of reasons. If you’re in the northern hemisphere and not in the Tropics then the weather is bad and the days are short. You’ve probably overspent at Christmas, the bills start rolling in and the January pay-day seems an awful long way away. In these circumstances it’s hard to keep up the good intentions.

I’m going to make this really easy for you. The only resolution that you have to make is to buy yourself a copy of Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle and to commit to reading it over the course of the month. Then, assuming you think it makes sense you can write your goals and commit to a start date, perhaps around mid-February when winter will be easing off a little. You’ll find some techniques in the book that make these goals a bit more “stickable” than your typical new year’s resolution.

Good luck!