Being overweight is dreadful indeed it's an affliction that your humble servant knows too well.

Every day while walking around the complex my good self looks in the windows of the clothing shops and sometimes goes inside to peruse the garments in the gentlemen’s section.

Sadly all the clothes are way too small for me and my only option is to leave with a sad expression on my face knowing that my hideous obesity is preventing me from enjoying the latest fashions.

Despite going on diets, undertaking strenuous exercise and even starving myself it seems losing weight is dreadfully difficult thing to do.

If yours truly does not lose weight soon I fear my good self will keel over while on one of my regular lunchtime walks around the town centre indeed it's a long way to Stoke Mandeville in the back of an ambulance.

A few weeks ago I looked at myself in the mirror. What a dreadful sight it was. Could the person staring back really be the same person who once had a slim, athletic body and was a keen cyclist?

There was only one thing to do. Go on yet another diet.

Naturally my good self has started counting the calories in the food that one eats which seems harder than it sounds.

There may be nutritional information on every packet of food but the nutritional figures often relate to a measurement which is different to overall weight of the packet or individual item of food contained within.

For example take the pack of two slices of pork pie that my good self purchased for a quick snack the other day.

On the packet it said that every 100g of pie contained 350 calories. The pack contained two slices and weighted overall 250g.

Firstly there is the complication of the 'g' unit of newfangled metricated measurement. Why on earth they can't use proper trusty imperial pounds and ounces one really does not know.

As the weight of the pack (250g) was not an exact multiple of the weight for which the known calories was given (100g) it needed all my mathematical powers to work out how many calories each slice contained.

Why not just say how many calories each average slice contained after all it would be far easier.

Another example is the 330ml tin of fizzy drink which has forty two calories per 100ml yet it does not state clearly how many calories the entire tin contains. Are we really expected to multiply forty two by three and a third just to find how many calories it contains?

In this example one also has do battle with the dreaded 'ml' unit of measurement.

Standing for 'millilitres' naturally your humble servant thought one millilitre was a millionth of a litre however it turns out there are only a thousand millilitres in a litre which just goes to show how complicated the newfangled metricated measurements are!

So many packets give calorific information in different units to the actual weight of the product indeed one needs a degree in mathematics just to be able to discover how many calories are in a single portion.

Bottles of the ghastly alcohol come clearly labelled with the number of 'units' they contain so why not introduce a similar clear and easy to understand 'units' scheme for food too?

With such complication involved to work out how many calories food contains is it any wonder there are so many obese people like myself around?

I do wish food labels would give easy to understand nutritional information.

What do you think?

*My next exciting and enthralling blog will be published on Thursday evening around 8pm.