10 down 10 to go

Hi, my name is Tim and I'm a ..........? What exactly am I? Well, not an alcoholic which is definitely a plus but I am, as you might have guessed, 55 and a half years old. For most of those 50 odd years I successfully managed to dodge the double bullets of marriage and children. Until I met My Beautiful Wife that is. Now at this tender age I find myself both happily married and a father to two wonderful (most of the time) children and my view on life has been turned well and truly upside down, as you might expect having your first child at 47. But at least I am in good company as I ponder the question: am I too old to be a father?
A free wheeling, carefree, lifestyle under the tropical sun with nothing to worry about and the most taxing issue of the day might be deciding which beach bar to watch the sunset from has been replaced with an empty bank account, sleepless nights and issues on a daily basis that might well effect the rest of the lives of the two little ones (not to mention their mum and dad) and all under the grey skies of northern England. And I couldn't be happier.
But, and of course there is always a but, some things are always swirling around the day to day chaos of teeth brushing, homework and taxiing the kids:

• Age - I'm no spring chicken despite what I tell myself
• Weight - the wonderful cooking of MBW combined with my woeful lack of will power has resulted in a fantastic spread. 
• Money - in case anybody hadn't noticed, kids are expensive.
• Health - let's face it after hitting the big Hawaii 5-0 your health is like driving down a one way street the wrong way - you can still have fun but you know sooner or later you are going to hit something hard
• Family, relationships, people, friends - how the hell do you bring up kids? How do you keep family relationships strong that are separated by half the world and two cultures and languages? How do you have time for a social life?
• Any other business - a catch all category to describe all the random stuff that comes along to stop you sorting out or dealing with the more important stuff

This blog is how to survive being over 55.
But why am I going to write about all this stuff in a blog for the world (well, probably just me and our "pet" fox who has just strolled past the door) to see? I have some vague idea of it helping me to clarify my thoughts or possibly provide a record for prosperity. And possibly help me to get to, at least, 60 not out in one piece.
But one thing I really hope it will do is provide me with extra motivation to sort out the size of "daddy's big tummy" as the kids call it.

Since getting married to My Beautiful Wife who loves cooking and adores food, but somehow manages to stay slim, and growing into family life, predictably my stomach has grown (it wasn't small in the first place) even faster than the kids and the overdraft. My weight rapidly ballooned to over 90 kilos - an astonishing weight for a small guy and presumably classed as obese but with my classic ostrich style I always avoided checking what the actual definition of obese is.

An ostrich doing what an ostrich does best

In the last three months, however, I have really dieted hard and achieved, by my pathetic lifelong dieting standards, some great results. I have lost 10 kilos in weight, or 22lbs in old money, which is fantastic and I am really pleased but just recently I have noticed I am slipping back into some bad old habits. If I start putting all this out in the public domain surely it will help with the motivation to stick with the diet and hit my target of losing another 10 kilos? Let's see.
Feel free to add any comments below.