Careful with that bodypaint

Three and a half miles this morning, hard going. I reckon I run much better (or at least it feels much easier) after I've had lunch, but the layout of the rest of the day was such that going fairly soon after breakfast was my only option.

I seem to have lost a couple of pounds this week, not as much as I would have hoped, but better than nothing. It set me to thinking though about why statues of Buddha are sometimes fat, when the buddhist way is "the middle way" with restraint in all things, including eating and drinking. Anyway, a bit of internet research tells me that despite the common misconception, the guy on the left isn't actually supposed to be Buddha - It's a Buddhist monk called Budai (or Hotei, maybe, depending where I look).

The skinny one (from Thailand) is probably meant to be Buddha during his fasting stage, following which he is supposed to have decided that the extremism of that kind of fanatically ascetic way of life wasn't useful, and developed the whole middle way theory.

So I guess I'm aiming for something in between, like the last one, maybe.

Or maybe more like this?

.....but not so dead.