Like many people I could lose a pound or two with little difficulty and look and feel better for doing so. Unlike many people, I am aware of this.
Now,
I’m not an old man far from it, at thirty nine I may have passed the tipping
point of my prime but I can still remember the great days of the early nineties
when going on holiday meant sharing beaches with fine looking people; the
Mediterranean coasts were literally awash with good looks and glamour, a
perception admittedly assisted by alcohol but a fair reflection all the same.
However, not enough booze exists to make many of today's Brits abroad look
palatable. At holiday resorts frequented by the British the appearance of David
Attenborough and a camera crew is half expected as you would be forgiven for thinking
that you’d arrived at a seal colony given the abundance of blubber.
We
live in strange times when the majority of people sporting sports attire are
those least likely to engage in anything that would even raise the heart rate
of those of us able to see our feet and reach our genitals. They don’t look
sporty just as I don’t look like a nineteenth century gold prospector when I
pull on a pair of jeans.
The
men generally opt for a trip to Sports Direct to pick up a few 4XL t-shirts and
jogging bottoms. The women tend to adhere strictly to a different dress code
that allows them free rein as regards their torso but mandates leggings on the
bottom. Leggings, however comfortable, are rarely flattering, especially on the
fuller figured wearer. White ones forgive nothing whilst black ones create a
sort of giant black pudding illusion.
A
friend recently started internet dating, he was seduced by the myth that it is
normal (it isn’t) and being new to the whole thing wasn’t really up to speed
with the jargon and various acronyms used on such sites. Thinking that a broad
cast of his net would yield better results, he had to endure a number of dates
trying to disguise his disappointment with his hulking fellow diner before he
realised that BBW apparently stands for big beautiful woman; he felt MOPS would
have been rather more appropriate - morbidly obese panting slug. Things didn’t
improve a great deal when he got the hang of things and decided to refine his
criterion. Average sized and even slim were the next lies being purported in
the cyber love search. When did corpulent become average or slim? The problem
is that many people who are indeed overweight seem to think that because they
are part of a sizable and growing (in every sense) minority, their size is in
fact normal and rather than being mocked for their porcine gluttony they should
be considered perfectly acceptable specimens.
I
enjoy eating, its a pleasant thing to do. What I don’t understand is comfort
eating. I suppose that I must derive some sort of comfort from eating but only
the comfort of no longer being hungry having emptied my calorie bank. As a
rational, pragmatic individual I tend to look for solutions to any problems I
may have rather than ways to compound them. Post-war Britain was a pretty
miserable, austere place, did everyone comfort eat? 70s Britain saw massive
inflation, the three day week, the winter of discontent, did our bulldog spirit
lead us to chow? Thatcher dismantled the remnants of British industry, did we
mewl into our microwave meals? See where I’m going? You’re a fat rotter, it
understandably upsets you. Solution, eat more. Give me strength!
I’m
not a body fascist (whatever that means), I don’t expect everyone to walk
around taut and sinewy at their optimum fighting weight, I just want to see
people with the general contours of people rather than sea mammals. Glandular
problems, big bones? Nonsense. If glands were the problem more money would be
pouring into glandular research than for both cancer and the common cold combined.
It isn’t. Bones are hard, fat people are soft, I don’t think bones are the
cause of their problems other than forming a scaffold from which to hang fat.
What
happened to necks and waists? I’m struggling to recall when I last saw either,
before too long I expect them be consigned to the history books, listed
alongside dodos, mammoths and sabre toothed tigers but with more photographic
evidence. We’ll become wistful and yearn for yesteryear when elders were
respected, you could leave your doors unlocked and people boasted necks and
waists and often both, great days.
What
of the future? All of our signs would have to be modified as the stick figures
currently used to denote human beings would no longer be a recognisable
representation of the human form; fat folks would be in mortal peril, unable to
heed that the warnings from unrecognisable signage.
I
recently saw a guy on TV complaining that he had been refused a gastric band on
the grounds that he wasn’t fat enough. Surely any right minded individual would
breathe a sigh of relief at discovering that, whilst overweight, they weren’t
actually morbidly obese and their very existence wasn’t threatened. Not this
chap, he decided that the only solution to his problem was to gorge himself
Henry VIII style until such time that he was considered fat enough to merit
weight loss surgery. He’d managed to work out that eating more made him fatter
but was unable to comprehend how cutting down would have the reverse effect.
Eat
less and move more, it’s a simple equation which seems to befuddle our rotund
friends. How about this one then? Substitute calories for pounds; if £4000 was
deposited in your bank account each day and you only withdrew £2000 would you
expect your balance to go up or down? If you can work it out you can lose
weight, if you can’t happy heart attack.
Mal B
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