The Weighty Issue

There was a brief period in my early twenties when I tortured my body into a slim, (relatively) healthy machine. I achieved this by basically eliminating all fat from my diet. I ate my toast dry and there were certain foods that never crossed my lips; butter, cheese (with the exception of cottage cheese), nuts, avocados, cream, mayonnaise, and any kind of oil. I don’t eat meat anyway so there was no question of lean vs fatty cuts, but I do eat fish and if I had tinned tuna, it had to be in brine. One memorably dismal lunch at a supermarket cafe consisted of a limp salad without dressing, accompanied by a dry wholemeal roll and glass of water. I was nothing if not dedicated. Food had to be functional rather than enjoyable. I did eat  sugar and I ate carbs - the current bad guys of the dietary scene, but because, in not eating fat, I cut one food group completely from my diet, I lost a lot of weight.

The medics approved of me -  according to the charts, I was the perfect weight for my height. This state of being required constant vigilance (as Mad Eye Moody would say).  I was forever scanning food labels to see their fat content and I even took my low fat, low calorie meals round other people’s houses so I wouldn’t be tempted to share the takeaway they were having. (convivial, eh??) In many ways this fat-free diet seemed perfect as you didn’t need to restrict the volume of what you ate and as a consequence, (in theory) you never felt hungry.

When I lost weight I was totally intoxicated by the approval of others; “Haven’t you done well?” They’d say. “Well done you! You look amazing, you’ve lost so much weight.”

I loved hearing it, felt morally superior to my former, ‘fatter’ self. How weird and schizophrenic we become when we enter the world of dieting - I blame those ‘Before and After’ pictures you get in magazines; you’re encouraged to jeer at the former fatso with the comically large, clown trousers and you begin to look at your former self as this disgusting, idiot twin. It’s not the real you, the ‘real’ you has broken free of the fat chrysalis and flown out as a beautifully svelte butterfly.  I felt that I’d cracked the code. I’d finally learnt how to be thin and being thin was the way to be.

Then gradually, from my mid-twenties onwards (after I got my first, ‘proper’, full-time job), something began to go wrong, I started to put on weight. Without me making a conscious decision to do so, I started to introduce fat into my diet again; a bit of cheese here, some marg on my toast there, a Danish pastry for breakfast. I also ate too much, I ate very large lunches, reasoning that I would burn it all off at work. My weight crept up - only a little at first, but eventually to the point where I could grab handfuls of flesh (Like Alan Partridge, I had a ‘fat back’) and where I had to move into a larger size, then a larger one again!  So, I’d gained almost all the weight that I’d lost - why did I not just go back to the fat-free eating again?

This is a difficult question for me to answer.  Was it because I was sick of eating dry toast? Or was it because I didn’t want to be on a diet for the rest of my life? Or was it because of the theory put forward by Susie Orbach in her book Fat is a Feminist Issue, that, on some deeply unconscious level, I wanted to be fat? Did I want that protective layer of fat to act as a barrier - a protective wall, between me and the rest of the world? At first I baulked at the idea - who, in their right mind, would want to be fat? But then I looked back at the times when I put on weight and patterns seemed to emerge. I did seem to put on weight when I felt that there were a lot of external demands on me. The weight gain was gradual - it wasn’t that I went to bed one night a slim 25 year old and woke up fat, the day I turned 26. So perhaps I thought, in the beginning - so I’ve put on a few pounds - does it really matter? Maybe this is just the weight my body settles at.

I’ve always been a comfort eater - ‘’You’ve had a hard day - you deserve this.’ I’d tell myself, as I ate something with little nutritional value but a high calorie content. Invariably something sweet.

I never let it go too far; I was never morbidly obese. Whenever I went over 12 stone I would pull back, cut out sweets and cakes and biscuits (all the sweet stuff) and try to exercise more. I lost weight when I was a bridesmaid, twice, and for my own wedding but I never seemed to be able to get down to my ‘goal weight’. Whenever my weight got down and neared those magical and mythical goal posts, it had an abrupt turn started to creep up again, seemingly of its own accord. Was/Is my conscious desire to be slim and fit, in conflict with a deeply unconscious desire to be fat?

I do think that how you are exposed to food as a child is pivotal in whether you become overweight or not. I don’t really place much importance in a ‘fat’ gene (but hey, what do I know), rather, I believe that if, when you were unhappy or upset as a child, you were offered food rather than a hug/chance to talk, then you will associate food with comfort and this will become ingrained into your way of operating. I remember being offered chocolate, even as I vomited into the sink, after reacting badly to an anaesthetic as a child.

It’s not our parents fault - that’s how they were brought up themselves. And society itself is geared towards smothering problems rather than dealing with them. (For god’s sake don’t talk about your feelings; have a biscuit. You’ve broken your arm? Never mind, have a biscuit. You’ve been a good girl, have a biscuit. You feel like ending it all? Have a tablet!)

If your parents were part of the post-war, rationing generation or they come from a country where food is scarce (and mine tick both boxes, respectively) then you would have been encouraged to clear your plate - another fat-inducing habit.  Habits are very hard to break, especially when they are associated with something essential to our survival. I don’t have any answers, if I did then maybe I would be thin...

Now, for the first time in my life I am only too aware of the need to ‘manage my weight’ for my health, rather than for aesthetic reasons. And do more exercise. Best get myself away from this computer. Happy New Year!

A Christmas Story

Crackers

Lee wrote ‘Happy Christmas’ in the condensation on the window.  She forgot to write it backwards so it would read properly to people outside and Arun did a mongi face at her.

“Do you celebrate Christmas?” Mrs Jakes had asked in that high-pitched, slightly girlish voice of hers, head to one side, eyes leaching understanding.

“Yeah.” Lee had said, and Mrs Jakes gave her a card for her Mum and Dad. It was one of those cheap ones that didn’t stand up properly. She wondered what her teacher would have done with the card if she’d said that they didn’t celebrate Christmas, but when her mum opened the card they saw that it wasn’t actually addressed to anyone, simply signed;

‘Best wishes, Caroline Jakes’.

The teacher had seemed very grateful for the present that Lee gave her.

“I shall put it under my tree.” She'd said.

Dad had wanted to get her a bottle of gin but mum said it wasn’t appropriate as they didn’t know whether she drank or not, so they’d given her a bottle of bubble bath instead.

Dad and Arun met Uncle Ray and Auntie Priya at the station. Lee liked Auntie Priya, she was pretty, she smiled all the time and she never asked them about their homework like the other grown-ups.

Uncle Ray clapped Lee on the back, looked around and told Dad that they really should move to a bigger place but Auntie Priya just said;

“Oh, the tree looks so pretty - did you decorate it, Leora?” (Auntie Priya was the only person Lee didn’t mind using her full name).

Lee nodded proudly and stuck her tongue out at Arun - he had said that pink, green and blue tinsel didn’t go.

Because Auntie Priya was pregnant she was going to sleep in Lee’s bed and Uncle Ray would sleep on his own on the sofa-bed in the lounge. Lee was to sleep on a lilo on the floor next to Priya and she was excited about that.

“We can be like sisters.” She said.

“Yes, I always wanted a sister.” Priya, smiled.

In the morning she did Lee’s hair in a French plait.

“Shame you have to spoil the effect by wearing your exercise kit.” Dad said, looking at Lee’s A-Team tracksuit.

“It’s not an exercise kit; it’s a tracksuit!” Lee said, scathingly.

“Don’t be rude, Lee.” Her mum said warningly while Auntie Priya busied herself with the kettle.

Uncle Ray was watching Star Wars with Arun.

“I love this film!” Uncle Ray shouted. Lee wondered why he always had to shout.

“Peter Yates is getting a computer for Christmas.” Arun said, to no one in particular.

“Good for Peter Yates.” Mum said, pouring the tea.

“And he got a BMX for his birthday.”

“His mum must have robbed a bank.”

“Hardly!” Arun snorted. “She goes to Church.”

“Are you going to Church tonight, Cee-Cee? Midnight Mass?” Priya asked Mum.

“Oh no, I gave all that up-” She looked towards Dad who had taken the back off their old radio and had the bits all over the kitchen table. “I gave that up ages ago.”

“And what do you want for Christmas, Leora?” Priya asked.

“I’ve asked for a ‘Mr. Frosty’ and a ‘Magna-Doodle’.” Lee said, meaningfully.

Mum raised her eyebrows.

The Grown-ups went to visit their Uncle Raj and Lee went downstairs to play with Louise.

Louise’s Mum, Pat was pouring candied peel into a bowl while Lee watched in fascination.

“I suppose your mum makes the pudding weeks in advance, like you’re meant to, does she?”

Pat asked Lee.

“No, she buys it from the Co-op.” Lee replied and Pat smiled.

Lee went into Louise’s room and they played with her ‘Speak and Spell’ but the batteries were running low and the voice sounded even weirder than normal.

Louise lay back on her bed.

“Do you remember when you were little and your dad used to dress up as Father Christmas?”

“My dad never did that.” Lee said. “He always told us that Father Christmas wasn’t real.”

“He didn’t!”

“Yeah. Maybe he didn’t want us to believe in anything…”

“Are you really going to have curry for Christmas dinner?”

“No! I never said that.”

“Your mum told my mum.”

“Oh, well, I don’t know...”

“I wish we could have curry, I hate Turkey; it’s so boring!”

“Yes, I think we are having curry, actually.”

“Can I come round and have some?”

“Yeah, O.K.”

“Really? Your mum won’t mind?”

“Erm, no. She won’t mind.”

“Can Debs come too? She loves curry.  She likes your mum’s curry, anyway, she doesn’t like it from the Taj; she doesn’t like all those seedy bits they put in the rice.”

“O.K.” Lee was starting to worry now.

“She’s allergic to nuts so your mum will have to make sure that there’s no nuts in anything and that no nuts have touched anything; otherwise her neck swells up like a balloon.”

“Oh. O.K.” Lee said, thinking about the oval dish filled with Brazil nuts that her Dad loved.

On her way back upstairs, Lee stressed about the next day. Her parents always offered her friends food whenever they came round but how would they feel about Debs and Louise joining them for Christmas dinner? They didn’t even have enough chairs for everyone; not with Uncle Ray and Auntie Priya there.

When she got back to her flat there was a line of fizzy, yellow drinks on the sideboard.

“Your father has been making snowballs!” Uncle Ray boomed.

“Can I have one?” She picked up a drink.

“Yes, why not?” Ray said.

“They have got alcohol on them.” Mum said, doubtfully.

“Only a little bit; let the kid have a taste, it is Christmas!”

Lee had already put it to her lips.

“It tastes like ice-cream, it’s yummy.” She said, gulping down half the drink.

“What is Advocaat, anyway?” Auntie Priya asked, holding up a neon yellow bottle. Her cheeks were flushed.

“Ad-voh-car; it’s like eggnog, it’s made from eggs and brandy.” Mum said.

“Brandy! I’d better not have any more.” Priya said, patting her tummy.

“I’ve got some ‘Five Alive’ in the fridge; it’s alright if you mix it with soda.” Mum went to get some fruit juice for Priya and one for Lee and Arun too. Arun gulped down his ‘Snowball’ before Mum could take it away but Lee didn’t catch on in time and Mum wrestled her glass away from her.

They were curled up on the sofa watching The Sound of Music, with the big blanket over their legs when the doorbell rang.  Mum, thinking it was carol singers, got her purse from the table.

“Lee - it’s Louise.” Mum called.

Lee felt like she’d been hit - she’d forgotten to tell her Mum about the extra ‘guests’.

Louise looked rueful.

“I can’t come to your house for Christmas dinner.” She said. “Mum says me and Debs have to eat with the family.”

“Oh...Shame!” Said Lee, hoping that her mother was too engrossed in the film to hear what Louise was saying.

“Tell your mum and dad to pop up for a sherry tomorrow.” Mum called out from the sofa.

“O.K. Auntie Cee-Cee.” Louise called.

“I’ll save you a bit of biryani too, if you like.” Mum said, passing Lee a long look.

“Oh, thanks!”

Louise went away happy and Lee went back to Julie Andrews, light of heart.

Darts

Delirious with flu the other night, I watched and enjoyed a programme about the history of televised Darts (that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it).

I remember watching the competitions in the ‘80s at a time when the T.V schedules were packed with snooker, boxing and Darts and when (in our house at least) it was against the law to turn your T.V off. Well, not until the little white dot/striped lines/high-pitched whine of shut-down, appeared anyway.

I remember quite enjoying watching Darts, as a sport I found it far more interesting than football or cricket, and the documentary reminded me of how tense the finals could be. It also reminded me of how much people sneered at it (they showed that infamous ‘Not the Nine O’Clock News’ sketch where the ‘sport’ involved the number of times you raised the pint glass to your mouth). I feel that I should champion Darts because it’s very much a working class sport, with its origins in local pubs, and also because it was a sport in which women excelled.

It really bugs me that people take issue with Darts being defined as a sport. If you break down any sport, or any activity, for that matter, it seems rather simple and pointless. I don’t really ‘get’ football but I dislike the nihilistic definition of it as just a load of men kicking an inflated bladder around a field. You could say that of any activity - embroidery is just someone sticking a sharp object into some fabric to decorate it with coloured thread. Cooking is just putting some chemical components together to make something else...And so on. Do we want to be watching ‘open heart surgery’ live or something equally ‘valid’? If people find it entertaining, then it qualifies as entertainment. I know this could bring forth a barrage of comment and criticism of the dire state of T.V and the depths that people stoop to in the name of entertainment. But the point is, is that it’s all subjective, innit? We all like different things. It turns out that I could still quite happily watch a Darts match but football, car racing, and pretty much any other televised sport you could mention, make me want to curl up into a ball and hum gently with my hands over my ears (there is something about the noise of a football match or that buzz saw whine of a F1 race!)

It seems that Darts, like most sports, is a game of nerve as well as precision. Champion player, Eric Bristow (The Crafty Cockney), began to suffer from ‘Dartitis’ a condition which meant that he found it very difficult to actually let go of the dart. He saw psychiatrists and specialists but no one could help him. His then partner, fellow darts champion, Maureen Flowers (Goldfinger), suggested that he practice with someone else, he spent spent hours practicing with and coaching an up-and-coming player and the results were quite interesting.

If you fancy watching the programme there should be a link here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0287mq6

Of course, it may only be interesting to those of us doped up on Lemsip!

“It’s your job to pick things up off the floor…”

These are the words that my (almost) four-year old daughter greeted me with when I tried to encourage her to pick up the food that she had dropped on the floor;

“Mummy; it’s your job to pick things up off the floor.”

“It most certainly is not!” I protested, ponderous and plummy in my outrage.

But I must admit that I’ve been reading the book Longbourn - the reimagining of Pride and Prejudice from the servants’ point of view (a brilliant book, would highly recommend it) and have been heavily identifying with the servants. O.K. so I don’t have to render pig fat into soap or stand on the back of a moving carriage while my ‘masters’ are cosily ensconced within, but I do have to get up ridiculously early and be at the beck and call of a couple of capricious despots. Although I don’t actually get a cuff round the ear for any perceived transgression, I do suffer from many little sharp elbows in the ribs, (accidental) head butts and pokes in the eye. I am handed messy things to clean up and I an almost invisible provider of food and have to satisfy someone else’s needs before I even think about seeing to my own. In fact, as soon as I dare to sit down and try to eat or drink anything, the tyrants are already demanding more.

I don’t want this to turn into one of those whinging, when is it ‘wine-o’clock’? I am so hard-done -by posts, not really, I do realise how lucky I am to have my family, I just thought it was interesting that my daughter genuinely thought that my job was to skivvy! And I am splitting hairs here because it is me who cleans up after them but I just don’t like to hear it in black and white! ‘Your job to pick things up off the floor’ - and me a feminist and all! Perhaps she was just trying it on - she is demonically clever, maybe she was winding me up and I’m too easy to get a rise out of. She also asked me what her job was.

“Your job is to play and to learn.” I told her, wishing that we could switch jobs for a minute. “And also (futile attempt to turn things my way) to pick up the things that you’ve dropped, when I ask you to!”

Optimum Health course - part 2

Optimum Health course - part 2

So the optimum health workshop wasn’t so much about health this time and more about helping you realise your dreams. I know that sounds a bit wanky and there’s no way I can make it not. But the workshop was about planning for the future and setting tangible, measurable goals for yourself.

My god it was exhausting; not least because we were talking about what we really wanted to achieve in our lives and what we wanted to change and in the course of discussing these things we opened up about our aspirations and I found this quite exposing. To expand, I felt like a worm under a microscope at times. What did I want? What was stopping me? Had I done everything I possibly could to help me realise these dreams? (Turns out not) Why did I want it? We had to take turns in being the life coach and the client and it very much felt like therapy at points and as such, was immensely draining.

And now I’m thinking - I wish people didn’t know that I wanted to be a writer, I wish I’d just kept it to myself and quietly scribbled away…

One of the things that stops people taking risks and putting themselves out there is fear of rejection, the other is fear of failure, but I like our tutor/life coach’s analogy of watching his children learning to walk, knowing what they wanted to achieve, emulating their role models (parents and siblings) and falling over a good few times before they reached their goal.

And the moral of this story is:

You have to get on board with the fact that you will fall and you have to get back up and try again (and again).

Supersized portions Vs Superskinny Images

I saw the actor, Alex Kingston, on the Nigel Slater programme ‘Taste of my Life’, the other day. This is where food writer and chef, Slater, cooks for a celeb and talks to them about their favourite foods and childhood memories of food.  Alex Kingston had lived in the United States for a number of years and starred in the American T.V drama, E.R. She talked about going for a part in the series Desperate Housewives; she auditioned for the part that eventually went to Felicity Huffman. She, Kingston, then went on to say that she wouldn’t have fitted in on the programme as the actresses were all so thin. I paid closer attention to this - but Alex Kingston IS thin! I thought. Actress thin. How could she think that she wasn’t thin enough to appear in an American T.V programme (she’d already done E.R after all). But when you look at the poster for Desperate Housewives, you can see what she means; the actors are all tiny. The thing is that you kind of forget how skinny they are after a while because they are all very slender, they look the same; they look regular, no one stands out. Alex Kingston didn’t want to stand out. Funnily enough, I read something recently where they said that a lot of people don’t realise that they are overweight because so many people are overweight these days that when you stand next to another heavy person, you just look and feel normal. It’s all about comparisons. And some commentators are against using plus-sized models and even mannequins because they say that it is normalising of even encouraging obesity. But the thing about so-called ‘plus’ sized models is they probably aren’t obese - they are actually a healthy, ‘normal’ size.

It struck me that America, the most obese nation in the world, is responsible for drenching our culture with images of ultra-thinness. Why do we have this paradox? Why does American media, American culture present us with such an unrealistic, difficult-to-attain body ideal when America is the fattest nation in the world? Why is there such a yawning gap between the reality and the ideal?

Is this lean physique is a status symbol?  The Old Masters gave us images of plump, fleshy women as the ideal of beauty in an age when it was only rich women (and men) who could afford to be plump, and now, when obesity is predominantly a problem among the poorer sector of society (in the West, at least) beauty is represented as a starved-looking body. Who was the rich idiot who said; “You can never be too rich or too thin.”? (Was she a permanently hungry, chain-smoking, old crone with a face like a slapped arse?) I wonder why richness and thinness go hand in hand these days? Is it to separate them from the rest of us poor, flabby, plebs?

Now, I’m not saying that it is healthier to be fat, but I just find it bizarre that the Nation that has brought us the culture of Supersized fast food is also telling us (insidiously) through their visual culture, that we should be super thin.

I just did a Google search to find out the percentage of Americans who were obese. The first thing I came across was this NBC News article from this year, 2014:

http://www.nbcnews.com/health/diet-fitness/whole-world-getting-fatter-new-survey-finds-n115811

The first line reads;

“The whole world is steadily becoming more obese, a new study shows, but not surprisingly, the U.S. is No. 1.”

The U.K have got no reason to be smug about this as we are closely following on America’s coattails - in this as in everything else (see what I did there?) but at least a sizeable chunk of our U.K television reflects people as they actually are. When thinking about British television programmes with female, ensemble casts, the first thing that springs to mind is the BBC1 programme In the Club.  The actors were certainly attractive but they did not have the highly polished gleam of ‘perfection’ that you get in something like Desperate Housewives. I suppose you could argue that because Desperate Housewives was about middle class women, then they, the women, would be uber skinny, perhaps just as middle class women in America are (you only have to look at one of those raft of ‘Real Housewives of ...’ to see that. But why did the cast of Friends have to look like models? Ok, they lived in Manhattan and everyone on New York is thin, so let’s think, the most recent American comedy I’ve watched is The Mindy Project, written by and starring Mindy Kaling. I really like this show - the main character is likably fallible but she has a good job. It’s quite quirky and it has heart but isn’t overly sentimental (most of the time). The main character isn’t skeletal, neither is she huge but her weight is constantly referred to by everyone around her; she is constantly referred to as ‘chunky’ or ‘hefty’, much to the character’s disgust. It’s great to see more ‘normal’-sized women on American T.V but perhaps it would be more groundbreaking if her weight wasn’t mentioned at all.

I really don’t know the answer to this but I’m sure that far sharper minds than mine have pondered it. But why are we being force fed these bizarre, unnatural images of woman kind with a side order of jumbo fries?

The Best Laid Plans...

My plan to do a 45 minute walk to work today didn't happen, because I didn't go to work. When I tried to speak to my daughter this morning to ask her whether she needed the toilet or not (she needs constant reminding) a bullfrog croak came out. Have been coughing up nasty, meteor-sized, green rocks ever since and feeling generally crappy. The kids have gone to the grandparents (as they would have done if I'd gone to work) so I don't have to worry about trying to add authority when I whisper-hiss at the older child to stop tormenting the younger.

So, no exercise for me today and this is a real shame as it's a beautifully, sunny October day. I really should use the time to do something productive like teach myself how to touch type or work on my magnum opus. Or perhaps I'll try some of that desktop yoga that the trainer showed us how to do at the workshop last week. Hmm...I wonder if you can put desktop yoga into myfitnesspal and see how many calories you burn off doing all those shoulder rolls and foot lifts...