In Good Company: Back To Winter Food
... ‘Mum, Julie’s come to look at your legs,’ our youngest said one teatime, while her giggling companion lurked in the doorway. Friend had come for a demonstration of my thigh-dithering act, part of the previous evening’s mirth-inducing designed for family viewing only – but it seemed my fame, like my thighs, was spreading...
Enid Blackburn tells of the endless battle to control the flab.
I managed in summer, but now there’s not as much of me on display I find I am slipping back into my contented, delectable eating habits once more.
Will I ever kick this vocation I have for enjoying my food, I ask myself. Will my stomach ever get used to receiving only half of what it asks for; will the noisy protests it subsequently transmits between small portions ever be silenced?
Getting rid of the pounds is easy compared with the eternal struggle to maintain one’s loss.
All you need is a bike, galloping harassment from family, hard work and a baking decline – ‘I can’t face baking and a diet’ is my excuse. It helps if you can throw in a yoga crash course. Well that’s how I have come to regard my weekly yoga class anyway. Every time my arms are asked to support my body – it’s crash! If I try to heave my weight on to one leg – it’s crash! But one day I hope to achieve the cross-legged position for at least two groans.
These classes really help to keep your bulges down, everyone else’s leotard looks so unstretched – it’s embarrassing for us tubbies.
We fat-fighters could do without a recent newspaper article boasting the attractiveness of bulkiness. ‘Times’ writer Hugh Tompson waffled on about a village in Nigeria where a girl is packed off to a stuffening farm the minute she gets engaged A fat wife is a figure of esteem for the African husband, a hint of his great wealth. Apparently a bloated wife indicates a bloated wallet.
Then there was the tantalising piece informing me that older men love voluminous partners – a longing to return to the fleshy enveloping womb – says Freud.
It’s enough to evoke a serious bout of non-dietary logic in a semi-slimmer like myself. If I start eating now I could one day be just the cuddly sort of dumpty my old man will desire. But I desperately want to think thin.
Actually I am at the most trickiest stage of my diet. If the family miss a day without a slim comment, I sulk sensitively.
Non-eating would be easier if I could mix only with the thin. It’s no help to be reminded by contented non-dieters, that Anorexia Nervosa is just around the corner.
You eat because you want to be loved, say psychiatrists – I do, I do – but can’t we eat first, please?
Would a fat in winter, thin in summer condition be more suited to my temperament? Winter food smells are so inviting, simmering stews spreading their appetising message all over the diet sheets, beefy casseroles with fluffy suety dumplings boiling their juices all over the oven – mmm – pass the bread, please. Then of course (another bout of non-dietary logic emerging) if I continue to keep wasting, the family is deprived of one source of amusement.
‘Mum, Julie’s come to look at your legs,’ our youngest said one teatime, while her giggling companion lurked in the doorway. Friend had come for a demonstration of my thigh-dithering act, part of the previous evening’s mirth-inducing designed for family viewing only – but it seemed my fame, like my thighs, was spreading.
There are only one or two useful tips I don’t mind passing on to other sufferers. I find if I wear a skirt occasionally, such a change from my daily smock and trouser outfits, someone is sure to notice I have a dent around the waist area and comment on it.
Always weigh in at your emptiest. If the arrow still points in the wrong direction try: cutting toe-nails, eyebrows or stand on one leg. The verdict still depressing? If no one’s looking try leaning - just a little – gets rid of the surplus a treat.
When life seems just one long stomach noise, dieting does often bring out the despicable in one. I pile my youngest daughter’s lunchtime platter twice as high as mine, then when she’s not looking I find myself pinching great forkfuls. When preparing supper for the family I cram my mouth to choking point with biscuits when I am alone in the kitchen. Then I face the family martyr-like with my pot of sugar-less coffee. Sometimes I even wax mean with the dog, making him wait another hour with his empty dish.
Face watchers can be a deadly hazard. ‘Have you been slimming?’ they demand, making you feel like an alcoholic caught sucking wine gums. ‘I thought so,’ they nod bloatingly. ‘You’ve lost your face.’ Your hands fly to the place where your features are fast disappearing from and you dash home to the mirror. And yes – you look quite ill and gaunt – pass the cream buns.
When a doctor gave a friend of mine a diet sheet he told her ‘All your friends will say you look better – never mind the others,’ so I tell my friends this.
Last summer I thought I was winning when I bought a suit one size smaller than usual. Surely this would keep me on the straight and narrow. But summer’s over and woollies can stretch so far.
If any of you are fighting a two way stretch this verse by Frances Cornford should help you to contract a little, especially the title.
To a fat white lady seen from a train
Oh fat white lady whom nobody loves
Why do you walk through the fields in gloves?
When the grass is as soft as the breast of doves,
And shivering sweet to the touch – missing so much and so much.
But if beauty is only skin deep – does it matter how much skin there is?
There goes my non-dietary logic again!
