Fat Chance

by Nick Spalding

  Even the people you see on a regular basis can’t help but comment when they see you’ve shifted another three or four pounds in one week. I like the look they get on their faces. It’s usually a combination of amazement and amusement, born from the fact that someone they know well is changing right before their eyes.

  Inexplicably, eating less makes dining out a more pleasurable experience. Zoe and I used to love going out to dinner in the first few years of our marriage. It was one of the cornerstones of our relationship. By the time our fifth anniversary had rolled around we’d pretty much become on first-name terms with most of the local restaurant managers.

  Thinking back on it, maybe we became a little too familiar with the local restaurants. Our time and money spent in them may well have contributed to our combined weight gain over the years. The Miltons certainly never left a restaurant hungry or unsatisfied back in those days.

  Needless to say, those evenings out dwindled to nothing once we had piled on enough pounds. When you realise you are very overweight, eating becomes something you’d rather do in the privacy of your own home, where no-one can look at you and make snap judgements.

  In recent weeks, however, we’ve rediscovered a love of eating out, even going so far as a bit of alfresco dining when the weather has been good enough. The difference this time is that we choose the healthiest options on the menu and don’t accompany our meals with a bottle or two of red wine. Where once we would eat and eat and eat with little time for conversation, we now both pick at our food and set the world to rights as we do so. I know more about Zoe’s life outside the one we share together than I ever have. The same is true for her.

  Where once a meal together was all about the food, it’s now all about sharing some quality time with each other.

  It’s not all good, though, this dieting business.

  Take clothes, for instance.

  When you’re on a long-term weight loss program it can play havoc with your dress sense—and your wallet. You essentially have one of two choices: either stay walking around in the clothes you’ve always had in order to avoid the extra expense, or pay regular visits to the clothes shops and re-buy a new wardrobe every couple of months.

  I tried the first option to begin with, being a man used to a certain degree of frugality. It didn’t work out well at all. By the time I’d started cutting new notches in my belt, I was starting to resemble a small boy dressed in his father’s clothes. I’d have to constantly hitch my jeans up, and my vast collection of polo shirts all billowed like sails around my shrinking frame. The final straw came when I was down the pub and someone asked me with a sympathetic voice if I’d contracted some kind of serious disease.

  When people are mistaking healthy weight loss for a terminal illness, it’s time to change your wardrobe.

  And change it I did, in one swooping attack on Marks & Spencer that my bank balance took weeks to recover from.

  This was all well and good, but I was still losing weight and quickly found myself once again cutting notches in my belt and hitching my jeans up.

  I did seriously contemplate buying a pair of those nylon trousers with an elastic waist—but decided against it, as looking like a terminal cancer patient is slightly better than looking like a guy who’s just escaped from the Shady Pines Institute for the Mentally Bereft.

  So back to Marks & Spencer I went.

  Then I walked straight through Marks & Spencer and took a sharp left into Primark.

  If I’m going to keep renewing my wardrobe every couple of months I’m going to be buying the cheap stuff, even if it is badly made and makes me itch.

  Zoe has got it even worse than me, of course.

  We men don’t really hold much stock in the clothes we wear. That would just be a little bit ‘fruity’ and best avoided at all costs. We don’t talk about clothes with other men, and we certainly don’t compare wardrobes.

  Women, on the other hand, seem to define their very existence based on their fashion choices, and the fashion choices of the other women around them.

  Poor old Zoe is having to constantly update her wardrobe thanks to her weight loss. Sometimes she even buys exactly the same item of clothing three times over in decreasing sizes, in the kind of gross western consumption that people in the third world get justifiably upset about.

  I pointed this out to her the other night. The reaction was not pleasant.

  ‘Don’t guilt trip me, Gregory,’ she snapped. ‘If I go out in clothes that are too big for me I’ll get crucified by the other girls next time I’m out of earshot.’

  ‘But won’t they just be jealous that you’ve lost all that weight?’ I respond, showing my complete and utter lack of understanding of how the female mind works.

  ‘No Gregory, that will not be what they talk about. Losing four stone is nothing in their eyes when compared to being dressed like a bag lady.’ She puts her hands on her hips. ‘Just accept that for the time being our credit card is going to get pounded, and my usual sensitivity to the plight of those in developing countries is secondary to the need for my arse to look good in chiffon.’

  That was the last word on the subject.

  Since then I have resolutely refused to go anywhere near a shopping precinct with my wife, for fear of having to spend a good six hours sitting outside changing rooms while she tries on everything in sight.

  I can’t escape the hell of female clothes shopping completely, though. Zoe has taken to ordering stuff online, so I’m forever having to take delivery of a package from one website or another. So much so that I’m now on first-name terms with our postman.

  ‘Has she gone mental?’ asks Wilfred the garrulous old postie as he hands over the latest purchase. ‘This is the fifth parcel of the week.’

  ‘Quite possibly,’ I reply and take ownership of the brown cardboard box.

  He gives me a look of profound sympathy. ‘Joan was the same with shoes. I had to threaten her with divorce before she bankrupted us both.’

  ‘And how did that work out for you?’

  Wilfred looks more glum than Birmingham. ‘I got the dog in the settlement. The house went to her and the shoes.’

  I didn’t quite know what to say to that, so I took the conversation back in the direction of business and told him that if any more parcels come and we’re not in, he should just come through the side gate and leave them in the shed. He seemed a little disconsolate that I didn’t want to discuss his marital break-up in more detail.

  There’s no doubt about it: losing weight is an expensive business.

  You may think that all that money lost on new clothes would be clawed back by the cash we’re not spending on food, but you would be completely wrong in that assumption.

  Yes, we no longer treat ourselves to at least two takeaways a week and have cut down on unhealthy meals and snacks in general. The problem is we have to eat something, and healthy food is always more expensive than the cheap, sugary stuff. Mung bean salad and a fresh fruit compote may be a one-way ticket to a smaller waistline, but they also costs four times as much as the family-sized lasagne and chips lurking a few aisles away in the frozen food section.

  I always knew that a harsh weight loss program would mean a lot of physical effort, but I wasn’t prepared for how much of a financial outlay it is, too. I now have a better appreciation of why so many people on limited incomes and benefits are big roly-poly people. It’s hard to maintain a thirty-two-inch waist when the salads are three quid and the burgers are thirty pence.

  I haven’t even started on how expensive the actual diet food is. All those milkshakes, smoothies, healthy snack bars, and dried fruit snacks cost a bloody fortune.

  How on earth can we ever expect our society to get thinner when no-one is making any effort to make the healthy food cheaper than the toxic, fatty stuff that’s creating a nation of tubby fuckers with too many fillings?


  The expense sadly doesn’t end there, either. If eating healthy is a strain on your wallet, then exercising can quite easily break it completely.

  Gym fees are quite frankly idiotic.

  If the government wants Britain to lose weight it should make all those fitness companies charge less for the privilege of using their shiny, complicated equipment.

  Let’s face it, exercise can be something of a ball ache, especially if you’ve just spent eight hours at work, sitting at a desk feeling your vertebrae fuse together. The last thing most of us need is to then go to a hall full of sweaty people and add our own perspiration to the mix.

  People need to be incentivised to get off their arses and go to the gym. Charging them fifty pounds a month on a one-year contract is not the best way to accomplish this, as far as I am concerned.

  If the gym contract stated that you could stop paying if you didn’t hit your target weight within six months then I’d be more likely to sign up—but I think the chances of that happening are roughly equivalent to me winning Miss World in a mankini.

  I’ll apologise for the hideous mental image that may conjure up, and move on.

  Since March, when this whole escapade began, I’ve tried many different kinds of exercise in my pursuit of a healthier lifestyle and fifty thousand pictures of the Queen.

  My week with Alice Pithering still keeps me up at night, but it did give me some insight into what it’s like to have a personal trainer. Enough insight, in fact, to make me one hundred percent sure that I never want a personal trainer ever again.

  Aside from this I’ve also tried a plethora of exercise contraptions that purport to help you shift weight at a vast rate of knots. Most of them also promise to make exercise ‘fun’ and easier to fit into your hectic social life.

  All of them are expensive.

  None of them work.

  Take the following few paragraphs as both warning and consumer advice, so you don’t end up making the same mistakes I did.

  Like everyone who embarks on a weight loss program I went for the easy options first. This is just human nature. If we can avoid hard work, we damn well will. An entire industry has been built around this inherent laziness, one that I have contributed a great deal of money towards in the last six months.

  If there is a piece of exercise equipment specifically designed for the lazy, it’s the electro muscle stimulator. Not half as dirty as it sounds, these odd little contraptions are designed to send small electric charges through your body, making your muscles twitch—which apparently encourages weight loss.

  How utterly brilliant! You can just attach a few pads to your body, turn on the machine, and lose umpteen calories while you’re sitting in your armchair watching ‘Downton Abbey.’ By the time the episode has ended (usually with tea being served in the drawing room) you’ve dropped several pounds, all without any effort whatsoever!

  Needless to say I was sceptical. But I was also grossly overweight and lazy, so I forked out two hundred quid and ordered the Electromax 2000 from Amazon with fingers crossed.

  Let’s just repeat that: I spent two hundred quid on a machine that basically electrocutes me every few seconds, in order to avoid any actual exercise.

  The Electromax 2000 is promptly delivered three days later and by the time Downton starts at 8 p.m. I’m wired up and ready to rock. Two pads are stuck to my gut, a further two are placed on my thighs, and the final couple are strapped to my biceps. I look like someone about to enter suspended animation for the five-year journey to Mars.

  ‘Are you sure about this?’ Zoe asks me from the couch, doubt in her eyes.

  ‘Of course! I did some research on the internet. The science of this thing is very sound.’

  Boy, do I sound pompous when I’m trying to prove a point.

  The pads are connected by wires to the big friendly blue Electromax box, which I’ve sat on the arm of the chair. As the Downton credits begin I turn the big friendly blue dial at the top of the box to the on position and sit back, ready to burn off the fat while watching posh people argue politely with one another.

  ‘Ahh, Lord Poncyface, so nice to see you again . . .’

  Bzzzt.

  ‘And the same to you, Captain Sternexpression . . .’

  Bzzzt. Bzzzt.

  ‘I trust your wife Lady Furrowedbrow is well?’

  Bzzzt. Bzzzt. Bzzzt.

  ‘She is. I was so sorry to hear about your wife’s tragic demise at the hands of that Irish ruffian.’

  Bzzzt. Bzzzt. Bzzzt. Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt.

  ‘Ow! For fuck’s sake!’ I scream, wrenching the pads from my stomach.

  ‘Is it painful?’ Zoe asks, pausing Downton and trying very hard not to laugh.

  ‘Is it painful? You fucking bet it is!’ I jump out of the chair and pull the rest of the pads off. ‘How the hell is this thing supposed to make you lose weight?’ I hold a pad up and examine it. ‘Unless the electric shocks eventually clamp your jaws permanently together, meaning you can’t eat anything.’

  ‘Well, colour me completely surprised,’ Zoe says, in a derisory fashion. ‘You bought a get-fit-quick contraption off the internet and it doesn’t work.’

  ‘Sarcasm does not help at a time like this, woman. Back to your period drama.’

  I gather the Electromax 2000 in my arms and carry it out of the room. It goes into the cupboard under the stairs, where I have every intention of letting it rot.

  Two hundred pounds is a lot of money, however, so I have another go with the stupid machine about a week later, while Zoe is out with her friends. This time I lie out on the bed and mentally prepare myself for the self-inflicted torture I’m about to put myself through.

  I last about eight minutes.

  Seriously, in what universe did somebody think this was a good idea? To run an electric current through your body for the purposes of weight loss?

  What’s next? Inhaling vast quantities of helium because it might dye your hair blonde?

  About the only thing the Electromax 2000 managed to accomplish in the few minutes I did use it was to make my bowels loosen. Half the reason I turned it off was because I needed to go and take a dump.

  The machine went back under the stairs, and it really will stay there until the end of time as far as I’m concerned.

  Unless I come down with a nasty case of constipation.

  The next contraption I wasted my time and money on was an abdominal exercise machine called the Ab Lunge. It claimed to burn fat and tone your stomach muscles using a combination of forward and lateral movement. You basically kneel down on two platforms that move along two metal runners, grip the handle, and move yourself back and forth, exercising your abs, lats, and other incomprehensible muscle groups.

  I bought it after watching one of those late-night infomercials.

  You see what going on a diet does to you? The madness it inflicts?

  In no other circumstance would I even consider buying anything I’d seen on a late-night infomercial. Never in a million years. You will never see me purchase a miracle steamer designed to clean up everything from spilled milk to nuclear waste. Nor will you find me shelling out for a juicer that can crush diamonds and mix you up a tasty banana smoothie in three micro-seconds.

  But when it comes to ways to lose weight I am a complete moron. Hence the hundred and fifty quid I spent on the sodding Ab Lunge.

  I knew I was in trouble within the first few minutes of unpacking the box out in the conservatory. The instruction manual on how to put the thing together consisted of one thin piece of double-sided A4 paper. On this were a series of amateurish pictures of the Ab Lunge in various states of completion, next to the kind of instructions they would have had a problem deciphering over at Bletchley Park.

  It took three hours to put the bastard together, by which time I’d sweated so much that the last thing I wante
d to do was jump on it and exercise.

  I had a go at it the next day, though.

  Down I went into roughly the same position you’d find yourself in on a motorbike. Hands gripped tightly on the handlebars, I started to move forward and back, left and right—just like the infomercial had told me to do. The left‒right stuff didn’t appear to be doing much, so I just concentrated on going forward and back, forward and back. The knee platforms ran smoothly up and down the metal track and in no time I felt myself building up a sweat.

  ‘Enjoying yourself, are you?’ Zoe asked as she came out into the conservatory with a cup of green tea.

  ‘Yes! Yes! It’s good!’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘That’s just as well, as from where I’m sitting, you look like you’re shagging a mountain bike.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Yep. If I could get you move that enthusiastically when you’re on top of me it’d be a miracle.’

  ‘Shut up.’

  ‘Look at those hips go! Be careful, though, you don’t want to go too far with it.’

  ‘Be quiet!’

  ‘We don’t want a lot of little mountain bikes wheeling around the house in nine months, now, do we?’

  ‘Will you leave me alone? I’m exercising!’

  Laughing her head off, Zoe leaves me to it.

  But now the whole process is ruined. Now she’s pointed out what I look like, I can’t get the image of me sexually molesting the contents of the nearest Halfords bicycle department out of my head.

  I stop after twenty minutes and try my level best to ignore my wife for the rest of the day. This proves difficult, as she’s found an old bicycle bell from somewhere, and periodically rings it for the next few hours—asking me if it makes me horny every time she does it.