Fat Chance

by Nick Spalding

  You see, his crack team of nutritionists have devised and created a whole smorgasbord of healthy foods and drinks, designed to speed up your metabolic rate and kick those evil lifoproteinates to the kerb.

  The last thirty pages of the Chatman diet book is basically one long advertisement for their own brand of health shakes, health bars, health snacks, and health meals.

  Now, I’m not normally the kind of person who pays that much attention to advertising if I can help it, but I have spent the past four hours reading about how the food I eat is effectively killing me in a slow, painful and lifoproteinate-rich way. Professor Monty has more or less convinced me that if I don’t immediately start eating and drinking his products I will become so full of poisonous amino acids that my weight will balloon to elephantine proportions and I will die of metabolic anti-stasis within the month.

  Helpfully, the book contains links to the Chatman website, where I can purchase all the healthy Chatman-approved food I need to dodge this grim fate.

  The website recommends I buy the full weekly complement of products, which includes a snack for every morning, a shake for every lunch, and a meal for every dinner.

  All of this costs . . .

  . . . wait for it . . .

  Seventy-five pounds!

  Yes, for just seventy-five quid a week I can stave off the spectre of chubby thighs and metabolic cell death.

  Having not been brought up in a small room with no access to the outside world, I instead order a box of ten lunchtime health shakes. This is still twenty-five quid’s worth, mind you, so I obviously haven’t seen enough of the outside world, regardless of where I was brought up.

  Monty’s book begrudgingly admits you can just supplement two meals a day with the health shake, provided you eat a meal of less than five hundred calories in the evening. Obviously someone down in marketing realised that not everyone can afford the complete package, so there must be an alternative that’s slightly easier on the pockets of the poor. Better to fleece them of some money than none at all.

  A couple of days later the shakes arrive and I embark on the carefully laid out programme that the book provides in a handy fold-out section.

  So now I’m a fully grown adult drinking two thick shakes a day. The last time I consumed this kind of drink in such quantities I was eight years old and didn’t give a shit about my weight.

  Apparently, the shakes have all the necessary vitamins, minerals, and trace elements I need to keep me going through the day. This is all very well, but they don’t appear to contain much actual taste. They are also a rather unpleasant shade of grey. I ordered the banana-flavoured ones as I love a nice banana, but I can only assume that the nearest this gloopy mess ever got to a real banana was having one waved over it for a couple of seconds before they put the lid on.

  Keeping your lifoproteinate levels down may well be important to your metabolic rate, but it sure as hell doesn’t do much for your taste buds.

  Nevertheless, I stuck at the diet for a whole month. This is officially the longest I have managed to stick with one of these programs in the entire time I’ve been part of the Fat Chance competition.

  Not because it was any good, of course—don’t be so silly. The only reason I stuck with it is because Professor Montague Chatman had scared the crap out of me with all his talk of metabolics, lifo-bloody-proteinates, and isoelectric processes. He’d done enough to convince me that if I didn’t stick to his program, I’d just keep getting fatter and fatter until my brain was consumed by my own body lard.

  It has to be said that over the course of the month I did indeed lose weight from drinking just the shakes and eating a low-calorie meal for tea. After thirty days I actually began to believe that the diet was worth it—that Chatman’s claims were valid. Maybe there was something to all this metabolic anti-stasis, enantiomer whodoyouwhatsit business after all.

  Then Greg saw the credit card bill and we had a lively discussion about it.

  ‘A hundred fucking quid on milkshakes!’

  ‘They don’t have milk in them.’

  ‘I don’t care if they’re flavoured with pure gold and give you superpowers. It’s a hundred fucking quid!’

  ‘You wasted enough cash on all those stupid exercise machines!’

  ‘I know! That’s why I’m sure you’re wasting your money on this Chatman shit.’

  ‘No, I’m not!’

  ‘Really? Go on Google and look him up,’ Greg challenged me.

  So I bloody well did!

  Shit.

  It didn’t take me long to scroll down past the promotional Chatman website entries and get to the independent opinion sites.

  It wasn’t pleasant.

  The science of the Professor Montague Chatman Approach to Effective Nutrition and Metabolic Health was as big a load of steaming horseshit as I’d first feared. I discovered reams of proper scientific study that showed how Chatman’s methodologies were made up out of nothing but fresh air.

  What’s more, Professor Montague Chatman wasn’t even a bloody Professor. Monty turned out to be a disgraced doctor from Middlesex who’d been struck off the register thirty years ago for giving out blank prescriptions to his old Eton buddies in exchange for cold, hard cash.

  His name wasn’t even Montague.

  I’d spent over a hundred pounds of my hard-earned money on a weight loss program devised by Barry Chatman.

  Barry. Is there a less dependable-sounding first name in the English language?

  Oh, and Barry had popped his clogs in 1997 anyway. All that money had in fact gone to the company that now runs and owns the Chatman diet brand. It’s called ACP Petrochemicals. They also own three sugar refining companies, a fast-food brand, and a mail order business. The same mail order business I’d received my shakes from during the previous month.

  I would have felt crestfallen if I hadn’t felt so bloody stupid.

  ‘But the diet worked!’ I pleaded with Greg once I’d got him to stop laughing.

  ‘Did it?’

  ‘Yes!’

  The patronising tone he effected made my teeth itch. ‘Now Zoe, don’t you think you would have lost all that weight anyway? Even if you’d been drinking one-pound Asda smoothies? Or, you know, water?’

  I wanted to argue. I really, really did. But the bastard was absolutely right.

  I’d been well and truly suckered. In my desire to lose weight—and to make it seem like I hadn’t been completely baffled by all those scientific terms—I’d become a gullible idiot.

  Still, I’m not alone.

  The diet industry is worth a purported thirty billion quid worldwide, I’m led to believe. Barry and his fellow shysters are slicing themselves a pretty big chunk of that cake.

  I stopped the Chatman diet there and then. My body—which had dropped into fat storing, self-preservation mode thanks to Barry Chatman’s bullshit—made sure I paid for my gullibility by piling six pounds back on in the following two weeks. It didn’t matter how little I ate, or how much exercise I did, I simply could not prevent my metabolism snapping back like a rubber band after having been so artificially stretched for a month.

  Needless to say I was despondent.

  That was when I booked an appointment with a nutritionist on the NHS. A proper, bona fide nutritionist, with certificates from recognisable medical institutions. Her name was Claire. Her skin looked very healthy.

  ‘Can you tell me which one of these diet programmes I should go on, Claire? I’ve tried so many now and none are working for me,’ I pleaded from across her neat desk.

  ‘You don’t need to go on a diet programme, Zoe,’ she replied. ‘You just need to eat a balanced variety of foods, watch your calorie intake, and exercise regularly.’

  This didn’t make any sense, so I asked her to repeat it.

  She did so.

  It still didn’
t make any sense. It sounded far too simple. ‘Just run that by me one more time?’ I said doubtfully.

  Claire the nutritionist sighed. ‘I get this a lot. For some reason people think it’s complicated when it really isn’t.’

  She went on to explain a few cold, hard facts to me.

  Weight loss is about burning more calories than you take in. Our bodies are essentially engines. If you put in less fuel than you burn off, then your body turns to its fat reserves to compensate. That’s how you lose weight.

  That is the only way human beings lose weight.

  From the dawn of time that has been the only way human beings have ever lost weight. Everything else is just gravy—if you’ll pardon the rather on-the-nose expression.

  Like Greg and his exercises, it just comes down to simple human biology, and understanding it properly.

  Billions of pounds are wasted every year because people—including me up until this revelatory conversation—just don’t realise this plain and simple truth. If you eat a balanced diet and exercise off more calories than you consume you will lose weight. It’s a biological certainty.

  Unfortunately it isn’t a quick biological certainty. To burn off fat and keep it off permanently requires time, effort, and patience—three things the Western world doesn’t have much of.

  Hence that thirty billion quid.

  All the weight loss programmes, books, websites, videos, packaged meals, snacks, health shakes, and pills in the world don’t really make a blind bit of difference, if you don’t understand and appreciate the effort it actually takes to get thin. Once you do, everything becomes a lot clearer, and a lot easier on your purse.

  I walked out of Claire’s office with a renewed sense of purpose.

  She’d given me a pamphlet detailing all the do’s and don’ts of proper dieting and I intended to stick to it religiously. I still felt a bit strange about following a diet that hadn’t cost me a single penny, but tried my level best to ignore the feeling.

  Since that day I have seen a more gradual—but permanent—loss of weight over the last three months. There has been no yo-yo effect whatsoever.

  Neither have I suffered from bad breath, runny bowels, acid reflux, or extreme lethargy. In fact I’ve never felt better in my life.

  I am highly fucking annoyed by the entire thing.

  GREG’S WEIGHT LOSS DIARY

  Sunday, August 31st

  13 stone, 10 pounds (6 stone, 6 pounds lost)

  I looked at myself in the mirror this morning.

  Can you remember the last time you looked at yourself in the mirror?

  I don’t mean the quick glance in the morning to check that none of your breakfast is still between your teeth, or the thirty seconds you spend in the changing room at Primark deciding whether stone wash jeans are still a good idea in the twenty-first century.

  I mean the act of just standing in front of your own mirror (preferably full length) and taking a long, hard look at yourself.

  It’s a surreal experience. Especially when it’s the first time you’ve done it for about ten years.

  I’ve never been one for much in the way of narcissism, even when I was young and thin and should have cared about that kind of thing. I could go days without looking in a mirror if my hair was short enough and I wasn’t attending a job interview.

  As I grew older and my waistline grew larger, the last thing I wanted to do was stand and see my flabby, naked body staring back at me. It wasn’t a conscious decision, of course. I don’t think anyone intentionally goes out of their way to avoid looking in a mirror because they’re fat. It’s just something that naturally happens when your sense of physical self-worth ebbs away as the pounds pile on.

  Today, however, is a special day. And on special days you can find yourself doing things you never thought possible.

  I woke up at six thirty in the morning feeling refreshed and well rested. I have never woken up at six thirty before feeling refreshed and well rested. If in the past I have been forced to awaken at such a god awful time it has been with sleep dust jamming my eyes together, a groan escaping my lips and a long, sonorous fart escaping my backside.

  Not only am I refreshed and well rested this morning, I am also excited . . . and not a little nervous.

  The reason is simple: today is the day of the grand final weigh-in. Fat Chance ends today, and there is every chance Zoe and I will be fifty thousand pounds better off this evening.

  With this cheery prospect running through my head I leave Zoe dozing in bed and pad softly through into the bathroom for my customary early morning piss.

  Look at the way I described that, would you?

  I padded softly through to the bathroom.

  I did not stumble, plod, or shamble through to the bathroom: I padded softly.

  Six months ago I would have been incapable of padding softly anywhere, unless I was on a planet with a far lower gravitational pull than ours.

  In the bathroom I have the decided pleasure of taking a piss butt naked. The opportunities to take an early morning whizz naked in Great Britain are few and far between. It’s normally never warm enough. But we’re experiencing a mini heat wave at the moment in these parts, which gives me the chance to walk around with my parts swinging free. I’m not going anywhere near the conservatory, though.

  I finish the piss and turn to leave the bathroom. Then I stop in my tracks as I notice something fixed to the back of the bathroom door that I’ve not thought about in a long time.

  No, not the ratty dressing gown I haven’t worn in months, or the threadbare towel Zoe uses when she’s dyed her hair. I’m referring to the thing hidden behind them both.

  I unhook both dressing gown and towel and give the mirror a wipe. It’s very dusty, and I have to stifle a sneeze so I don’t wake Zoe up.

  Having cleaned the reflective surface to a satisfactory degree, I drop the gown and towel and stand straight.

  The man looking back at me is a complete stranger.

  The kind of guy I’d probably be quite jealous of if I saw him in the changing rooms at the gym.

  This man is lean and fit. He stands confidently, his shoulders squared and his head cocked to one side, a rather perplexed expression his face. Sure, there’s a small spare tyre around his middle, but nothing too offensive for a man rapidly approaching his forties.

  This is a bloke who looks like he can jog for miles without suffering much damage. There’s at least thirty press-ups in those shoulders before they give out, and maybe even twenty sit-ups in those abdominals.

  All in all, he seems pretty well put together. Someone with a lifestyle to be envied.

  . . . and I have no idea who he is.

  A sudden wave of emotion washes over me. Tears start to form at the corners of my eyes and I find myself having to take a deep breath.

  I think back to an early spring barbecue, a Mister Benn suit, and a broken chair—and have to fight back a choked sob.

  They hit me all at once. The feelings of inadequacy, the lack of self-worth, the sure and secure knowledge that for a decade I felt and acted like a fat, lazy failure. All those neuroses and doubts that you bury deep, deep down where you think you can safely ignore them.

  But they are always there, you know. Always ready, willing, and able to climb from the recesses of your soul if you give them a decent leg up. All it can take is the decision to do something you haven’t done in years—like taking a long, hard look at yourself in the mirror.

  It takes me a few seconds to calm down, to remember that I have done so much to change the way I look and feel since March and that bloody barbecue.

  When I look back into the mirror I do so not as the fat, inadequate man I once was, but as the fit, healthy, confident man I am now.

  A fierce sensation of pride overwhelms me. It’s a strange and alien emotion I don’t quite know how to han
dle.

  I have done this.

  I have lost six stone, and in doing so changed the person I am forever.

  Every step on the treadmill, every curl of the dumbbell, every pound spent on a useless piece of exercise equipment. It’s all represented in the new and improved Greg Milton looking back at me with a smile on his face.

  Hell, now I’ve lost all that fat around my thighs and waist even my penis looks bigger.

  This man in the mirror is no stranger. He is me, and I am damn proud of that fact!

  ‘Are you taking a shit in there, Greg? Only I really need to pee,’ Zoe says from beyond the mirror’s reflection.

  I throw the door open and give my wife a massive hug. I am delighted to discover she is as naked as I am thanks to the early morning heat.

  ‘Oh, get off, you lunatic,’ she says, pushing me away. ‘I can smell your B.O. from a mile away.’

  ‘Come and look in the mirror with me, baby,’ I say to her.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Look in the mirror with me.’

  ‘I need a pee, Greg. Stop being weird and let me by.’

  I take her hand. ‘In a second. Just humour me.’

  I drag my reluctant spouse into the bathroom, close the door, and position us both in front of the mirror.

  Zoe rubs her eyes. ‘What the hell are you doing?’

  I stand behind her and drape my arms around her neck.

  For the briefest of moments I flash back to the day I first met Zoe, and the pose we stood in for Lionel the Pervert’s camera. ‘Just look at us,’ I say in a soft voice.

  Zoe sighs and forces her eyes to focus on her own reflection in the mirror. In them I see the exact same emotional process I’ve just gone through. At first Zoe looks confused, as if she’s never seen the gorgeous woman staring back at her before. Then comes the shame, the shame of knowing that this woman was underneath all that fat, screaming to get out for so many years. And finally, there is the mixture of pride and pleasure at a job well done, and a human being rediscovered.

  ‘We did . . . we did it, didn’t we?’ she says to me, fighting back the tears.