Paul O'Dohertyhad lots of stories to tell when he started a column for our health section about his efforts to slim down. Now he has turned his experiences into a book
You're at dinner with friends, and it comes to the last roast potato or cheese meringue. The hostess offers you the leftovers. "Ah, go on. Sure it'll only go to waste, and sure don't I always do extra when I know you're coming?" It's the bloody enormous elephant in the room, in more ways than one, the taboo nobody wants to talk about: male obesity. The big MO, one could say; I can't really bring myself to say it twice or in full. Much better to abbreviate it - put it on a diet, so to speak, shorten its impact.
Where does it all start? Childhood? Possibly. Months become years become decades. Then, staring into a mirror in your 40s, you see that the face looking back at you has a problem: the big unmentionable. You dare not talk to friends about it - "Wow. Far too much information, brother. I'm going to the bar. Another pint?" - and way too many issues are floating round the family conference to raise a flag. So you do nothing, stuff it down below the waistline as if you're tucking in your shirt. You get away with it most of the time. Simple solution: don't mention it and it won't exist.
But it does, and the next time you're invited somewhere it comes creeping out of your closet, like all the right clothes you can never find. Your trousers are too tight, your shirt feels as if it has invaded Kuwait and you look like the Buddha of MO Town, isolated, irritated and odd. You eventually find something you've worn before - probably all week - and freshen it up. Out you go, Mr Saturday Night, dancing on the outside. On the inside you want to pull the cord, tug it tight, draw one last breath from the big MO. And then the feeling goes. It's time to perform. Presenting the resident fat bloke, your friend and mine - "Go on, Pauly, tell us another one."
You crank into action; one-liners fly from your lips like spit from a stage. The jogging story always gets a laugh; apparently, people think it's funny to sound their horns when they see you out jogging, and gardaí always want to know what a fortysomething fat bloke could possibly be doing in a tracksuit at night. Like, do I look like a cat burglar?
Then there's the story about the time I brought the chip pan on a camping holiday. Or the one about the tin of Quality Street my aunt brought home from Lourdes . . .
A column is born of a freelance's desperation, a fat bloke who can write the odd whistle, willing to spill the intestines from his dirty suitcase of obsession. In no time it's got a title: An Irishman's Diet. How about a book? Liberties Press gets involved, and then for two years I tell the nation in as many ways as I can that I'm a fat bloke with the big MO.
I carry my pen everywhere: to the gym, to swimming classes, to my personal trainer, to the spa, into my past, on to my soup diets and even on holidays. I bring the Conscience with me, the poor unfortunate wife, the voice in my ear, who says to me in all the best restaurants: "Ah, Pauly, please don't have the chips."
Did I mention I have a chip obsession? And a shortbread addiction? And a fast-food mania? They're all in the book, tucked up like butter-soaked asparagus spears in a bed of pastry.
So here I am, staring once again into my great nemesis, the mirror, waiting for The Irish Timesphotographer to arrive. At the last moment I take off my glasses, to make my face look thinner. Why? Even a fat bloke's got vanity.
An Irishman's Diet: A Marathon Not a Sprint is published by Liberties Press,€13.99
DEEP FAT MEMOIRS
Traditional diet books, written by well-meaning skinny experts who have never been lardy in their lives, are on the wane. They have been replaced by much more meaningful "fat memoirs", whose stars are people who have been there, done that and worn the XXXL T-shirts.
• The Hungry Years: Confessions of a Food Addictby William Leith (Bloomsbury, £10.99 in UK) is the big daddy of these books. Described by one critic as "part memoir, part diet book, part comedy and part sugar rush", Leith's story catalogues the physical consequences and psychological pain of being overweight. The book has nudged thousands along the path to healthy eating.
• The Amazing Adventures of Dietgirlby Shauna Reid (Corgi, £7.99 in UK) is the story of a young Australian woman who shed 80kg (12½st) - half her weight - over seven years. Dietgirl was Reid's alter ego for the blog that provided the material for this hilarious and hope-filled read.
• In The Fat Girl from Hollyoaks(Hodder & Stoughton, £16.99 in UK) the actor Mikyla Dodd - for four years the only overweight person in the young people's soap opera - writes about her struggle for self-acceptance and how a sensible eating plan combined with exercise helped her lose 57kg (nine stone).
• The journalist India Knight and her friend Neris Thomas scored a hit last year with their book Neris and India's Idiot-Proof Diet(Penguin, £7.99 in UK), about dropping from uncomfortable size 22s to far more manageable size 14s. Essentially a more sensible spin on the Atkins diet, the book is hilariously written and easy to follow. - Róisín Ingle