. . . . On the elephant in the room
FOR TWO DAYS in a row, I manage to schedule meetings with friends for coffee. It’s been far too long in both their cases. I find these days that time slips away and there always seems to be more pressing things to do than make time for social catch-ups. Which is ridiculous, because spending quality time with lovely people is way more essential than, say, scrubbing crayon marks from a wall.
Recording the two meetings in my diary feels like an achievement. I arrive early for the first, in a rooftop cafe with a view of St Stephen’s Green. N has been through a tough time, but she looks good and says she is feeling good too. We drink peppermint tea and she mentions a diet she has been on. I am as a moth drawn to the dieting flame. I want to know more. I need to know more. I’ve been on them all, of course, starting at age 15 with Scarsdale. Then Weight Watchers. The Californian. Atkins. Cabbage soup. And that wine one, which I have to say was fantastic. I’ve been on more diets than I’ve had hot batter burgers. So what’s the lowdown on this one, I ask her, and she starts to tell me all about the Dukan diet, famously the weight-loss plan of choice for both British and Hollywood royalty this past year.
This one is full of militaristic jargon that anybody who has ever waged war on a diet will know is highly appropriate. There are phases of it called Attack and Cruise and Consolidation and Stabilisation. Attack lasts for a week and involves eating only lean protein. Cruise mode involves lean protein one day, vegetables and protein the next. If I’ve got this right, Consolidation involves some “celebration” meals and during the Stabilisation phase one day a week is still devoted to lean protein. Often a Thursday. Every day people on the diet must eat one and a half tablespoons of oat bran. This can be made into bread which my friend says is “nice when toasted” which I always think is a code phrase for bleurrgh.
When you are a fat person it’s difficult listening to someone talking about their new diet. I smile encouragingly all the while thinking, Yes! I know! I am the elephant in the room. My mind gets busy with the self-hating spiral: I am fat, much fatter than her, and so if this diet is working for my friend I must immediately sign up to show that I am ashamed of myself and will go to any lengths to sort my sorry self out. My mind, by the way, is not my friend.
I am genuinely happy for N. This regimen is working for her and she expects to reach what this Dukan dude, a French doctor, calls her “true” weight by Christmas. But I know something now that I didn’t know before. There is no diet in existence, or one yet to be invented, that is going to fix the likes of me. No can, Dukan.
The next day I meet C in Sandymount while my boyfriend settles our daughters for their lunchtime nap in the Green. “You look amazing,” I say. And she does. I order a lemonade and she tells me about this diet she’s been on. You know where this is going. She shows me the little chart on her phone, the downward graph of dropped weight.
She didn’t have much to lose, but her “true” weight is mere days away. I am happy for this friend too, and the instinct to go to the health-food shop to stock up on oat bran is strong. But, I repeat, no diet will fix the likes of me. Ah well, it’s only taken 25 years to figure this out.
In her wonderful book How to be a Woman, Caitlin Moran writes with more wisdom about overeating than anything I’ve seen. (And I’ve read more books about weight than I’ve had . . . ) She writes of overeating as being “a way of fucking yourself up whilst still remaining fully functional . . . Fat people aren’t indulging in the ‘luxury’ of their addiction, making them useless, chaotic or a burden. Instead they are slowly self-destructing in a way that doesn’t inconvenience anyone. And that’s why it’s so often a woman’s addiction of choice. All the quietly eating mums. All the KitKats in office drawers. All the unhappy moments, late at night, caught only in the fridge light.”
She makes a very good point, that until us overeaters stop being secretive about our problem, it will never be properly considered or understood by society or, more importantly, ourselves.
Lately I’ve been approaching my problem from a different direction and I am making the kind of slow, hopefully meaningful progress that doesn’t register on a weighing scales. I am learning about how my issue is not really around food but around not feeling good enough.
Moran is right when she says it’s funny that in a society obsessed with fat and weight, the only people not talking about it are the people whose business it really is.
So here I am talking about it. Well, it’s a start.
In other news . . . Write in the City is a newly launched series of events aimed at would-be writers, poets and authors which will take place in the National Library’s Café Joly in the coming months. For more details, telephone creative writing teacher Yvonne Cullen on 086-1701418 or email writingtrain@gmail.com