Fat chance: Lindsey's lunchbox might be looking like this. Pic: istock
It’s about this time of the year that a woman’s thoughts turn to diet and exercise, what with the sap rising, clocks changing and all that. I weighed myself on the Wii Fit yesterday. It informed me cheerily that it had been 693 days since we first met. I ignored it and viciously pointed the remote thing at it to move on to the next step.
I only ever use the thing for weighing myself and to make the weans laugh when my Mii (Wii character which represents me on the thingummy, which looks really like me too, strangely enough) goes “Wuh wuhwuhwuhwuh wuh” while it looks down at its wobbly bits and makes a face to indicate its disapproval over its overly fat bottom.
Ah I remember the hopeful days when I humphed the Wii back from Argos - I’d only gone and discovered the Holy Grail of get thin quick. At last. Exercise I don’t have to leave the house for. I can do it in my pyjamas too. I broke myself in gently with a bit of hula-hooping.
About half an hour of it. I was exhausted. By the following morning I was in hospital with appendicitis. I kid you not. I even asked the surgeon if he thought this sudden surge in activity from my usual sedentary couch-dwelling lifestyle would have been enough to stir the infected organ into a reaction. He looked at me as if I was an idiot (harsh, yet fair) and said that if he noticed an upturn in middle aged overweight women presenting with appendicitis after a bout of hula-hooping on the Wii Fit he’d write an article for the Lancet.
I haven’t really used the Wii in anger since. It’s long since been cannibalised for its batteries anyway. But yesterday, what with sap rising and all, I was spurred in to action, after five weeks of immobility due to my fractured bone.
I fired up the Wii Fit and took the body test. It wasn’t pretty. I’m pretty much off the scale now BMI wise. My Mii has given up even trying to be funny and just stares back at me blankly from the screen, shaking its head scornfully and generally giving me attitude.
I’m sure many readers (hellooooo? Does anybody actually read this drivel?) can identify when I say that I’ve joined every slimming club going over the years. I’m still fat. Oh yes I’ve triumphantly lost the odd half stone here and there - I’ve even had a sticker applied to my weight record card with a wee gold star to say ‘Well done. Half a stone off.’ (I’ve usually subsequently been solemnly court martialled and stripped of my sticker weeks later when the half stone has crept back on.)
But generally it’s been an upward trend since Kate and I did the Race for Life in 2000. (I hated every minute of that run, and all the way round I fantasised about the various ways I would kill Kate and chop her body into little pieces as punishment for convincing me that this public humiliation was a good idea.)
I wasn’t built for running - I’m more of your basic pleasure model to be honest. I had to run in the dark due to my top heaviness. And don’t mention sports bra. I haven’t been able to source a satisfactory one to this day. I suspect mine would have to be Clyde-built and would take several thousand man-hours to weld all the rivets or whatever industrial-strength metal work would be required to hold these puppies still for a ten minute jog round the scheme.
Another thing - the minute I decide that it’s time to diet again, someone sabotages my efforts. I decided yesterday that it was That Time again and decided that I would eat all the Bad Things in the house before filling the fridge with Good Things. Right on cue my sister arrived bearing a gift of two pork pies. Most people get flowers when they’re ill, I get pies. They know me so well. Of course I scoffed the pies down in two minutes flat politely declined said pies, bid her a good day and suggested she find a home for them elsewhere, as my body would reject any lard I attempted to insert therein.
So today I’m treating my body like the temple it is. I’m off the pies. I’m off crisps. I’m off chocolate. In three months the thin person stuck inside this fat body will be burning the elasticated waist garments (but they’re so COMFY) and smocky tops and will be investing in a whole new wardrobe full of bodycon dresses (I don’t know what that means either) and skinny jeans. No more bingo wings! No more rumbly down pants! Watch this space.
