Carol’s Column

Fattening and flexing in the great flab war

Are you happy with the body in which you live?

The headline hit me between the nostrils.

I looked in the mirror and saw a plump person staring back. I put in my contact lenses and peered more closely. No, this was not a body which would launch a thousand satellites; no one could live in this and feel proud.

“Confront your body and make it work for you,” continued the article.

I immediately signed up at the local gym for a course of aerobics.

The bronzed young man “call me Jed” with the rippling muscles and Daglo teeth nodded sympathetically when I told him I wished to lose 10 kg.

“It’ll take time,” he said, “but we’ll do it.”

The “we” made me feel secure. “How much time?” I asked.

“Two years,” he replied.

I thought he was joking but he wasn’t so I immediately signed up for the running and weights sessions too.

“You don’t think you’re overdoing it at your age?” asked Jed.

I flexed my flab and glared at him. “I have a friend called Charlie Kark who climbed the Himalayas single-handed when he was 94,” I retorted indignantly, “and my grandmother belly-danced before the State President when she was 86 and at the time he remarked it was a sight he’d never forget.”

At 5.30 am I staggered into the gym to discover nine other bodies ready for action.

For half an hour we agonisingly jerked our flab away in time to rock ’n roll. And then he put on Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto for stretching exercises and I fell asleep during the second movement and only woke at the finale.

“What a relief,” muttered the retired one-legged trapeze artist on my left, “I thought you’d died.”

After aerobics, we went for a run around Zoo Lake.

“Isn’t this grand,” said a hale and hearty sewing-machine salesman known as Merv the Perv who was puffing beside me.

I was unable to answer due to the fact that I was having difficulty breathing, an essential to staying alive.

At 8 am we returned to the gym to “do the circuit” — a tortuous session of apparatus designed to shape and mould the human form into a thing of beauty.

This regime became part of my daily life and I felt fitter by the minute.

Naturally, there were a few problems. I strained my neck during an energetic session of aerobics and my head was permanently locked towards the right. It’s remarkable how quickly one adapts to disability.

I also received a black eye when Merv the Perv inadvertently kicked me while doing the can-can. However, one has to suffer to achieve one’s ultimate ambition. The late Chairman Mao said that when he pulled a hamstring while jogging on the Great Wall of China.

On Saturday, I looked in the mirror and there was no doubt that my body had improved. My mammaries had lifted from the region of my knees to my waist, my derriere was no longer catching the back of my knees when I walked, and if one looked carefully, one could see the faint outline of a waist while the scale registered a 7,85-kg loss.

I was beside myself with joy.

I slipped into a pair of stretch pants and took my new body to breakfast.

“We’ve made you a special breakfast,” said my youngest unmarried daughter.

My son emerged from the kitchen bearing a huge platter on which resided two fried bananas, three waffles, potato fritters and two fried eggs, sunny-side up.

I was appalled: there was at least 5 kg of fat on that plate.

“You have to eat every scrap, Ma,” said Barry. “We’ve been so worried, you look gaunt and haggard and you’re shrinking away.”

“Don’t worry, Ma, we’ll soon fatten you up,” said Ralph.

At that moment, I knew exactly how P W Botha felt when he had to make the decision whether or not to cross the Rubicon.

And like P W Botha, I decided not to cross. I took a bite of waffle. It was delicious.

This morning I read a definitive article that said thin people are always miserable.

I can only agree.

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