Sunday, August 03, 2008
On Being Thin
Now 22 pounds down in two months on my sensationally effective diet, I find the reactions of my paunchy coevals provide hours of harmless fun. The first glance is ambiguous: is he suffering from some terminal disease? I tell them I have been on a diet and they look relieved at not having to make small talk about my impending extinction - 'Cremation, burial, ashes scattered in the Solent? Can I have your Luccheses?', that sort of thing - then curious. I explain my regime which they, however paunchy, then subject to 'expert' analysis. Later, behind my back, they approach other friends or family. 'Is he all right?' 'You ought to get him off this anorexic kick.' and so on. The sub-text of all this is the feeling that it's not quite right to be this thin at my age, that men getting fatter with the years is the natural orders of things. This is, of course, nonsense. If I am supposedly anorexic now, was I anorexic in my mid-twenties when I weighed about 7 pounds less than this or in my mid-thirties when I weighed approximately what I do now? No. Face it, guys, getting fat is an avoidable error.
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A blog about, among other things, imaginary ideas - What ifs? and Imagine thats. What if photographs looked nothing like what we see with our eyes? Imagine that the Berlin Wall had never come down. What if we were the punchline of an interminable joke? All contributions welcome.
I got the impression when I was in the US recently, that others estimate your age from the perpendicular projection of your paunch. Accordingly, I was asked on a United Airlines flight, "Are you on a gap year?"
ReplyDeleteGo to the US again, Bryan, and they'll think you're really young.
so, sustainable or yo-yo?
ReplyDeleteWould it be a mistake to interpret this post as a last, desperate, defiant appeal for succour against the weight of a superior body of opinions...?
ReplyDeletehelp an old horse-doctor: more details about the diet, please (e.g., are nectarines allowed in place of psychotropic peaches?).
ReplyDeleteYou are going to end up like Nigel Lawson you know... he is an awful warning of the effects of excessive dieting in older men...
ReplyDeleteIn fact, Mutley, he is an awful warning of the effects of diet on former chancellors, quite different.
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ReplyDeleteWell done, that's one heck of a result. Having followed what sounds like a very similar diet to you (judging from your previous posts) a couple of years ago, I now weigh a little more than I did at the "lightest" point. One can get too thin and a little obsessive about it all. I had begun to dream of chips - no substitute, alas, for eating them from time to time. Even so, it's not so much a diet as a different view of life and I wouldn't go back to my old ways now other than for the occasional visit. A fine chip is a potent as a madeleine.
ReplyDelete"[M]ore details about the diet, please": this Low-Carb Linkage might be of interest.
ReplyDeleteBut do you FEEL better? That's the real question.
ReplyDeleteI'm doing my seasonal yo-yoing. My weight goes down in summer (cause it's too damn hot to feel like cooking or eating), and up in winter. But after age 40, the dramatic downs in summer slowed way (weigh?) down, so they have to be pushed with hiking, biking, swimming, etc.
I'll never again be the gorgeous chick I was pre-kids, but I'm sure a lot happier now as an aging matron.
So, I put it to you again, Appleyard? Are you happier now? Is there a correlation between your weight and your state...of mind?
I'm a Tony Lama man meself, got my eye on a nice pair of Ostrich skin boots in Shepler's. But Luccheses are nice too I shall admit.
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