If you are a reader from the beginning of JaneLaverick.com (and for the sake of anyone new, this is my real name, who would invent it?), well done! In September it will be twelve years. The first thing I wrote about, the very first funny column, was how to get weighed to weigh less than you actually weigh.
Weight and the losing of the extra, has been a hot and miserably itchy topic with me since the 1960s, when my dear flat chested mother, alarmed at the way things were developing with me, decided to diet me and weigh me every week For my 18th birthday. prompted by my mother, a cousin (who I have not spoken to much, since) bought me a pair of scales which I am still using. There they sit in the wardrobe, covered in 1960s flower power stick-on plastic. The enemy.
I wrote, as you will recall, if you are the loyal reader (you and me against the world, naturally) of interesting techniques involving getting weighed standing in the wardrobe, with one hand on the garment rail, flex the bicep, take the reading, relax, back handspring, double full dismount, shove yer arms back, bow.
Also, step on scales breathe in, taking care to only inhale lighter air molecules. The necessity of sleeping as heavily and sweatily as possible and getting weighed first thing, after blowing your nose.
I did not touch on assisted weighing, as practised in clinics, I have heard, where paper-thin girls, dressed in lab coats of great brevity, assist you on to the scales by elevating parts of your anatomy (legs, arms, stomach, etc.) so that you get your core weight (Cor! Is that all?) And, of course, only getting weighed on a Flatterday, at any time during the month of Yesvember.
And all was well, up to a point. I knew where I was and what I was, or at least what one leg propped up on the door frame was, then the OH, who has spent the lockdown eating, spoiled it all by buying new scales.
I got weighed on the new scales.
Horrors.
There is nothing for it, I will just have to bite the bullet. Or, to be more exact, bite the bullet but under no circumstances masticate and swallow.
Three and a half years of intestinal troubles, following five years of sitting in a car to and fro (see Dementia Diaries) have done me no favours.
The only good note is that my intestines are on the mend, at last, and this year, when I grow cucumbers, I’ll be able to eat them, instead of giving them all to the neighbours.
In fact I might just do that, eat what I grow. I did it when I was young and thin and had a greenhouse.
If you are a good friend you will not email recipes. There is a massive and profitable world-wide industry based on recipes for people who wish to lose weight. No one seems to have spotted that the cooking is the problem. Move away from the frying pan, dear, put the bottle of oil down. Well done, good giant!
I have read that to change the world you need to change one thing to begin.
So I am going to stop eating after seven at night, which is knocking back an hour and a half.
I am going to stop Internet shopping late at night. Paddling up the Big River with chocolate in the canoe is right out.
And I will cut down every meal by one spoonful.
And I’m going to put the birthday chocolate, mine and from the S&H, in a cupboard until the new, traitorous scales are singing a different tune.
Just that – I’ll let you know.
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Erroneous beliefs
Anything eaten standing up has no calories.
Anything eaten whilst standing behind an open fridge door has no calories.
It is a good idea as you get older to have extra padding in case you fall over.
Ice cream eaten from the tub, with a dessert spoon, has no calories.
Gift chocolates do not count.
Butter is emollient and rushes through, leaving no trace.
Burping after a fizzy drink releases the calories into the air, harmlessly.
It is not fat if it is encased in elastic shapewear, it is smooth.
Fat on the buttocks is helpful because it has evolved over eons to assist fast running and will be fuel when you enter a marathon.
Thin chips are less fattening than wide chips.
Any fried snack loses calories in the factory when it is put in the bag.
Sitting still but breathing a lot can assist weight loss.
You should eat a lot of sugar, otherwise dentists will have nothing to do.
Having massive knockers is a sign of great beauty.
A double chin can assist in weight loss by preventing you looking directly at the plate.
Food eaten in restaurants does not count if you have to wait between courses.
Sweets were invented in antiquity, to refuse them draws fire from the gods.
Most of the developed world is fat, so it’s OK to join in.
Fat people are cuddly, if your arms are long enough.
If you don’t sit for hours watching television, people will stop making programmes and chairs.
And…if you don’t eat as much the sewerage system will lose interest and close up.
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