Welcome to weight watchers

Welcome to Weight Watchers:

“Welcome to Weight Watchers, is this your first time?”. “Yes”, I reply with my head tucked into my chin. I am mortified that I have let my arse become the size of a small country. Once, when wearing my soft purple tracksuit, my backside was mistaken for a couch, a young child was trying to clamber on top of it using my calf for leverage. Yes, the black men love it, but one grows tired of chants of “Baby’s Got Back” when out in nightclubs.

There are three queues at the Weight Watchers meeting. Unsure of which to pick, I join the back of the longest one. It doesn’t take me long to realise that I am actually in all three queues at the one time. I try to suck my stomach in and hollow my cheeks, which results in a loud smacking sound that resembles a fart. ‘This isn’t making me inconspicuous’, I think as I paste myself up against the nearest wall.

I look around at what are to become familiar faces to me. ‘My fellow greedy lard asses”, I think. I wonder if I had small pieces of bacon in my pockets if they would be able to smell it out. I’d better not begin sweating chocolate again or they will devour me, I worry. I notice some skinny girls sitting in the corner and realise that I could use them as a tooth pick if need be.

Lets be honest, I think, we are all here because we would sell our children for a giant sized Toblerone. We would sacrifice men, sex, relationships for a night in with a bacon butty or twelve. We would bathe in gravy using a deep fried batter sausage as a sponge to wash out every crack and crevice if we could. We dream of putting chips between our toenails as we paint them the colour of red M&Ms.

We’ve all felt it, my fellow fat ladies…. the shame of walking into a supermarket and thinking, if only I could live here, sleep here, die here. We have all fantasised about dressing ourselves in strategically placed glazed cinnamon buns and rolling in cocktail sausages with chocolate coated strawberries tickling our stumpy buttered toes. We have all gone to the freezer and used sugar coated almond fingers to spread Ben and Jerry’s cookie dough ice cream over our ever-expanding bodies and giggled as we watched it sizzle on our stretch marked skin.

Some people take heroin, I take a grande mochachocolatio with syrup, double whipped cream and a chocolate chip muffin to go.

Our Weight Watcher team leader introduces herself as “Anne”, which makes me think of “Ham”. She is slim, but must have been big once as she has some saggy skin around her face and a chicken neck, which wobbles like jelly when she talks. “You can do it”, she says as she makes an altogether uninspiring fist shape in the air. I notice liver spots on her hand, which make me think of blackcurrent scones, toasted with clotted cream and raspberry jam.

“You need to imagine yourself slim”, Anne says, “What are you wearing?”. I think back to last summer when I was lying in bed wearing heated up pecan pie and an assortment of curried eggs. “Something hot and spicy”, I say aloud, some drool gathering at the corner of my mouth. The group giggle and to my confusing I overhear the word “racy” being whispered.

I have tried to loose weight before, doing diets such as the South Beach and
Atkins. Atkins meant I could eat all the meat and eggs I wanted. I gorged day and night on fried meaty treats, never sleeping and hardly coming up for air. I must have eaten the entire contents of a small zoo. My dreams were taken over by scantily clad dancing lamb chops and gyrating beef burgers. I eventually lost a few pounds and was able to see my feet for the first time in years. I didn’t much like the look of them so I wasn’t too disappointed when the weight crept back on.

I have even tried exercise. I went to the gym once. When I stepped on the treadmill it buckled under my weight. The fitness instructor asked me to get off the machine and to please stop eating the chicken baguette that I had in my hand. I refused to dismount and told him it was turkey, not chicken as I wiped some mayonnaise from my lip. Eventually, I was escorted off the premises by eight burley security guards and banned from the gym for life, which suited me just fine.

I tried hypnosis once. I was regressed back to my childhood to try and establish where my insatiable desire for food came from. Unfortunately, it transpired that there is no hidden trauma or family secret, but that I am just plain greedy. Since the hypnosis sessions, every time I see a meringue pie I cluck like a hen and walk in circles with my hands in my pockets, before eating the pie of course.

So, here I am at Weight Watchers, listening to Anne drone on about how we can achieve anything if we want it bad enough. There’s talk of vegetables, fruit, calorie counting, low fat spreads. I begin to feel edgy. I look around, there are hungry eyes everywhere, it becomes difficult to hear her talk over the rumbling of empty stomachs. “You must drink 8 glasses of water a day”, says Anne. Instantly, I begin to worry about the effect that water might have upon my body. I know that water and oil don’t mix and after last nights gallon of deep fried ice cream, deep fried chips, deep fried chicken and pies, I don’t think water will agree. “You must exercise”, she says. Well, I know I cant do that, I think to myself as I fold my large fleshy arms across my mono boob. I begin to wonder what the point of all this is. I wonder if I truly need it. These people are miserable, I think to myself. Starving themselves in modern day society and for what? A bit of sex on the side? Pah! I have my coleslaw and cheesy natcho dips for that. Panting loudly, I wedge myself off the two stools I have been sitting on and make my way towards the door. Before exiting the meeting, I turn around, let out some gas and think…. a middle chocolate finger to all you weight watchers.