Andy's Weight

1991

One’s Plenty 

On two years’ acquaintance with it, I’d cultivated a zest for solid food. Having wolfed down my own, I eyed Johnny’s uneaten Yorkshire Pudding and sausages. Of my enthusiasm to ensure they weren’t wasted, Mam grew wary.

Whereas Mam and Johnny could hardly ever bring themselves to finish a meal, I, on finishing mine, always remained hungry. A dull, anticipative sinking in my stomach, and a residual dragging sensation in my throat stoked an impassioned desire for reunion with the thrilling spices and soothing pressure of taste and texture.

At a speed similar to that of Granda Tait, I ate with fervour - immediately and thoroughly, I needed the regenerative nurture of food. 

At mid-morning, Mam, whose willowy thinness now held a post-natal paunch, often enjoyed a small snack, termed a “ten o’clock”. This typically entailed a bag of crisps, poured onto the table, and shared with Nana Widdrington.

James, Johnny and I might each have a bag of Wotsits. While no one else seemed to desire a second bag, I saw little point in having only one. While the flavoured corn fingers supposedly weren’t very fattening, Mam eventually forbade sequels. 

“One’s plenty,” she said.

My insatiable desire for extra food was starting to take noticeable effect.

“That laddie,” Granda Widdrington warned Mam, “is ganna fall off his legs.”

1992

Greedy 

My face now had a slight extra breadth. My torso, as mightily as ever, bulged in a hefty flow. When sitting down, I could comfortably cover my hands with my stomach flab. Such exertion as walking uphill or running strained my lungs and legs more quickly than those of James, John or my classmates. 

Dad, at my age, while nowhere near my size, had been slightly overweight, but, without any laborious dieting, had eventually slimmed. It was vaguely hoped that I would follow suit.   

Around seven, supper for John and me often consisted of two small grilled Co Op pizzas each. John seldom finished his. On finishing mine, a faint dragging sensation in my chest stoked an urgent desire for more food. I was allowed a packet of crisps, but that was it, mind.

With my torso as large as ever, my parents decided to wean me onto more modest fare - a sandwich and a packet of crisps. Meanwhile, Mam guarded against any urge I might have to eat in between meals.

The Rothbury Practice waiting room, as well as magazines, had several children’s books.  Greedy Graham, (I forget precisely which year I read it,) depicts a young boy who, despite his elders’ warnings, fecklessly indulges his rampant appetite. A stomach ache (or some such; I can’t seem to find the book online) eventually enlightens him to the error of his ways - until, in comedic subversion, he commandeers an entire chocolate cake. 

The cartoon illustrations of an overweight boy offer a fairly appealing image of childhood innocence; albeit one comically distorted by bulbous excess flesh. Greedy Graham bloats his young frame to ungainliness - all because of his disinclination to stop being greedy. If only he could reign in his childish excesses, he’d be normal. 

Why did I still feel hungry on finishing a meal? Did I alone have this residual hunger? Or did everyone have it; albeit usually with maturity enough to restrain it? 

Why did I lack such resolve? 

Why was I frightened of toilets and hens? 

I had no answer.

1998

Dangerous Diet 

Having, throughout First School, undergone food limitation programmes advised by magazines, my torso remained mountainous as ever. Apparently, diets – or at least those I’d tried – didn’t work. 

At the village surgery, Dad booked me an appointment with Dr Allan. A tall, silver-haired man with a Standard English accent and gently jocular smile, he prescribed me something rather more specific – a prohibition of certain nutrients. 

For weeks, I adhered. Then, one Friday evening, I slipped. 

Mam and Dad had been shopping at the Morpeth branch of Lidl and had bought several pots of chicken and mushroom flavour Snack With Noodles – a favourite of mine. Noodles, bits of chicken, sweetcorn and croutons were all ready at the boil of a kettle – and, unlike Pot Noodles, no peas. However, my new diet forbade some of their content.  

Since I’d been so good, Mam supposed a mild breach wouldn’t hurt this once.

Next morning, I awoke feeling queasy. In the kitchen, this worsened to a bout of nausea. I hurried to the kitchen sink but could only retch.

At some point in the next few seconds, conscious awareness left me.

I woke up and realised I was lying on the floor by the sink. I was vaguely worried to hear Mam sobbing. The voice of Granda Widdrington was sternly reassuring her.

“But my little Andy’s never done anything like that before!” sobbed Mam.

Granda, it seemed, had caught me just as I’d fainted.

With Mam reassured – and advised by Granda against “bloody diets” – she told me to relax in the living room and “put Stanley Ipkiss on.”  As suggested, I watched the first twenty minutes of my video of The Mask (1994).

1999

How's the Diet Going, Andrew?

In the Dinner Hall, I found myself seated beside Mrs Bell. Buoyed by her genial conversation, I shared my aim to make a serious attempt at weight loss. 

“Well, to do that,” she said, her gaze gently amused, “you need to eat lots… and lots… of fruit.” 

I didn’t suppose it would do to mention that, save for berries, I couldn’t bring myself to eat solid fruit. 

The following week, back in the Dinner Hall, I once more found myself seated by the Maths teacher. With my usual urgency, I swept forkfuls into my maw, chomped briefly and eagerly repeated the process. 

“How’s the diet going, Andrew?” said Mrs Bell. Her indulgent geniality was gone; this was a demand. Perhaps an encouraging challenge. It barely occurred to me that it might be a deft sneer.

2005

Fizzlin’

The Calorie Count was working. My mountainously bulging torso became slightly but definitely easier to manoeuvre. At its now visible recession, everyone marvelled. I could only just see it myself but received the revelation with momentous glee. 

Milk Roll was a great help. These cylindrical loaves were sliced into discs of bread, each only forty-six calories. Mam’s Taiwanese colleague “Golf” had introduced us to Nam Prik Pao, a thick, sweetly spicy spread to which I took a liking. 

As had always been the case when I’d finished eating, a residual dragging sensation in my throat sought more of the sensuous joys of tasting and swallowing. Having lunched in the Sixth Form Centre, I placated these urges with a small cup of tomato soup from the hot drinks machine. Sweet, fizzy diet cola also helped persuade my appetite of satiation. 

By evening, I’d sometimes used up most or all of my daily calorie allowance. My longing to be soothed by the sensations of taste and swallowing soon succumbed to a tight, burning hunger, to which I refused to concede. If people in the Third World could live on a few grains of rice, I crassly declared, I could go without supper. I’m not sure how safe this really was, but I never found myself dangerously hungry. Weight loss was possible; it was happening, and it would continue. For the first time since the age of four, my torso would be free of its cumbersome shell of flab. 

“Whoa, Andy!” said Dale Hartley on arrival one evening. “You’re fizzlin’!”

2009

Rob Grant’s Fat

As summer dawned, I got the bus to Newcastle, wondering what to get for John’s twentieth birthday. In the basement floor of Waterstones, I decided on Red Dwarf co-creator Rob Grant’s satirical novel Fat (2006), which, along with a copy of Skulduggery Pleasant for myself, I bought and headed home.

The trouble was, having peaked inside the first few pages of Fat, I found myself reluctant to come out again. 

Divorced television chef Grenville Roberts, having bafflingly and irresistibly gained weight since his twenties, has reached a point where getting out of bed and putting on his shoes has become strenuous. While dryly comical, description of his weight portrays it as an affliction, rather than a selfish affront to the aesthetic tastes of innocent bystanders.

An ominously increasingly overbearing government tasks Jeremy Slank to promote newly built Well Farms. His moderate contempt for the heavily overweight is challenged by research assistant Jemma Bartlet, mouthpiece for Grant’s own research, who debunks the government’s draconian attempt to get people to lose weight. 

Fat says a decline in epidemiology standards has enabled researchers to “prove” that just about anything can cause just about anything else, hence the media’s endless scaremongering health warnings. The book says cholesterol can’t actually enter the bloodstream, and that past the age of sixty-five, being overweight improves life expectancy.

Save for extreme cases, the scaremongering around obesity seems based on dubious science. 

I’d heard of the so-called obesity epidemic. I’d vaguely supposed it to refer to an apparent influx of weight gain. Whatever the case, it no longer applied to me, as I’d lost weight. 

Now, media obsession with the “obesity epidemic” struck me in a new way: it cast flab not only as an unfashionable hindrance, but as a danger. Dislike of flab could now be channelled into dutiful concern for the carelessness with which we porkers spoiled not only our visual acceptability, but our health. Supposed concern for fat people’s safety sanitised dislike of their appearance. 

Already eternally grateful to Rob Grant for having co-created Red Dwarf, I now held him in all-new esteem. With only slight guilt, I decided to keep Fat and get John an Irvine Welsh novel instead.