The Fatslayer Chronicles

I had dinner last night with a friend who has lost 5 stones (70lbs), and I have to be honest, I was bored to tears and thoroughly depressed by the end of the evening.

I’ve examined my reactions closely to see if I’m suffering from jealousy or sour grapes (after all, she’s lost more weight than I have and is a lot closer to goal) but I truly don’t think I am. When my friend Maddy visited back in September (she of the 175lb loss discussed here) I wasn’t the least little bit jealous, even though she looks fabulous, lives in Rome, has pots of money, a fantastic job and a husband (who looks a bit like Andy Garcia) who absolutely adores her.

Jealous, moi? Not a bit of it. Bitch! You know what? I bet she had to have tons of lipo and cosmetic surgery to look that good, and you should see her cellulite…

Heh heh.

No, I’m just kidding. I had so much fun catching up with Maddy that it never crossed my mind to be jealous. On the contrary, I was sincerely and completely thrilled for her, so much so that I’ve decided I want to be like her when I grow up. She’s my fabulously inspiring dieting role model…

Last night it was different, though. The visiting friend (lets call her Donna) talked tirelessly for six solid hours about herself and her weight loss.

Now, lest I seem churlish, let me say that I can appreciate how proud of herself she must be, and how much her self-esteem must have improved since she started to look so good. And, frankly, she did look good. Gotta give her credit for that.

But I kid you not, in the course of the evening I heard at length about every size 12 outfit she’s ever tried on, every weight-related compliment that has ever been paid her, every chat-up line she’s received since starting her diet, every indulgent treat she’s denied herself, every second of exercise she’s endured.

I learnt about her daily food intake for the last 15 months, the length and duration of her workouts, and even the regularity and consistency of her bowel movements.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, all of this self-absorption was accompanied by the most red-in-tooth-and-claw competitiveness I’ve ever had the misfortune to come across.

It wasn’t enough that she was getting herself healthy – she seemed to have an obsession with being better than everyone else. She couldn’t stop gloating about how she was getting skinnier than her colleagues, getting chatted up more often than her sister, running farther and faster than her best friend. She said at least a couple of times “I’m the pretty one now!”, as if being prettier or slimmer or faster or fitter or more desirable or sexier than her friends and siblings was the most important thing in the world to her.

When she started telling me how thrilled she was that her best mate’s husband was constantly coming on to her sexually, I’d had enough.

Afterwards, when I’d finally got rid of her, I was thinking about the difference between her and Maddy. Maddy was funny and fascinating and fabulous company because her weight loss was only one part of her. It didn’t absorb her so much that it eclipsed everything else in her life – she had great stories to tell about her job, her family, her husband, her Italian in-laws. And all her observations were warm and witty and enormously generous in spirit.

There was none of the awful competitive one-upmanship and the spiteful sourness that Donna displayed. And it made me wonder whether losing weight had simply revealed an existing but previously hidden side of Donna’s personality, or whether the self-absorption required to achieve sustained weight loss had corrupted her in some way, and made her shallow and malicious.

I’m hoping she was always like it but never expressed her hidden side before, because the alternative is too awful to contemplate! If becoming that nasty is a side-effect of successful weight loss, I’d honestly rather stay fat!