Pollyanna Fatslayer
Today's Fatslaying Workout Nothing - 14 hour workday.
Today's Weight 201.0lbs
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In the way of thin people everywhere, my mom has A Theory about what makes people fat. It's not a particularly original Theory, but its one she trots out regularly, usually when she's invited her sister round for coffee and she's feeling ashamed and embarrassed at having produced three such galumphing great girls as me and my two sisters, in contrast to my aunt's beautifully slender progeny.
Her Theory is that we're fat because by and large we're placid, happy, contented women. This means that although we've 'let ourselves go' and are a dreadful blemish on her child-raising credentials, at least we are not vindictive sour-faced little bitches. (This is never explicitly articulated, of course, but my aunt knows exactly what mom's getting at.)
According to The Theory we lard-arses have lower expectations, which means we have lower stress levels, which means we are destined for fatness because we burn less calories than our frustrated, anxious, uptight, skinny-arse counterparts. And though this leads to atrocious aesthetics, it can also be seen as A Good Thing.
To illustrate her argument, she points to my aunt (discontented and scrawny), my two cousins (moody and emaciated), my fourth sister (fiercely competitive and slender), and herself (simmering with repressed rage, and skinny). That's all the empirical proof she's ever needed.
I've heard The Theory all my life, but I've always been a bit sceptical about it. Not all fat women are jolly like Dawn bloody French, are they? Surely at least some of us are moody and miserable?
But I was thinking about it today at work, when I had to read the riot act to a couple of my staff for being so whiny and disgruntled whenever I ask them to do anything even slightly out of their usual routine.
If moaning was an Olympic discipline, these two women would have a cabinet full of gold medals. To say they whinge just doesn't do them justice - they've raised feeling-hard-done-by to an absolute art form.
Both of them burn with self-righteous indignation whenever they're called upon to do some work. I can practically feel the flames of malcontent licking round my ankles whenever I ask them to lift a (beautifully manicured and twig-like) finger and actually start earning their not-insubstantial salary.
So is it just a coincidence that both of them are painfully, bone-breakingly thin, or is mom on to something?
If mom's right, terminal frustration and discontent have burned away their fat stores, and allowed them to emerge phoenix-like and fat-free from the flames.
I, on the other hand, am usually pretty happy and even-tempered. I can't recall a single time that I've had an honest-to-God temper tantrum, and my default mood is one of reasonably buoyant and positive optimism. I'm not saying I never get ratty or irritable, but there usually has to be a pretty good reason for me to be in a bad mood.
And according to mom, that's always been the case. Whilst my skinny sister cried up a storm for the first three months of her existence, and nothing could ever mollify or distract her, me and my tubby sisters were sweetness personified. Apparently we rarely cried, hardly ever fussed, and could be instantanously pacified by being handed something edible.
Hmmm, d'you think that sounds like a clue?
In almost every childhood photo, we have wide and beatific smiles, and clutch handfuls of sweets, or ice-cream or candy-floss or toffee lollipops.
Lollipop, smile. Smile, lollipop. A match made in Heaven.
Bloody hell, no wonder we were fat and placid - we were probably in a permanent sugar stupor!
