Romance:From Fat To Fatale(10)
Their starvation was totally for real. Mine seemed kind of fake. How could I be starving when I scared the batteries out of the bathroom weighing scales? But she was serious. I had to get some nutrients into my over-abused and goodness-deprived body and she nodded her approval at the old doc's initial advice to start an intensive vitamin and mineral regime. Forget about dieting, she said. Let's start with some helpful boosters and focus on working out why food has been a problem for you for so long. She printed out a list of vitamins and minerals that I could pick up at any well-stocked health food store, made sure I understood the daily doses, and told me to fill in a questionnaire at home that she'd already printed out from her PC.
The answers would be strictly confidential and she was only looking for the truth, the key to understanding my behaviour. We would get together again in a week's time and I could always call her if I had a problem. And I could eat whatever I wanted. No need to worry about the dietary side of the equation. We'd get to that a little later.
Can you imagine that? A genuine nutritionist telling me to carry on troughing! Sounded too good to be true. And it was.
So what would you do if a professionally qualified nutritionist gave you a blank cheque to go out and eat whatever you felt like? Exactly! I waddled down to the nearest burger joint and hit the overload order on a massive, life-threatening triple-cheeseburger deluxe with extra fries and a very large diet cola. And a microwaved apple pie with chemically-concocted whipped cream. And another diet cola. And a portion of fries to go. I was really enjoying this fantastically generous approach to dieting.
Except that the dining experience didn't end exactly as planned. I was halfway home on the bus when I completely lost control of my stomach and threw up, managing to pebble-dash half the interior of the coach with partially digested gobbets of burgers, fries and deep-fried bacon. Unfortunately, the couple in front of me didn't escape the high-velocity eruption either. A more positive person might suggest that this could be a great way to meet new people but a realist would recognise how easily a group of perfect strangers can rapidly morph into a hostile lynch mob. Visions of my distant ancestors running from a crowd of blood-crazed villagers sprang to mind and I decided it might be more prudent to step off the bus, muttering apologies and excuses about some rare medical condition that made me allergic to bus rides. I escaped with my shamed and blushing head bowed but still on my rounded shoulders yet with the absolute certainty that a group of deeply inconvenienced bus travellers were giving me the benefit of their collective evil eyes.
Chapter 7:
Getting personal
Have you ever filled in one of those really personal questionnaires that wants to know absolutely everything about you, from whether you were breast-fed to the most intimate details of your love life? I settled down on my bed after supper that evening with the door firmly wedged shut and a chair against the handle - Mama would never permit inside locks on bedroom doors - and started to work through the questions. This wasn't some ditsy quiz in Cosmo.
This was the real thing, full of questions that made you contradict yourself, approaching the same subjects from half a dozen different angles, narrowing down your choices to exclude the fantasy answers and excavate the deeper truths about how you really felt. Took me about an hour and a half and, guess what? Yep. I was hungry. Again. Well, come on. It was hard work. I was burning some serious calories with all that mental effort, wrestling with the multiple choices and struggling with the requests for really personal descriptions. It was exhausting. I deserved a snack. So I hit the fridge and settled down to a well-deserved slab of cholesterol-enhanced chocolate fudge cake. Yes, brothers and sisters, I sinned. And it was so good!
Madame Whiplash of nutritionist fame had asked me to drop off the questionnaire at her office once it was completed so she could evaluate the answers before we met again. Made sense. I put the forms in a sealed envelope and taped the cover firmly shut like a secret diplomatic missive to the Vatican offering trade discounts on Choirboys Monthly. I got an E-mail within twenty-four hours confirming our next appointment for the following week. She didn't waste any time. I wondered if the food-free diet was likely to begin at our next session so I started to cram the goodies like a coke fiend who's planning to quit the habit at the weekend. Damn, I kept saying. I'm sure going to miss you as I sank my teeth again and again into the dense layers of piped cream and sugar that crowned Mama's personal interpretation of Bulgari Black Forest Gateau.
Then I woke up with a temperature. I hadn't been feeling too good for a couple of days and wondered if I was coming down with a bug. Energy levels at an all-time low. Palpitations. Blurred vision. Nausea. Constipated.
Just the usual brand of not feeling too good. Maybe it was infectious. Maybe it would be best to skip the next appointment with the nutritionist and wait until I was feeling better. So I called her to re-arrange the session and she said no.
Unless it was a case of Bubonic Plague we should definitely meet as planned. I told her I didn't want her to get any of my bugs and she just laughed out loud on the phone, telling me she had an amazingly robust immune system and that she wasn't in the least bit worried about catching obesity just from sitting in the same room as me. I didn't know what to say. I was feeling pretty bad and she just dismissed it like it was nothing. This lady was beginning to annoy me. Big time. And, just like my rear end, the irritation was getting bigger all the time.