Romance:From Fat To Fatale(12)

OK. She didn't say anything like that at all. She might've. But she didn't. I guess I made that part up. What she actually wanted me to see was that those sneaky underlying causes of my unhappiness still made a major contribution to my eating habits. But she had some more interesting news too. Seems that an unhealthy gut like mine was absolutely crawling with billions of hostile little critters whose purposes in life were to survive at all costs and sow chaos in their unwilling host's digestive tract. Unhealthy bacteria - and she said I could have at least five pounds of the dang things in my gut - sent chemical signals to the brain that influenced my eating behaviour. Holy shit! Or maybe not so holy. Mama Bulgari would've been dialling collect for the nearest exorcist at this point in the conversation. This sounded way beyond the scope of a triple dose of goose fat soup. This sounded more like a wreath of garlic, some very sharp wooden stakes, two full choruses of nuns, a bucket of holy water and a very large mallet. Just to be on the safe side.

So how was I supposed to evict these pesky, persistent colonies of hostile bacteria that were living rent-free in my digestive system? I had visions of pouring boiling oil down my gut to flush out the invaders, gargling with some industrial chemicals night and morning to make them feel unwelcome, daily injections of Agent Orange to de-forest my internal landscape. The lady nutritionist shook her head and said that wouldn't be necessary. There were better ways to fix the system.

But there was more news. She wasn't entirely finished with the horror story.

Seemed that the alien colonists had another nasty trick up their collective sleeves. The toxins they dumped into their hi-jacked living quarters damaged the gut wall and that led to tiny holes -

micro-porosity if you want to get technical - I wrote it down when she told me - and that meant that the toxins were leaking into my blood stream pretty much all of the time. She listed a small catalogue of unpleasant side effects but the biggest problem was something I'd never thought about - the strain on my immune system.

Here I was, bursting with hormones and the lust for happiness, ready to sample all the pleasures that life could offer, and my body had just been condemned as unfit for human habitation. It was a shock.

She smiled again and said that most folks didn't realise that their bodies had problems pretty much all the time but the immune system dealt with them very effectively without anyone being any the wiser. But when the system was under constant pressure from those leaked toxins, it was a lot easier for one of those little problems to get way out of hand. And that, she said with her warmest smile, was when we hit trouble with a capital C. Took a second for me to realise that she wasn't dyslexic. T for trouble. C for.... Oh. Right. Message received, decoded and understood. She put her finger tips on my balloon knee and leaned in a little closer. That's the real risk, Honey, she said. That's why we need to fix the problem right now.

While you're still pretty much a child, fix the problem right now before we have to deal with things that you shouldn't ever have to deal with. She leaned back, looking at me steadily with those deep blue eyes. I should tell you something, she said. I've been where you're sitting. Yes, I have. I've also had my problems with weight. I blinked at her in disbelief. She looked as if she'd been spun from high-tensile stainless steel fibres, barely an ounce of fat anywhere on her lean frame. She nodded slowly and added that she knew all about the perils of addiction. I know all about being messed up, Honey. Weight, drugs, alcohol. Nothing to be proud of.

But I got a lot of help, the right kind of help, and it came out good in the end. Sometimes it takes more than faith in the Bible to be saved. She was smiling at me. She went on, Faith never does any harm, sweet child, but let's give the Lord a hand here and see what the miracles of science can do to make things better.

We were checking my term schedule when she gave me the reason for finding a three-day slot in my diary where I would face the first of my ordeals in the quest for the ultimate weight-loss experience.

Sounded like a low-budget Japanese TV programme that specialised in humiliating rejected wannabe Sumo wrestlers but the steely-eyed lady nutritionist was determined to get my programme started as soon as possible and she needed three whole days to break the first of my secret addictions. And no, that absolutely did not include my battery-operated, strictly personal, relaxation device that was discretely hidden under a floorboard in my bedroom! You, my dear friend, have a filthy,

disgusting mind.....unfortunately much too much like my own! Must be one of the reasons we get on so well.

And the first challenge - you can imagine a drum roll in the background here, if you like - was our old friend and adversary, Mr Sweet, White 'n'

Deadly himself. A round of applause, if you please, a rousing cheer and a big, fat welcome for - sugar! What? Did you say 'sugar'? Is this for real? Sugar? Ged-outta-here! The same sugary sugar that's absolutely, totally, unfailingly in everything we like to eat? The main ingredient in every cake, cookie and dessert that rolls off Mama Bulgari's daily industrial production line? That sugar? The same sugar that Papa Bulgari sometimes sprinkles on his lettuce? You can't be serious! There must be some mistake.

Stop the bus.

I want to get off right here in the middle of obesity junction and take my chances in the saturated fat waist-land of the sacred jelly roll. Sugar? You can almost hear the scream of desperation in my voice. And there's a very good reason for that, my sweet friend. As the lady nutritionist was quick to point out, that constant and ever-present mainstay of the processed food industry was also one of the most highly addictive substances available without a prescription or a local pusher. That's right again. Sugar. It causes chaos in the body's metabolic system and, if we were ever going to get my insulin levels back to normal, I was going to have to go through three days of total abstinence to re-set my body's metabolic controls.