Taking a Giant Step

The first rule of Fat Club is that you don't talk about Fat Club. 

The second rule of Fat Club is - YOU DO NOT TALK ABOUT FAT CLUB!

That's right.  This is what I'm telling you.  Edward Norton and Brad Pitt are the chaps who run Slimming World in Leyland.  Yep.  It's true.  Rule Number Eight of Fat Club, apparently, is that if it's your first night - you will be weighed.

All right, all right.  It's run by a woman called Andrea, and everyone gets weighed every week.  Enough of the cult film references. 

I will continue henceforth to refer to Slimming World by its proper title, as I understand that some people are offended by the word 'fat'.  For the record, I don't find it to be a remotely offensive word.  In fact, I've found that skinny people get more offended by the word 'fat' than fat people do.  I personally find more politically correct terms such as 'big', 'stocky' or 'curvy' - or, worse still, the dehumanising 'well-built' (what am I, a listed building?!) are utterly patronising and therefore far more insulting than simply calling a fat person 'fat'.  As Clarissa Dickson-Wright and Jennifer Paterson, aka the women who had the cookery show Two Fat Ladies back in the late 90s, famously said, "We don't mind being called 'fat', because we are.  We mind being called 'ladies' because it makes us sound like a public toilet."

Although, having said all that, I do admit to bursting into floods of tears the first time a kid in school ran up to me, pointed, laughed and started chanting 'Fatso' at me when I was four.  Still.  That was more about the fact that one of my peers was being brought up with abysmal manners than the fact I was on course to become the world's youngest female Fatty Arbuckle impersonator.

I honestly wasn't sure what to expect from my first night.  I had awful panicky thoughts, such as, "What if they measure me?!"  "What if they ask me to say something?  Can't I just hide in the corner and attempt to be invisible - even though I'm 5'8" and weigh at least a tonne and that would seem to be a rather impossible ask?!"  "What if I'm by far the fattest one there?!"  "What if they do any crazy brainwashing/hypnosis stuff?!?"  "What if it's all a great big con?!"  Luckily, I wasn't measured, I didn't say a word, I managed to hide quite well and as far as I know, nobody hypnotised me.  Although I have a funny feeling that if someone says the word "watch" I'll start doing a chicken impression...

I sort of half-hoped that I'd be greeted by a bunch of miserable-looking orb-like persons (all named Marjorie or Janet or something) with very cropped, badly-dyed hair in wacky colours and shapeless pale pink t-shirts with bleach stains down the front, wearing the blank expression of resignation to the fact they wouldn't be able to have so much as a jam doughnut for quite some time. Everyone seemed quite cheerful apart from the miserable bint at the door who welcomed the newbies.  Blimey.  Was she having a good time?  If she was, her face didn't know about it...

The church hall was packed.  Honestly.  I've never seen so many people cram into a room in my life.  I imagine that not everyone will stay every week.  Most people, I imagine, will just come, sign up and then do the diet from home.   Perhaps I'm just a little sceptical.

I have my reservations about the woman who runs it.  She seems all right, like, but I'm just not sure about her.  Perhaps I just need to get over my phobia of women named Andrea.  Anyway.  It was packed.  The group as a whole lost 18lbs between Christmas and New Year - and put on 55lbs.  Biggest gain was 11lbs (did someone just mainline lard for a week?!?!) and the biggest loss was 2 1/2 lbs.  I have a great respect for anyone who can lose weight between Christmas and New Year. 

My biggest fear was being sat next to a skinny woman who had freaked out over putting on a couple of pounds between Christmas and New Year.  It happened.  She seemed dead nice though.  Her name's Hayley.  There's only one bloke in the entire group (seriously, there must have been forty women there!) - his name's Dave.  He got dragged along by his sister in law.  He seems dead nice too.  See.  I was a little bit sociable.  If Dave can turn up and be the only boy there and get stuck into it, then I have no excuse. 

Everything was fine.  The entire diet sounds utterly reasonable.  Basically, I think the general idea is that if you fill up on foods with a low calorific content, your metabolism will naturally increase and you'll cut down your portion sizes as a result (e.g. swapping a bacon butty for a huge salad with all kinds of vegetables, eggs and lean meat.  You're eating more but consuming less calories).  Makes sense.

Then I got weighed.

I definitely wasn't expecting a number *quite* that big. You know when you keep telling yourself "Don't freak out, don't freak out, don't freak out, don't freak out!" but inside you're like "I'm freaking out, I'm freaking out, I'm freaking out, I'm freaking out!"??  There was a lot of that.  Andrea, to her credit, didn't even flinch.  Even though she probably thought "Holy hell!" 

Being weighed is never a nice thing.  I don't even think if I was 10 stone I'd like it (if I was any less than that, I'd probably be dead!).  But sometimes you've just got to do these things.  You don't get anywhere by being an ostrich and pretending everything's cool when it isn't.  The only thing I know for a fact is that I will weigh less than that this time next week.

The important things I have learned tonight, then, are as follows:

• I can have a double brandy and ginger *and* a little bar of chocolate EVERY DAY!!!
• The healthiest takeaway you can have, if you're going to have one, is Chinese.
• You'd be surprised at how many people you can fit into a small room with a pair of scales.

It's all good.  I am less freaked out now than I was.  It isn't about the starting weight.  It's about the target weight.  Whatever that ends up being.  Remind me of this.  Please.  Frequently.  I think I might need it.

Well.  After all that excitement, I came home, had two massive chuff off glasses of something warming and am starting to feel a little sleepy.  Tomorrow I'm going to have another bash at sorting out Chapter One of the story.  I'm already plotting out Chapter Two in my head but I really need to knuckle down and get Chapter One to make sense.  More on that tomorrow night...!!