Fat Girls Guide To Fat Camp - Part 2

       It would be safe to say that more than a few days have elapsed since this post and the previous – I could invent some mistruth and tell you that I have been so engrossed with this new diet and exercise regime that I just couldn’t find the time to type. When you exercise as much as I do you get sweaty fingers which are a nightmare on your keyboard, absolutely impossible to type, oh the hardship!  Or maybe I could tell you that my amazing-ness has finally been noticed and I will be on next month’s Cosmopolitan; I just can’t keep up with my new socialite status. Ooh, or I could tell you that Chris Pine paid me a social visit and I’ve had him locked away in my ‘50 shades of Grey’ style room since (PVC really brings out his eyes).

(Chris in PVC trousers on our spin across Connemara – 2013 heat wave)

(Chris – listening to me recite some poems – in PVC trousers – Connemara, 2013 heat wave)

Well, if I told you any of that it would be a pile shite. 

The truth is, since deciding to go on a diet I’ve done absolutely nothing but eat! I’ve eaten things I never knew my cupboards held.  I’ve eaten things others never knew their cupboards held. I’ve eaten things I’m fairly surely weren’t all that edible! I’ve stalked the house looking for hidden treats and when I couldn’t find any I actually walked to the shop on the pretence of buying fruit and vegetables (I know...what are those?) and I’ve emerged from the shop with 3 bags of rubbish. You name it, I bought it.  As long as it didn’t look healthy we were on a winner.  And all that time around the supermarket that unfortunate phrase reared its lollipop head:

 – I’ll start again tomorrow – no you won’t you fat fecker – I will definitely start tomorrow AND I will do some exercise – will you fuck, you lazy heifer, if you did any exercise you have a heart attack! – I promise! Just let me have this 7kg bag of chocolate! I promise I will make an attempt to consider moving more. – A moment on the lips, forever on the hips...not to mention that arse and belly – Fine! I’ll get a smaller bag but I’m having Ice-cream now too! – If you eat anymore you’ll never fit out your door!-  I said I will start tomorrow! 

My subconscious could not win against the sudden starvation my body felt it was undergoing at the mere mention of a diet.  So I ate it all, every last bit of rubbish and now I’m twice the heifer I was before I started the ‘diet’.  Moo! Moo! I’m beginning to think the jaw wired shut is the way to go! A liquid diet is definitely the answer - at least you can still have alcohol.  Needless to say I didn’t go to fat camp last week and I’m not going this week either.  It’s going to cost me a fortune in re-joining fees at this rate but I’m scared stiff I may be the first member to break their scales!

 I have been somewhat proactive in the last 11 days. Somewhat.  I could say it was enthusiasm to get healthy.  But I think it was guilt, a deep unsettling catholic guilt.  The guilt you get when you know you have committed all seven deadly sins in the last hour; the guilt that will not let you be wasteful; the guilt that makes you do stupid things - productive things.  I willingly rooted out my exercise bike and freed it from the manacles of clothes it has languished in.  I willingly moved it into a good position with a view of the TV and I willingly plonked my fat derrière on the saddle and peddled like I was chasing after a Cornetto. 

(Expensive clothes horse – otherwise known as exercise equipment)

The whole ordeal only lasted 30 minutes.  Do you know, it’s very hard to peddle, watch TV, breathe, cry and laugh all at the same time? I was grateful I had the good sense to close the curtains; god help the neighbours if they had copped an eye of my jibbly bits in full momentum! By the end my skin had turned a wonderful shade of death; my heart had more beats than a David Guetta track.  And my arse, my poor arse was crying with the mistreatment of it all.  As I got off the bike I could feel my arse apologising to the saddle...'So sorry there...yes, I can imagine that was quite uncomfortable for you...yes, I realise that was 30 minutes of darkness...I understand you are now scared for life...I'm quite embarrassed myself, I don't normally sit in such hostile places!' In my mind the bike was screaming, crying out for the clothes to hang limp and weightlessly from it.  It was screaming for my ‘heifered’ stature to get the feck away from it so it could recover from the shock.  

All the next day I walked with a limp.  I couldn’t sit on anything hard and was smirked at endlessly.  What they thought I had been doing in my spare time made me seem a whole lot more interesting than I thought I was ever capable of.  My verdict? Exercise is fatal to a good and innocent reputation; it should be avoided at all costs; and as for the diet? I will start again tomorrow! I promise. 

Fat Girl's Guide to Fat Camp - Day One

“If you put your mind to it, you can achieve anything”  - A catch all phrase to rationalise your long list of failures.  Whoever came up with that saying should be shot.  I don’t for one second imagine that if I put my mind ‘to it’ I could make Chris Pine my sex slave. Nor do I imagine that if I put my mind ‘to it’ I could enter and win the Rose of Tralee. Do they mean everyone’s mind and how much do you have to put ‘to it’?  Here’s the problem: I am a heifer.  Unequivocally and shamefully.  Moo!  I’ve tried most diets known to woman.  The first week is always amazing...I convince myself that in those seven days I’ve shrunk down to a side 6, so trim and lean, sideways I’d surely slip through a grate.  I spend seconds persuading myself I am slinky and perfect – Then I’m suddenly impervious to making rational food choices.  Cream cakes? Oh, If you insist! Did you know if you close your eyes there are absolutely no calories!  That’s probably not true but when your mind is as warped as mine you believe your own shite.  Once you fall off your diet and bruise your fat arse it’s very hard to heft yourself back up.  I have an unfortunate disposition that after one week I’m convinced I know everything anyway, so what can these happy-clapy-fat-camp feckers teach me anyway?

Humility for one perhaps.

 Sometimes I fantasise about being kidnapped, trapped for weeks on end without food: crying because my captors are gorging on KFC or Supermac’s; or if they are up market kidnappers - homemade scones with jam and fresh cream.  I image that my sharp, astute wits and that module in Strategy will allow me to formulate an escape plan with more twists and turns than ‘Prison Break.  With my ‘Walking Dead’ survivalist knowledge and abundance of charms, I envisage myself making a triumphant escape and being a desirable, skin and bone size to fall lustfully into Wentworth Miller or Andrew Lincoln’s arms.  But who the feck am I codding?...kidnappers are looking for a light candidate; not one that would take half a rugby team to heist into a transit van and the potential to bald your tyres after 5 miles. 

    I think the worst part of being a heifer is the pitying looks and words of condolences: 

‘I’m sure you will grow out of it...it’s easy to fix...it just takes time...if you exercise more...if you just opted to have your jaw wired shut like I suggested...you may as well give up...have a new career goal, a bucking bronco perhaps...he probably would have asked for another date if you didn’t eat the entire stock of the restaurant...that chair definitely had a wobbly leg...I’m sure they make it in a bigger size...’

   So what’s to be done when you are almost on all fours using your tail to swot flies away, lowing in the dusky evening? I guess trying again is always a good start.  With an impending wedding just 4 weeks away it’s about time I try to shed some pounds...if only so I don’t have to walk with my back pressed against a wall hiding a gaping zip and back boobs.  Attractive huh?  

The first rule of starting a new diet is to eat the entire contents of your fridge and cupboards in one night. Seriously, you don’t want to have to pick through the bin on your lowest moments.  It’s very important to make sure you have enough reserves to undertake this gruelling task.  This may be the last time you admit to eating chocolate and crisps.  It’s a fact universally acknowledged that skinny people don’t eat that stuff, they like to lick laminated pictures of it instead.  

The second rule is to have a good support network.  Fat camps can help you succeed but make sure you are in a group full to the brim with elephants.  It wouldn’t do to attend the class with those who are nearly at their goal – you will look like the photo taped to their fridge. Your aim should be to look like the trócaire kid in every class! Also it helps if you enlist the support of your fattest friend.  Meet up regularly to size her up and feel better about yourself.  If you find you do not have a friend fatter than you – then that’s just rough - do not engage in any ‘coffee and chat’ meet ups...they are looking at how your arse wobbles and thighs jiggle.  Do not trust anyone!

The last rule of starting a new diet is to give it a chance.  Be open to change.  I know you are perfect they way you are...I know you are knowledgeable about everything...and I know you only have a few pounds to lose before you are a supermodel: but just give it a chance.  For me, I have to go back with my tail between my legs...turns out I didn’t know everything and maybe this happy-clapy-fat-camp feckers can help me put my mind ‘to it’ before my arse needs to be photographed to carry its own passport.  

Fat Girls Guide To: Behaving Like a 'Grown Up' - Prologue

I sat at the edge of the bed, laptop perched on my disappointingly ample thighs, clicking furiously on facebook.  Somebody has to be awake, for feck sake, I can’t be the only one alive at this hour of the night, I thought.  My agitation dipped and peaked with the snores to my left.  My useless man ‘friend’ had taken up my room, my life and most disastrously of all, the frigging bed.  He was breathing like a walrus or Tegan after her usual bout of exertion.  I wondered if perhaps some stray animal had wandered into his chest cavity and was yelling to get out.  Contemplating as whether to kick him I weighed up the consequences, it would most certainly rouse him – and the last thing I wanted to do this late at night was rouse anything!  I could always shave him to teach him a lesson; but again I feared he might wake up, cock in hand and a sultry pout to boot.  Men! A pest when awake and a nuisance when asleep.

      The laptop let out a beep alerting to one of my friends being online.  Well, it’s about frigging time.  Which sorry sack of lonely is it, I wondered.  I clicked the window open and up popped Tegan’s face.  Her new profile picture showed how deluded she still was.  In her finest attire and with a face only her mother could love, she believes her pout to be a siren of sex and desire.  Owff! Even on a dark, moonless night a man could not find any need to wander towards the face of a one eyed weeping leper. 

‘Hey Hun, how are you?’ I keyed into the computer.

‘I’m gud, u? Huh, I guess yer not so well, lol, obv yer boyfriend can’t keep an erection long enough 2 take your attention 4rm here!’ she replied

My jaw dropped, she was starting on me, and I’d been nice.  

‘At least any man I’m with can achieve an erection in my company...it’s not my fault you have a face that promotes gayness.’

‘Well, yer boyfriend didn’t think so last night...oh don’t bother waking him, he is prob still exhausted 4rm our rendezvous.’

‘He did say his arms were aching, that must have been from trying to fight your enormity off.’ I retorted.

‘Omg! Aw, I have missed u.’ Tegan replied.

Our spats, as she calls them are a joke to her, for me, its real life.  With my wits and her grotesque face, I was the winner, hands down.  But summer was starting and we would be forced upon each other again.  Another year in College over and another year of day time TV had revolved for Tegan.  This summer would be different though, I would be a fully fledged and legitimately intelligent member of society.  Having graduated with a 2:1 I could hold my head high, not only had I proved my worth, but somehow I had successfully managed to juggle an oh-so thriving social life.  I’m not saying I am a whore, even if I had my fair share of midnight knocks on the door. 

‘When u bk chicken pie?’ she continued.

‘Getting the famine ship in a week, can you wait that long?’

‘I will have to! I have big news 4 u!!!’ She typed back.

Ah crap, her big news was either trivial or unbelievable and either way just awful.

‘ooooh, what’s this big news?’

‘I will show u when yer back. So how’s things with what’s his face?’

‘Ah you know yourself; these men are too much hard work.’

‘Tell me about it!’ Tegan relied (yeah, as if she had a fecking clue!) ‘U look’n 4ward 2 moving home? ;-)’

Like a hole in the head! The thought of having to live under my parent’s roof was giving me the hebegebies! How in god’s name would organise an orgy or master those creaky stairs after a late night of slamming tequila? Sure, I would be in some state, and only the lucky, lucky, man I pull should be privy to that ordeal.  Hum.

‘Yeah, can’t wait, should be a blast!’

‘Yer such a liar...I can see yer face 4rm here!’

For a second I thought my camera was on, Jesus, the things we’d been doing earlier today better not be floating around the internet.  When I’m famous (I’m already incredibly hot...could be a model or something) I wouldn’t want that creeping up - I didn’t put my full into it.

‘It will only be for a while, until I find somewhere else.’ I rationalised, more to myself than anything.

‘My folks are pissing me off...lol, I need sum space!’

‘They are pretty annoying...’ (And inbred, I wanted to add.)

‘So I’ve been sorta lookin round 4 places 2 rent.  There is a nice 1, rite in da centre, fairly cheap and der are 2 rooms for rent.  What do ya think?’

I weighed up my options....living with dad the ‘grumpy arse’ or living with Tegan the ‘fat arse’? At least the press would be chock-a-bloc with food! I’m sure I could make it my mission to make Tegan somehow human, a good spiking should do the trick, and she’d be good craic alright.

‘Go on then, I’m sure it will be great!’

‘Brill, I will sort it all out! This is gonna be great! Will fill u in on my HUGE news when ya get back, see ya soon! xxx’

     Shit, shit, shit, fecking shit! She must have somehow found a man friend and I’m leaving mine! Or maybe its herpes, in which case she better not fecking show me. 

I switched off the laptop to mull things over; Tegan’s news must be grand if her fat mouth can lock it in for another few days. 

     I turned off the light and lay in bed.  He was still breathing, a good sign, I suppose, or at least I thought it was until he started farting in my Egyptian cotton bed sheets.  In a huff I pushed the bastard hard until he rolled right out and on to the floor with a winded bang.  Jumping up with a mock sleepy face I looked around the room.

‘What happened?’ I yawned ‘What are you doing on the floor, you fecking eejit?’

He rubbed his elbow furiously ‘Did you just push me?’

‘What?’ I asked incredulous, ‘Push you? Are you out of your small mind? As if I’d push you...in my sleep!’

‘You did, didn’t you?  You’re fucking crazy, you know that right?’ He said rolling back into the bed. And I’m the crazy one? If I suspected someone had just pushed me out of a bed, I would go one further and think that they didn’t want me there and therefore would feck off and sleep elsewhere!  What an Idiot!! 

‘Shut up and go asleep!’ I barked.

He wrapped one arm around me and placed the other under my neck.  I was trapped and to make matters worse he was poking me in the back, and not with a stray elbow.  I began to snore loudly, hoping he would get the hint.

‘Hey, Clodagh.’ He whispered.

I snorted in a somewhat vague I’m-busy-passing-out way.  He shook me awake, his face inches from mine.  He planted his lips on mine.

‘Let’s have a quickie!’ he pleaded

‘Oh stop with the romance like, and for the last fecking time, no!’

‘You never want to do it when I do.’

And even in the dark I could see his pout.

‘Well, if you don’t like it I suggest you feck off home, sort yourself out; and let me get some sleep.’

He sat up in the bed insulted ‘You actually are the biggest bitch I know!’

‘Hey! Less of the big please!’ I was highly offended.

‘Is that all you can say? Right, I’m leaving!’

‘Grand.’

‘And I’m not coming back, no matter how much you beg’ He continued.

‘Great, that’s settled then.’

He clicked the light on and commenced locating his clothes.  Pulling on his superman t-shirt I realised just how silly he was.  Toy boys are an over-rated luxury!

‘I thought we had something special...’

‘We did honey, until you ruined it.’ I replied.

He stood in the doorway with his clichéd face and sentiments.

‘So this is it?’

‘Yup, afraid so, don’t forget the pull the door after you.’

‘You’re heartless.’ He sobbed his way out the door.

Before the door clicked shut I had a change of heart:

‘Wait!’ I yelled

He was in the room faster than I could fake an orgasm.  He had a proud and vindicated smile on his face.  I had a smile too:

‘Don’t forget your smelly boxers!’

I wasn’t washing them then and I certainly wasn’t doing it now. He sobbed even harder and muttered madly about being mistreated.  It was his own fault really; he had to have known that.  You can’t deprive a woman of sleep and expect her to love you for it, can you?

Family Holidays

    Family Holidays?  Aren’t they just the greatest experiences ever?  And doesn’t it get even better when you realise you will be spending two weeks with them inside a tent?  Think of the benefits, you are never more than two feet away from your family – at all times.  I get a warm glow when I look back on my past holiday experiences:  a warm intense glow of utter despair and anguish.  The phrase “Lord save me” (literally) is never a far reach from the tip of my tongue.  This is normally how it stars out:

      Saturday morning and Dad screams down the house for us the get out of bed. 

    ‘We should have been on the road hours ago.’

To which we all enthusiastically shrug our shoulders to say, ‘so’? Dad then harasses us as we sit down to breakfast.  The oak cabinets are nowhere as wooden as his expression.  His face crinkles into the contours of a map and he howls the entire time we digest our toast and annoyingly slurp our tea from the good china cups (Mam will have to soak them later, to his determent).  She pats him on the back and tells him to mind he doesn’t have an embolism.  To which I snigger and earn a clip in the ear for my troubles.  Oh, he’s a hard man alright, just wait until he gets an eyeful of what I have in store for him.  Then he asks the dreaded rhetorical question “will you bring your bag down?” Bag? Huh, he should be so lucky. We all scamper upstairs and spend a half hour packing the cases; obviously we are enthusiastic about sending entire minutes of bonding with Dad.  One by one we creep the cases downstairs.  He has already started to play Tetris with the boot and gradually we deposit an extra item of luggage as he turns his back. 

    ‘Who the feck owns this?’

Mam points an accusing finger in my direction.

    ‘I thought this was your case?’ Dad groans pointing at an object that takes up half the ford estate.

    ‘It is.  That one is mine too.  Oh, and don’t forget this one.’

    ‘We’re only going for two weeks! What’s all that crap?’

I proceed to tell him one is for clothes, one for shoes and one for accessories, make-up and reading materials.  I earn another clip in the ear for what he assumes is me being a smart-arse.

Mam gets off scot-free with all her luggage because he is too busy focusing on what extra’s I’m sneaking into the car.  With the boot packed up and finally clicked to a close, Mam commences cleaning the house.  And me?  I’m left to help him attach the trailer tent to the back of the car.  There I am standing like a twat, looking at this gobshite, straining  himself lifting this stupid contraption and getting flummoxed that I’m too weak to help.  He continues to attach wires to connect the car lights to the trailer.

    ‘Twiddle it a bit, no that’s not how you do it.  What are you at?’ I demand.

Red in the face he politely tells me to ‘fuck off’.  I accept his invitation.  An hour later, boot pad-locked, trailer attached and his loving family dragged out by the ear, we start our journey.  We all pile into the car; mother, father, brother and me.  Yes I’m the one moaning and casting worried glances out the rear window.  Then he starts.  Then other insignificant individual I have the unfortunate pleasure of sharing the already cramped enough backseat with.  He narrows his eyes and sticks out his tongue, taunting me.  Only a few years out of childhood, I revert to my old ways.  Discreetly my fingers somehow manage to find their way to his arm.  I squeeze and pinch him hard.  He yells, the car swerves and suddenly I’m being given a lecture on what I cannot do while dad is driving the car. 

    Silence then penetrates the air almost as thick as the smoke being emitted from my father.  I keep my mouth shut; I don’t want a lecture on what adults can do in a car.  

Through bleary eyes I watch hills, green and grassy roll on by.  Mock enthusiasm takes a firm grip and I ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ just to keep the peace.  Suddenly my breath does actually catch, for there in the window’s reflection, I see him; his middle finger dancing joyously, waving, jesting and beckoning for a response.  I turn to face him, innocence dominating his face but still the finger wriggles and his blue eyes hold the gesture.  Just as I am about to tell on the wicked little being, my attention is diverted to the rear window, fears materialising, for off pops the trailer tent and halts yards behind us.  I roar.  Chaos rules the car.  Confusion.  Finger dancing.  ‘oohs and aah’s’ all gone now, only screams left as the tent now rolls its way down the steep hill the car huffed and puffed its way up. I could feel the car’s pain and unwillingness to do it all again, after all would you?

            Dad stops the car and runs with his entire might, lungs tightening and wheezing, he thinks maybe he shouldn’t have had  that last cigarette. Eventually he grabs hold of the trailer tent and yells frantically.  We all sigh and heft ourselves up from our seats and join him – at our own leisurely pace.  Together, as a family we push the blooming thing all those stressful yards back to the car. 

     With the tent fitted back into place we carry on deeper and deeper into the wilderness of rocks, more rocks and strangely enough sheep on rocks.  Needless to say the roads aren’t amazing, with potholes and blemishes likes Dad DIY un-handyman-ship.  The contents of the boot rattle furiously as do the contents of my confectionary laden stomach.

‘Pullover for feck sake.’

Dad catches a glimpse of my frantic face, pursed projectile lips and the hurried rolling down of the manual window.  The tyres screech to a halt and I spew my guts up by the side of the road.  

‘That’s it, get it all up, better out than in.’ Mam says while chomping on my unfinished mars bar.  I wretch even louder watching her swallow it.  Her stomach was weaker than she thought and next minute she was by my side, not patting me on the back, rather matching my spewing pattern. 

‘Hurry up or i’ll leave ye here!’ Dad yelled.  To which he got two angry vomit covered females glaring at him.

‘Okay take your time...just keep it out of the car.’

Smack bang in the middle of some godforsaken stretch of road, my brother decides he has to go.  Really, he could have picked a better spot.  So we stop and off he pops behind the nearest bush.  I smile and say to Dad: ‘Isn’t that an American camper van over there?’  My brother sticks his head up from behind the green mass. ‘What?’

Too late, they have already snapped themselves a picture of the lily-white Irish bum.  Thank god the phrase ‘kiss me, I’m Irish’ wasn’t even contemplated.  Red cheeked and burning with embarrassment  he scrambles back to the sanctuary of the car.  Quietly I laugh, priceless!  Later, much later we arrive at the campsite, it is packed except for one spot and I soon discover why.  The plot of grass has a steep gradient, of course that would be fine if you didn’t mind the blood rushing to your head while you sleep; or on a wet night, finding that your bed was suddenly in the kitchen compartment and you were now sliding out the door.  But being up a hill with a tent which has wheels is beyond a joke.  Dad insists it’s perfectly level, now  if you trust his eyesight you will trust anything. 

            We begin to unload; quietly I curse the world and my parents for not being normal.  As if in answer the heaven open and down pours torrential rain.  Dad starts to swear, I run for cover and Mam…? Well, she disappeared long ago when work was apparent. It rains and rains some more, bemusement establishes itself within me as grim defeat spreads over dad.  Suddenly a ray of light peeps through the clouds and the heavens shut their floodgates; perhaps they thought I was getting too cocky.  I’m force out of the car, but I won’t go quietly.  I stamp and splosh in the wet grass and refuse to let grace find me. 

            In theory the tent with wheels is supposed to just fold out.  Yeah right.  Well it certainly proved a whole lot more difficult than had been anticipated.  Poles fly and hit Dad square in the head.  He begins to yell obscenities; I don’t think even the oxford dictionary has come across the likes of that type of flowery language.  He pinched his fingers in the telescopic bars and more poles just collapse from above.  I giggle uncontrollably.  Seeing my hysterical state Dad effortlessly swings the poles and hits me hard in the stomach.  I fall to the ground.  Now he is the one doubled up with laughter.  Again, my immature evaluation of the situation leads me to commit an unforgivable sin; I call him one of the words he had so eloquently used and throw a stone at him.  I missed, but that’s not exactly what has him so upset.  He bounds around after me, I skid and slide and shriek in absolute terror.

            Unexpectedly my brother swings open the car door, curiosity getting the better of him.  I just about manage to avoid the collision but Dad isn’t so lucky.  He falls to the ground winded, dizzy and disorientated.  I’m relieved; he looses all his motivation to kill me.  The sky then darkens and my bother shuts the door with a bang.  Rain clouds reform and thunder rolls overhead.  Mother springs from wherever  her hiding place was and dives into the car.  I follow her example leaving a dysfunctional father to get soaked, it served him right anyway.  Finally sense begins to break through and he staggers with great effort into the car.  ‘We’ll put that bloody thing up when it stops raining.’ He growls.  Abruptly lightening flashes in the background.  I spin around and there stands a sizzled trailer tent, wheels spring off refusing to hold up the charred canvas load.  It’s no surprise then that we book into a five star hotel now is it?