This Life; I’M Still Fat, but I’M Reversing in the Right Direction

Susannah Jowitt

‘Don’t go to fat afterwards,’ was my father’s reaction when he heard that I was pregnant. Which surprised me on two levels. First, I assumed I was fat already, and had been since the moment when that adorable prepubescent football-up-jumper look hadn’t changed, at 12, to a concave adolescent midriff. Second was the phrase ‘go to fat’. Where was Fat? How did I get there? And wasn’t travelling quite hard with a newborn?

Once past the nitpicking, however, he and I were very much in agreement.

Just as I hadn’t been one of those brides who, man snagged, had hung up her sexy clobber and let it all hang out, neither was I now going to be one of those clichEd pregnant mums who banqueted on chocolate milk while ‘eating for two’, only to pay the price afterwards when I had to get rid of more spare tyres than a scrap- metal dealer. This was because I had ‘seen the light’ and was no longer in the market for being a fat person.

‘I had ‘seen the light’ when I was at my heaviest. I was 28, had been single for four years, had been yoyo dieting since I was 12 and had finished writing my second novel, when I had combined a passion for meeting my deadline with a passion for cooking calorific food. I found myself in a situation where my best friend and I were the only single women among a clutch of single males, one of whom was an old friend. He confided in me that, even though my best friend was being pursued by no less than four men, he was also going to try to get a look-in because she was ‘the only single bird here’. Technically not true, I reminded him, as I was also single. ‘Oh, Susannah,’ he concluded sadly, ‘you know, there’s a reason why no one makes reservations in empty restaurants.’ Not even stopping to consider why even the hurtful jokes in my life were food-related, I decided at that moment that I would no longer be an empty restaurant. I was going to bend all the energies that had hitherto been hellbent on fruitless, depressing and self-obsessive starve-and-binge cycles of dieting on becoming fat and sexy.

Not couch potato, seedy sexy but energised, glowing, joie-de- vivre sexy. I was going to abandon dieting and get active from fat bint to fit bird in several slightly spasmodic movements.

I had ‘seen the light’ and it was powerful stuff. Only three weeks later, I met Mr Right. It was love and lust at first sight he fought his way past my hold-’em-all-in pants with great aplomb and, despite what it still said on the scales, we were engaged three months later and married within the year.

This empty restaurant was no longer even taking reservations.

Cut to some years later and, through a lucky mix of moving to Asia (where I feasted on deliciously healthy food) and discovering the carbo-offset potential of exercise, I had lost three stone. Two pregnancies only dented the miracle my morning sickness was so bad that my doctor even begged me to gain some weight: oh, the joy! and I swam, Rollerbladed, jogged and yoga-ed my way back to an approximation of where I had been before.

Then, just after Child Number Two was born, we moved back to London and, without even noticing, the approximation began to blur. It’s been a busy three years, and it was only a few months ago, when I’d finished writing my overview of the craziness that is the dieting world, that I realised I hadn’t actually shifted the baby weight. I still exercise, but the scales would suggest otherwise. I still wear the same clothes, but they’re the clothes I bought just after giving birth. I still look in the mirror and see only perfect curves and marvellous bosoms, but candid-camera photos tell a different story: ‘Who’s that fat woman in the bikini?’ I found myself thinking after seeing last summer’s holiday snaps.

So, despite my father’s warning, it would seem that I had gone to fat. I could have blamed London’s ruinous social whirl and relentless drinking culture. I could have blamed an ageing metabolism, an exercise regime perhaps grown stale, a triumph of my natural greediness and a tendency to finish up the children’s teas. Or I could literally take a leaf out of my own book and not panic: put in a few shortcuts, up the ante on exercise, and, above all, focus on the fact that even though I am unfashionably fat, I am still sexy. A few months later and I’m still fat, but I’m reversing in the right direction. Naked cover shot for the book?

No problem. Corset and unforgiving tight skirt for the launch party?

Okey-dokey. Gone to Fat? Yes, still there but I’ll send you a cheery postcard. Fat, So? by Susannah Jowitt is published by Think Books, Pounds 8.99*

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