Love Is a Thief (8 page)

‘The effect of love is that there is a whole section of my wardrobe filled with clothes that no longer fit. I am keeping them in case we ever split up.’
(Jane, 33)

‘I’ve put on weight.’
(Miriam, 23)

‘It’s like I didn’t value myself any more. I fell in love, we got engaged and leading up to the wedding I had this goal: come hell or high water I was going to be skinny on the day. But after that I sort of gave in to it and the weight started slowly piling on.’
(Clarissa, 38)

‘I got really fat. I am really fat. I stayed fat. Thanks, Love.’
(Rosanne, 47)

‘For me it was hardest after the kids arrived. I just couldn’t shift the weight I’d gained. And it seemed selfish to insist that I needed time out a few times a week to go to the gym or for a run; my husband didn’t have time to do these things so why should I? And I wasn’t really sure what my motivation was. To say it was just about feeling good about myself, feeling sexy and enjoying my body seemed inappropriate. I was a wife and a mother, not a hormone-filled teenager. So maybe love stole my focus? It was certainly that lack of focus that ultimately played a massive part in the destruction of my marriage. I didn’t feel sexy. I started to dislike myself and my body. Eventually he felt the same way.’
(Hina, 42)

the birth of fat camp

the boardroom | true love

T
hey sat there nervous. They sat there scared. Some of them sat there defensively as if they had already changed their minds in the lift on the way up and now, faced with a hyperactive Federico, who had changed into a white T-shirt that said ‘skinny people are happy’, were going to do everything possible to stay the size they were. One had her hand in a bowl of red
Haribo
, a second was munching her way through a bag of
Kettle Chips
, a lady in the far corner was nibbling on one of those chocolate diet bars that tells you it’s fat free, which of course it is, it’s totally fat free and 100% sugar-coated and will make you balloon faster than a hydraulic tyre inflator. In fact the only person in the boardroom who wasn’t eating was Chad. He stood silently in the corner watching Federico, who was running from lady to lady telling them they were all
so much more beautiful
in the flesh before grimacing at their headshots pinned on the wall.

Bob, the man we had all been waiting for, finally arrived at 10 a.m. He was a famous motivational speaker from California and was going to be
Fat Camp’s
life coach: the positive voice to help make the positive change that would positively reduce in a negative decreasing way their physical size. He had called
True Love
as soon as my unauthorised advert had gone to press.

‘Kate …’ he had said, sounding exactly like Woody Allen (and on meeting him I discovered he was the exact same size). ‘Kate, this is such a wonderful idea. People become stuck, Kate. They become stuck. To give them a chance to realise their dreams, however small or large, to let life surprise them, in a good way, well, that is truly a wondrous endeavour. I want to be involved.’ He then emailed me a hyperlink to a TED talk
⁴
on achieving change, and a 10% discount for his new book available on Amazon and Kindle.

‘Ladies, we all know that certain foods aren’t good for us,’ Bob began, positively beaming at the room. ‘We know that exercise can make you thinner, that if you exceed your calorie intake you’ll store the food as fat. We probably also know that a lot of people get bigger when they fall in love. There are literally thousands of studies published on the subject. But I don’t want to talk about that. I want to talk about the woman who lives down the street from you, let’s call her Catharine. Catharine meets a new guy. She falls
in love. She moves in with him. Someone asks you how Catharine’s doing and you say “Oh, she looks really well,” but what you really mean is that she looks really happy and she looks really
really
fat, because that is what most of us do. Not the Brangelinas
⁵
of this world—us, the real people, the normal people. We meet someone. We want to stay in with them. We want to kiss them. We want to feed them nice food. We’ve waited so long to meet this special person we want to
indulge
in it. And we should. And … we … should! Plus our boyfriend says he likes our new curves. We love him so much we find his squishy new tummy so cute and sexy. But when the honeymoon period comes to an end, and it always does, you don’t feel sexy and curvaceous any more. You wonder why you can’t fit in most of your clothes, why your thighs spread to fill the chair when you sit down, or your boobs barely fit into your bra. And that’s before we mention those bat wings under your arms, or your bum that is bigger but also somehow closer to the ground like a blancmange slowly sliding off a plate. And his love handles, they’re not so lovely any more. And everyone feels a little bit less sexy and a little bit fed up. You have lost your body and somewhere along the way you have lost a little bit of yourself, while gaining a whole load more of yourself if you know what I mean!’ He beamed. The room was very very quiet. Bob did nothing to fill the silence. He just looked off into the
middle distance, for ages. Eventually his thoughts came back to the room and he put his hands in a pray position, resting his index fingers on his lips. He looked from face to face before speaking.

‘I’m sorry, guys, I can’t lie to you. You all seem like really nice ladies, you really do. So I have to admit that I don’t know anything at
all
about weight loss.’ There was a group gasp and the
Fat Campers
started looking to each other, and to me, to see if he was joking. ‘I don’t know anything at all about diets. Everyone in this room probably knows more about calories and eating plans. You all,’ he said, pointing to the headshots on the wall, ‘you
all
already have the information you need to be slim. You could probably open your own healthy-eating university and lecture on it. Fat people always know a lot about food.’ He nodded his head, then shrugged his shoulders. ‘You have all the facts and yet you are all
so
fat.’ He crossed his arms and sat heavily in Chad’s red heart-shaped chair. ‘And yet you are all so fat!’ Bob yelled. This time the group gasp was louder, angry, insulted. Bob bounced excitedly out of the chair and started smiling. ‘And that is why I am here!’ And now he was speaking fast. ‘We don’t need to overthink this. Two plus two doesn’t need to equal four. We don’t need to know the facts. Knowledge doesn’t lead to solution. Do you think the smokers of the world don’t know cigarettes cause cancer? Of course they do!’ he squeaked. ‘But they can’t stop! Do you think the alcoholic thinks drinking is improving his life, making him smarter, sharper, richer? No! But he drinks anyway. People can’t stop. Knowledge doesn’t equal power. The fact that you haven’t lost weight
in spite
of your
knowledge is not your fault. We are
all
the same. But for those of you in this room, today marks something new. The way we will work is in 30-day blocks. Every 30 days, as in every month, we will try something new. Anyone can commit to one thing for 30 days. I know a man at
Google
who lives his whole life by the 30-day rule. Every month he promises himself he will do something new. In the month of August he learnt a Spanish word every day. In July he gave up sugar. In December he took one photograph every single day and made them into a photo-book. His life is coloured by new experiences, of growth and development. And he could pack so much in. One month he made himself write 1,500 words every day. Some days he wrote total nonsense, but he did it anyway. At the end of it he had 45,000 words. That’s the length of some novels! So he self-published and now he’s got his own book of nonsense!’ The room giggled. ‘Sounds like fun, hey! It is fun. So we start today, and our 30-day challenge this month is that we will all do one form of physical exercise, together, every single day. One thing, even if it’s just for 15 minutes. The more fun, the better. No questions asked. All we have to do is show up every day, just show up, and we will arrange everything. Everything you need is here.’ He nodded to Federico, who started handing out Peter Parker’s gift packs. ‘And showing up will be a common theme throughout our experience together. If you tell the universe you really want something and every day you show up for it, you turn up, you drag yourself out of bed and you yell, “Universe, I am here! I want this! I need this! But I can’t do this alone, help me!” you will be surprised how often the universe delivers. And what you ladies
don’t realise is that you already did just that. The day you wrote to
True Love
, the day you agreed to join this programme was the day you set an intention, showed up and said, “I want something! I need something! Take notice! Here I am!” And guess what, people? Guess what? We took notice. This is the beginning of your new life. Welcome.’ The room burst into rapturous applause while Federico sat weeping in the corner.

‘I am a Human Fountain,’ he mouthed at me before blowing his nose into an enormous silk hanky then running into the middle of all the over-excited ladies and squeezing them all very very hard.

⁴
TED Talk
- TED.COM - website with hundreds of inspirational talks from an assortment of incredible people. TED believe in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and, ultimately, the world. Their website offers free knowledge and inspiration from the world’s most inspired thinkers, including Bob.

⁵
Brangelinas
- Brad and Angelina, somehow greater together than the sum of their parts. Ridiculously skinny and beautiful in spite of love, and childbirth and crippling work schedules. In short … not the norm.

pepperpots life sanctuary

‘to be a star you must shine your own light, follow your own path, and never worry about the darkness for that is when the stars shine brightest’
(anon)

T
he floating restaurant at Pepperpots is one of the most bizarre eating establishments I have ever come across. It’s a circular building constructed in the middle of a giant lake accessed by a wooden footbridge that resembles the Millennium Bridge
⁶
. The restaurant itself stands one storey high, is completely glass-walled and has two enormous decked terraces on either side. And it was here that I had been instructed to wait for Delaware O’Hunt, the movie starlet from the golden era of the silver screen.

It had taken some time to secure a meeting with the elusive
Delaware. She’d cancelled twice, not shown up once then one day, out of the blue, she’d called and invited me to come and meet. We’d agreed upon the afternoon before Pepperpots’ annual fireworks display and I’d arrived early so I could watch Grandma in all her organisational glory. She was coordinating the evening’s sparkly event and I could see her on the shoreline assembling a herd of volunteers who just happened to be a gaggle of handsome axe-wielding men. Grandma had them chopping large bits of wood, dragging around heavy pieces of scaffolding and generally doing anything that might result in them getting hot and sweaty and taking off their shirts. As yet another man removed all but his trousers and boots I noticed out of the corner of my eye the legend that is Delaware O’Hunt step gracefully onto the deck. She walked purposefully, no, she
glided
across to meet me. She was rumoured to be close to ninety years of age but looked a glamorous and beautiful seventy. She wore dark glasses and a camel-coloured wool coat and as she crossed the deck in the last of the autumnal rays it felt as if the sun’s sole purpose were to illuminate her. Every head turned, in the restaurant, and from lake’s edge, and even Grandma, not a gesticulator at the best of times, waved manically in the distance. Delaware waved back before gracefully seating herself on a chair next to me. I on the other hand sat heavily, as if under the influence of a completely different gravitational pull. I shifted my chair to face her. She stayed exactly where she was. Then she began absent-mindedly stirring warm milk into her coffee.

‘Kate,’ she said to me from behind dark glasses. ‘When your grandmamma explained to me your idea I was unsure
how I would be able to contribute.’ She spoke in a slow and considered way, every syllable carefully pronounced, the words trickling like honey wrapped up in the thickest Texan drawl. ‘I am from a different generation from you, darl, so I can speak my truth but I’m not convinced anything I say will resonate with the women of today.’

‘I’m sure—’ I squeaked before clearing my throat and starting again. ‘I’m sure everything you say will be relevant.’ I was practically whispering. ‘So many women are trying to balance a working life with a relationship, with having kids, with maintaining friendships and hobbies.’ I could barely look at her. ‘You were among the first generation of women to do this. You are exactly who we need to speak to. You started the revolution,’ I said, performing a gentle and uncommitted fist shake while looking slightly past her right shoulder.

‘That’s sweet,’ she said, placing my fist-shaking hand back by my side. ‘But it didn’t feel like a revolution, that’s for sure. Back then, when I was working all the time, I felt mostly overwhelmed, sometimes a little scared and almost always unsupported. It was a man’s world and I was a silly little girl who had accidentally ended up with a big career. Certainly to the outside world I had it all. I was acting with some of the greatest actors of the time, with incredible directors, I had to kiss some dashing fellows as part of my day job, most of them gay if the disappointing truth be told, but for the early part of my career I always remember feeling somewhat empty.’