A healthy weight is a road trip

Let me tell you about my former gym trainer – “former” because I still go to gym, only not with him. He was beefy and rippling, as a fitness guru should be, but during my mid-morning sessions he’d regularly declare himself starving and then pull out his second breakfast, like a hobbit.

He’d ask if I minded – well, what could I say? – then open the box, and a cloud of hardboiled eggs and cold cauliflower would puff into the room.

Some days he’d change it up: there’d be broccoli and tuna instead. Different food, same result. He was obsessed.

Perhaps he’ll live forever on his diet of cruciferous vegetables and sulphur, but who’d want to?

I’m with a different trainer these days; sometimes we talk about cake.

And now, after many months of denial – water retention, bad camera angle, dodgy scale, etc – I’m on diet, again, I joined Weightwatchers, again, and I’m weighing food and counting points, again.

I already know that a bottle of wine is 23 points, and that I’m allowed 23 points a day, so basically I can live on wine until I hit my magic number.

However, after years of fighting my genes and my jeans, I have had a minor epiphany.

I’ve been at my magic number before, above it and below it too, and I once dabbled in minor anorexia – a box of Smarties plus an apple a day made me thinner than I’ve ever been – but ultimately my weight fluctuates like the seasons: I have winters and summers, with spells in between where the kilos creep up, and back down (only slower).

This will always be. This is how I shall spend my life.

I will live large because I’m not the sort of person who could eat cauliflower and boiled eggs for the rest of my days, and then, to mitigate the effects of cake, wine and long lunches with people I love, I will live small, because I’m not the sort of person who is happy in a built-in fat suit, and I want to be healthy and strong.

There is no end destination to this, no point in the future where I can tick “ideal weight” off on a list and never worry again.

A healthy weight is a road trip, with uphills, downhills, freewheeling, and time for maintenance, until eventually the road runs out forever.

As long as the car doesn’t smell like yesterday’s cauliflower, all is well.