Constant mission to get thinner

Idid something unthinking recently: I commented about somebody’s body, directly to them. Now, I would never comment on another person’s chubbiness – as an occasional chubster myself, I know how awful it is – but I looked at this lovely woman, slim and fizzing with energy, and noticed she’d lost weight.

“You’ve lost weight,” I said quietly. “Is everything okay?”

Her ever-smiling face collapsed.

“Can you actually see it?” she said, because she had lost weight, though she knew not how.

So off she went to the doctor, fretting, where she was tested for everything. Happily, she’s fine.

The difference was her old-fashioned Spanish mum had been staying and cooking her speciality, delicious Mediterranean vegetable dishes, from scratch. The weight loss was incidental.

So I think we need to talk about other people’s bodies – fat or thin.

I go to a weekly weight-loss group, and there I sit, feeling smug amongst the nutrient newbies – of course honey “contains sugar!” – but I actually learn things too, and I like that here people talk freely, without censure, about their lifelong battles to keep their waistlines in check.

Me, I fight the same 10kg which creeps up uninvited if I don’t keep constant guard, so I walk everywhere and I go to gym, but some of these women – and one token man, in case we need things mansplaining – have lost and gained their own body weight many times over.

We are literally all shapes and sizes, from all walks of life, with one shared yet highly personal mission: thinner.

Yet it’s almost funny what happens when people lose weight.

One of the women, proudly down 15kg, ran into an old acquaintance who immediately mentioned her new streamlined look, then delivered the clincher: oh-my-god-was-she-ill?

Now, firstly, former porkers don’t always like to be reminded of the kilogrammes they’ve left behind. And nobody, ill or not, wants to be told they look unwell.

So instead of talking about deposits new or departed – which comes loaded with judgment – how about simply saying: “Wow, you look fabulous!” Interventions are for doctors. And, fat or thin, people already know.

They’re just hoping, desperately, you haven’t noticed.