RESTORING HAIR SHINE
Until I was in my late 40s, I was a complacent ectomorph – narrowhipped, flat-stomached, small-boned despite being tall (5 feet 9 inches) and so effortlessly slender that many of my girlfriends envied my ability to eat nonstop - and drink like a sailor on shore leave - without putting on an ounce.
I’d pour 3 heaped spoons of sugar into each of the 5 cups of tea or coffee I got through every day.
I’d merrily knock back several super-sweet, highcalorie whiskey/rum/brandy-and-cokes-or-sprites most nights, while carousing into the wee hours with equally indefatigable boozing companions.
I was a huge fan of desserts that were drowning in thick dairy cream. My favourite savoury dishes were the fattiest cuts of meat (bacon, ribeye steaks) and ugba, the delicious Igbo delicacy that is known as “African salad” and drenched in palm oil.
I frequently ate enough for three people in one meal and never steamed, boiled or grilled anything that could be fried. And it’s not as if I made any serious attempts to at least partially offset these gluttonous binges and alcoholic excesses by exercising.
Ironically, I’d been something of a sports star as a teenager growing up in the UK. I was voted Games Captain by classmates at school and even won awards.
But when I arrived at the University of Leicester, I fell in with a bunch of fast-living, fun-loving reprobates and decided that pubs, wine bars and hangovers were way more interesting than tennis, athletics, gymnastics and clear-headedness could ever be. And this somewhat immature mindset persisted for the next 3 decades.
Sure, once in a while, in my 20s, 30s and 40s, I’d try to be a good girl and make my way to various gyms to meet my more health-conscious chums for aerobics classes…or join them for brisk early morning walks. But such rare forays into the realm of wholesomeness and physical exertion were halfhearted and reluctant.
My default setting was Classic Couch Potato and Unrepentant Barfly. In a nutshell, I couldn’t be bothered to control my calorie intake – or to burn calories via exercise – because I didn’t need to deprive myself of culinary delights or sweat to stay slim. I remember being amused to discover, at one point in those halcyon days of unbridled and unpunished hedonism, that I could easily fit into my then 9-yearold son Oliver’s T-shirts. And then it happened. When I was nearly 50.
All of a sudden, my body rebelled with a vehemence that shocked me; and I stopped getting away with abusing it. My previously speedy metabolism slowed down to a crawl. My previously unbloated frame succumbed to Middle-Aged Spread. And most of the clothes in my wardrobe became unwearable.
I was shuttling between Nigeria and Europe at the time; and, by the way, there is a BIG difference between Nigerian and European attitudes towards weight issues.
It’s a cultural thing.
As far as most Nigerians are concerned, it’s fine for females to be chubby even when they are young, never mind when they are mothers or grannies. Here, it is expected that one will be larger at 50 than one was at 20; and most Naija ladies don’t feel bad – and aren’t made to feel bad - about becoming chunkier as they age or about sticking to roomy kaftans, bubus
22 or wrappers when they cease to be spring chickens.
Whereas in Europe, women who are past their primes doggedly aim to fit into outfits they wore as students. Bikinis included. And because I spent my formative years in Europe, I shared the average white woman’s profound fear of fatness and was utterly traumatised by my rapidly expanding waistline and hips…even though Nigerians often assured me that I looked “nice and fresh” and “better with some flesh on you.”
As the kilos relentlessly piled on, my selfconfidence plunged to rock bottom. And I’ve spent the past decade desperately trying – and spectacularly failing - to discipline myself to shed excess baggage by eating a lot less and exercising a lot more.
In 2015, I was kidnapped in Port Harcourt and had to be sedated when I was released. The medication, which I took till 2018, worsened my weight problem; and by the summer of 2019, my obesity had become so extreme – I was 120 kilos or nearly 19 stone! - that even relaxed fat-tolerating Nigerian pals began to express concern.
Then, while I was in London last autumn, my knees almost completely caved in from the sheer pressure of all that lard. I could barely walk and had to return to Nigeria in a wheelchair. But can you believe that despite this indignity, I STILL continued to eat like a pig, drink like a fish and carry on as if sugar was an absolute necessity?
I hired competent physiotherapists who enabled me to ditch the wheelchair. But there is only so much a therapist can do for a stupid self-destructive patient; and because I didn’t offload any blubber, every step I took was excruciatingly painful.
I hated myself. I set myself deadline after deadline and kept missing deadline after deadline. First it was that I would start a diet programme on my 60th birthday last October. Then it was that I would start when I started a new job on November 1st.
Then it was that I’d eat to my heart’s content on Christmas Day and start dieting on Boxing Day. When Boxing Day became yet another food binge, New Year’s Day became the new deadline. Then every single Monday since January 1st was supposed to be D-Day. But no diet plan ever lasted beyond lunchtime. And I developed the habit of lying to folks who confronted me about my obvious ill health and limited mobility.
If anyone suggested that I confront a weight problem that was clearly dragging me down, I’d say that I was already confronting it and had “recently” commenced a diet.
Then – finally! – last month, I decided that enough was really, really, really enough…and that “fatshaming” myself by going public with my weight loss struggle was the best way of motivating myself to get rid of the 35 kg my doctor says I must jettison if I want to avoid diseases like diabetes, heart attack and stroke.
This diary will catalogue my experiences as a fat person, other peoples’ feelings about fatness, the practical/medical/emotional/financial difficulties that fatness can generate and the ups as well as downs that I encounter as I try to escape from fatness.
I hope you enjoy sharing the journey with me.
DONU KOGBARA IS AN ARISE TV NEWS ANALYST AND A VANGUARD NEWSPAPER COLUMNIST.