No secrets between me and those darn scales

IWAS given a pot of clotted cream in the week. It looked lovely, the finest Devon could make, thick, golden and smooth. “I could knock up some scones,” I thought, salivating over the thought of those warm, mouth-watering little goodies coming out of the oven all toastie brown.

Moving towards the kitchen scales I remembered the ones that sat, censoriously, on my bathroom floor. I’ve just bought these – they not only tell you your weight (all lies) but your body mass index, how much water you’ve got, your fat (more lies) and your body muscle (that sounds OK). It links with my phone and I can’t escape the truth. Yes, I know I bought them – seemed like a good idea at the time. But when I got on them after my old ones, I’d immediately put on an extra kilo. So being the ostrich that I am, I’ve kept the old set next to the new ones and depending on my mood will select the most flattering.

OK, I know this is ridiculous, but cut me some slack. I’ve been on dry January and not lost an ounce. I’ve followed Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s latest book slavishly, loved every mouthful, but have eschewed all the puds, biscuits and sweets and still those damned scales don’t budge. I’ve even wondered if there’s something stuck in them, which is what caused me to buy the new ones. Nada, nothing, not even a biscuit crumb.

So, as I reached for my kitchen scales, they clearly communicated, like Big Brother, to the ones upstairs. Guilt made me aware of the collusion and I felt as uncomfortable as if I was bringing in six bottles of whisky through Duty Free (if you can remember what that was).

Donning my hair shirt, I determinedly grabbed the pot of cream and marched it along the road to my mother-in-law. She squealed with delight, went straight to the kitchen for a spoon and high-tailed it up her stairs where I knew she would climb under her electric blanket and watch Fox News or any other medium that praised her hero, Donald Trump. There, according to past form, within minutes that pot would have been scraped dry. She has no shame. Before Easter she buys various children chocolate eggs. If she can get to me in time, she brings them along for us to store. Usually she doesn’t and they disappear, like the cream, in record time and she has to buy more nearer the date. But hey, she’s 98 and if I get to that age, I hope I’ll be able to indulge with as much sheer enjoyment as she does. Though I’ll skip on Trump and any of his toxic wannabe successors, thanks.

Scales make life very depressing. I mean, “a little of what you fancy does you good”, I think. It’s knowing what “a little” is. As I’ve written before, my real career ambition is to be a professional fridge clearer – preferably for someone like Gordon Ramsey or Nigella Lawson. I can quite easily jump from shelf-to-shelf shovelling food in as though I’m on the end of a sushi conveyor belt. Hmm, a lone chocolate éclair? Seems mean to leave it. Down it goes, along with the final scoop of peanut butter. That chicken wing won’t last till tomorrow, nor will that bit of goat’s cheese. Custard? Yum, it’s got skin on it, down it goes, slurp slurp. Taramasalata? Why not.

Then I buy the scales, which immediately start policing my life. If that’s not enough, some clever Public Health England survey gets published. Bang go my career aspirations, my LinkedIn dreams, because a Norwegian study of 25,000 people in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health recently reported that comfort eating doesn’t make us happy. Where do they find this nonsense? Just watch me crank up – I’ll have a smile as big as a watermelon slice.

Apparently during lockdown we’re raiding the biscuit tin for “emotional eating”. I must have been locked down for a very long time – probably from birth and am clearly very emotional. Eating cakes, chocolate and junk food gives a short, drug-like kick apparently, making us feel briefly better about ourselves. Well, just eat more, I say. Live life on a perpetual high – or in my case it could land up being high and wide.

Sadly, like the scales, there’s no escaping the truth because eating processed comfort food quickly negates all our efforts to eat healthily and our gut biome will be knocked for six and we’ll be more susceptible to all sorts of horrible things, including Covid.

Sandra Sunram-Lea is a professor of biological psychology at Lancaster University. She blames “go on, you deserve it” junk food advertising for giving us the wrong idea about mood-lifting fare. “There’s a placebo effect in all that packaging and promotion that primes us to believe, wrongly, that we’re getting comforting treats that will make us feel alert and happier,” she says, and reckons we’d be better off with a banana. Glumly, I know she’s right. Maybe I could just have the cream with the banana? No one will know, except those damned scales…….

My real career ambition is to be a professional fridge clearer, preferably for Gordon Ramsey or Nigella Lawson

A new set of scales is policing Charmian’s life, she says