Tonight:
5°c
A woman in her mid-thirties with two small children can, perhaps, cope with two people in a row exclaiming, "Wow, another one due!"
But when three people in as many months point to your stomach and smile knowingly, even someone as seemingly thick-skinned as me is likely to shed a self-pitying tear.
This is how I ended up going to the weekly weigh-in which I have dubbed "Fatfighters", in tribute to the Little Britain sketch. My version is more civil and genteel: Rosemary Conley's Diet and Fitness Club in all Hallows Church Hall in Twickenham. Each Tuesday night, it is attended by up to 50 women of all ages, shapes and sizes. The instructors are nothing like Marjorie Dawes (the overweight diet bully played by matt Lucas) although the weekly "diet talk" sounds just a teensy bit like her. And, yes, they really do say things like "nothing tastes as good as slim feels".
Rosemary Conley is still around, looking perky at 61. Celebrating the 20th anniversary of her Hip and Thigh Diet this year, she now presides over a nationwide empire of slimming clubs, the largest franchise of its kind in the UK. There are hundreds of these classes in London, mostly in the suburbs (too much competition from gyms in central London). Putney, Richmond, wimbledon, Tooting, Balham, East Dulwich, Mill Hill East and Edgware all have thriving Rosemary classes. around my way I have discovered there are eight classes a week I could go to.
In four months I have lost a stone and a half (about 10 kilos) by following Rosemary Conley's simple, no-nonsense eating principles and by attending at least two of these exercise sessions a week. Her classes, as I am sure she would like me to tell you, are unique. They feature a weigh-in but unlike other diet clubs, such as weightwatchers, they also have 45-minute exercise classes afterwards. These classes are populated by everyone from arthritic septuagenarians to lithe teenagers. (Not quite sure how the not-over-weightat-all teenagers ended up there but that is part of the magic of Rosemary: many are drawn to her no-nonsense, frills-free attitude.) I have never seen a man at any of them - but apparently men do attend in some areas.
The classes are taught by very ordinary instructors, not a scary Jane Fonda person. At the first class I went to the instructor was eight months pregnant. That's how down-to-earth it is: the exercise is designed for any level, no matter how decrepit. The first 15 minutes of the class everyone queues up to be (discreetly) weighed. The next 15 minutes is the talk, often a reminder of the pitfalls of holidays, parties and eating out. Then the exercise starts. The soundtrack is always entertaining: souped-up techno versions of acts from Gwen Stefani to The Supremes.
Everything is designed to be unintimidating and homespun. If you dream of finding yourself next to Kate Moss in a Third Space Pilates class, this is not the place for you. Some of the class members are seriously overweight. Others are massively unco-ordinated. Everyone is able to laugh at themselves. Indeed sometimes I cannot stop laughing. There is something endearingly life-affirming about a posse of overweight women doing the grapevine to Hollaback Girl in a church hall. There is zero posing. Although if you are in your thirties or younger, there is an added bonus: you automatically come across by default as one of the more youthful and fit members of the class. (Be warned: the pensioners will push you to the front. It's your duty to obey.)
I had decided originally on Rosemary Conley classes because they are not really about dieting, they are about health. What I required was a total re-education: not a diet but a total overhaul of my eating habits and fitness. I needed this because I actually had a far larger motivation than the phantom pregnancy: my children. Lately it has started to prey on my mind that although I make sure they both have a balanced diet and get lots of opportunity to run around, they live with a negative role model - me. Until recently, they had never really seen me exercise at all. I was in danger of becoming a "do as I say, not as as I do" mother. as my daughter Vera turned two this year, I realised I did not want her, especially, to grow up in a house where her mother is constantly on a diet, obsessing about her weight and moaning about how everyone thinks she looks pregnant. I want her to grow up in a way that I did not (my mother was always on a diet) - with a balanced, relaxed attitude to food: all things in moderation and no moral values attached to food (ie, chocolate bad, apple good). In order for her to grow up like this, I needed to relearn how to eat and exercise sensibly myself. The children do not know that I am on a "diet" and they have not noticed that I have changed my eating habits. They just know that I have started exercising more often to "make myself stronger". Fortunately the nuts and bolts of the Rosemary Conley experience are not rocket science. you eat about 1,500 calories a day and you exercise at least twice a week. That's it. The eating plan feels restrictive to an overweight person (which I was and probably still am a bit). I was, basically, just eating way too much food. a typical Rosemary day consists of Special K and fruit juice for breakfast, ham sandwich and salad for lunch, salmon stir-fry for tea. You are allowed a dessert a day (like a diet yoghurt - whoo-hoo!), one unit of alcohol, two fruit snacks and one carefully prescribed "treat". (In my case usually three Cadbury's chocolate fingers. I cannot even begin to tell you how much I enjoy them. apart from the daughter/guilt diet motivation thing, they are probably the main reason I am still on the diet.)
The class just keeps it all ticking over. Previously I never understood why on earth anyone would pay another person to weigh them. Why not just do it at home yourself and enjoy the humiliation for free? But, of course, it's all about the ritual: going to the class is a way of checking-in and formalising your weight loss. There is a discreet camaraderie. Actual weight loss is rarely discussed except by the instructor: we all have different weights to lose and it's tacitly understood that it's unfair to make comparisons. Although there are sighs of envy when someone loses three pounds and is awarded the Slimmer of the week certificate. As for the weekly weigh-in, I actively enjoy the humiliation: it keeps me "humble" and reminds me of my failings. For me, it's an acknowledgement that I will always have to make an effort to adopt a sensible diet (because my natural instinct is to eat everything in sight and slob out on the couch).
But most of all I take the view that it's not worth over-analysing. It just works.
I am very pleased with the results. But never smug. Complacency would be an insult to Rosemary - and the rest of the class. I have, I reckon, another stone to go before I hit my goal, a body mass index of the regulation 25 or below. I hope to get there before Christmas. My phobia of looking permanently pregnant has still not yet quite disappeared. Furthermore, I am sorry to report that only last week someone offered me their seat on the Tube. An outbreak of gallantry? This is what I'm telling myself. Or maybe it's my posture?
