The Twelve Months To Christmas

This is the story I didn't submit for my latest assignment.

Just one week after Christmas, my doctor said to me, ‘I’m sorry, Rosie, the tests have come back positive. You do have type two diabetes. Do you understand what this means?’

            I certainly did. Either a lifetime of deprivation, dieting and exercising or a future involving blindness, sugar induced comas (though they sounded strangely attractive) and amputations.

            ‘I’m not really sure, Doctor. I suppose I’ll need to lose weight.’

            Doctor Callaghan’s smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. I remembered when he first came to the surgery. He had brought such freshness and young, virile energy. My Mum’s generation had said what a nice boy he was, whereas I always thought he looked like his Mum knitted his jumpers for him. Those same jumpers now covered a more comfortable belly, and his enthusiasm had waned as the lines around his baby-blues had deepened.

            ‘Hop on the scales then.’

            Hop! If I could hop onto the scales, I probably wouldn’t be in a situation where I had to.  I gazed at the thinning patch on the top of Doctor Callaghan’s head as he manoeuvred the weights along the sliding balance until there was a clunk. A minor adjustment and he stepped back. I held up one hand.

            ‘Don’t say it out loud, Doctor. We’ll look back on it and smile when I’ve halved it.’

Just two weeks after Christmas, I went to CBT.

            ‘So, Rosie.’

            In the past when I’d been to counselling, the room had been redolent with therapeutic oils, the sofas had been deep and comforting and the sounds of waves on the shore had calmed the emotions. CBT, it seemed, was different. We used one of the doctors’ rooms and the therapist sat side-on to the desk, clipboard at the ready.

There was nothing soothing in the seventies built, city centre surgery with its thirty years backlog of poor maintenance and creeping damp. The curtain was pulled across to hide the couch but a tap dripped into the sink by the frosted window and the corners of the posters instructing you to ‘Get Your Flu Jab’ and ‘Wash Your Hands’ curled off the walls. The generic logo whirled around the computer screen and there was a tangle of blood pressure monitors and stethoscope tubing pushed to the back of the desk. The building always seemed too hot  and stuffy to me. I could see the germs basking in the heat, lying on their backs, hands behind their heads, as if floating in a nutritious soup, multiplying, smiling, coming for me.

            ‘Tell me about a point in the past week when you have overeaten.’

            I racked my brains to isolate one example from the many. I loved eating. I loved food. I loved cooking and sharing.

            ‘Erm, perhaps when I’d cooked dinner for my friend and she couldn’t make it so I ate both portions’

            ‘So. What thoughts were going through your head as you ate?’

            ‘I don’t think I really thought anything. I was fed up she’d let me down and there was nothing on tele, so I just ended up eating it all.’

            ‘And how did that make you feel?’

            And so it went on. What were my thoughts? How did it make me feel? It seemed that ‘full’ isn’t an emotion and perhaps I was using food to avoid dealing with my feelings. No shit, Sherlock! I went away with homework. I could identify the feeling on that one. I felt like a child again and that was not a comfortable feeling.

On the third week after Christmas, I went to join the gym. I stood at the bottom of the stairs and watched two sylphs in lycra take both flights at a run. I couldn’t embarrass myself by taking the lift up to the initiation session I’d booked. It seemed like cheating before I even started. I was passed by two more couples who smiled sympathetically as I hauled myself up using the bannister. I waited at the top until my breathing had slowed. I was glad I’d opted for the gray track suit as it wouldn’t clash with the beetroot of my face. I leaned on the wall and looked at the double doors which were all that stood between me and a fit new life. They were dull gray with a small, square window in each. The looked for all the world as if they were prison doors and I could almost hear the sound they’d make as they clanged shut behind me. Claustrophobia tightened my chest and I made my way slowly back down the stairs and across to Starbucks.

On the fourth week after Christmas, I decided to walk myself thin. I was feeling rather virtuous. My CBT diary showed that I was following the techniques we’d discussed. I’d bought a smaller plate, ringed with red, because research shows that people eat less off a red plate. I wondered idly if the same applied to red food and how long I could stay on an exclusive diet of tomato ketchup and red cabbage. But idle was not the emotion of the day (if it was an emotion – I’d have to ask). My gray track suit was still in the washing basket as it had been soaked in sweat after my abortive trip to the gym the week before. It seemed important psychologically to look the part, because I needed to stride out, not dawdle if I was going to be successful. I decided on my black leggings with walking boots,  a day-glo yellow cycling jacket that a previous boyfriend had overlooked when he packed to leave and – most importantly – a sweatband around my forehead. I added the final touches with my ipod, pre-loaded with Gorillaz for the energetic phase and a Chill album for the cool down, and a bottle of water. I would have to buy one of those special bottles that you could put your hand through, which would act like a weight to increase my calorific expenditure. So, loaded with the right vocabulary and the right attitude, I set off to the park.

On the fifth week after Christmas, I ran myself a bath. It was the only thing I could think of to stop myself power-eating through the contents of the fridge. I’d run through all the CBT techniques. My thoughts were that I’d been on a proper diet for three days now and my feelings were basically raw hunger. I’d been out for a walk again and was soaked to the skin. I’d like to say it was the sweat I’d worked up but it was actually that gray, dismal drizzle that seemed to have replaced the story-book snow of my childhood. I’d done the park every day for a week now and felt I’d seen all it had to offer.  In the meantime, I needed to get warm and stay away from the kitchen. Preparing the bathroom took on the air of a ritual. I found the cream bath sheet, which would fit all the way round me, and hung it over the radiator. The water was steaming and fragrant with oils - wintergreen for the aches and ginger for its appetite suppressant qualities. I turned on my i-pod, docked it on the windowsill, lit the candles on the toilet seat and lowered myself, groaning, into the bath. Paul McKenna’s voice lovingly reassured me that he could make me thin.

On the sixth week after Christmas, it all felt such a faff. It was still raining and my thigh muscles were so sore that even lowering myself onto the toilet for a wee was agony. My research had shown that pacing was an important skill and so I decided that today would be a rest and planning day. Every time I got hungry, I sniffed one of my essential oils and when I got desperate about three o’clock, I dripped some vanilla essence under my tongue. My God! I felt virtuous and sick with hunger. Never mind my clothes, it felt like my skin was hanging on me. There was nothing left to fill it. My body was eating itself.

On the seventh week after Christmas, I went back to be weighed. Luckily the appointment was immediately followed by a CBT session and we were able to talk about coping with setbacks and disappointments. Because it was weigh-in day, I’d skipped breakfast and hadn’t even risked the weight of a coffee. I sat now, surrounded by my fat, arms folded across my ample bosom and glowered at the thin thighs and prominent cheekbones of the woman in front of me.

            ‘So, tell me about a point in the past week which has been difficult for you.’

The CBT was working. The decision was so much easier this time round.

            ‘Well, half an hour ago when I discovered that I’d only lost a pound in spite of all my efforts, that has to be a contender.’

            The sarcasm hit her professional armour and slithered to the floor, unnoticed.

            ‘What thoughts were going through your mind?’

And so it went on until I broke.

            ‘ I thought, what’s the point? It’s like everything I do. I give it my best and it isn’t enough. I wasn’t thin enough to keep Jez and I’ll never be thin enough. I’ll just get fatter and fatter and no-one will ever want me and then I’ll die.’

            ‘And how does that make you feel?’

            ‘Are you kidding me?’

            She looked at me over those little half-moon glasses that she wore at the end of her nose. That curly, graying hair was so, so…middle-class.

‘I feel lonely. And sad. And useless. And ugly.’

‘And do your friends see you as useless and ugly?’

‘I suppose not. They’re always on at me to come out with them. They say it’s not as much fun if I’m not there.’

‘Okay.’ She dropped her gaze and blinked hard.  ‘Can I suggest that until our next session you behave as if you are not ugly and useless. Perhaps you could behave as if you are that person that your friends can see. How do you feel about that.’

I felt okay. Perhaps lunch would be a salad after all.

On the eighth week after Christmas, I was getting what I’d craved. I bet you think it was chocolate and latte with whipped cream, don’t you? Well, you’re wrong. I told them at work I was coming to the girls’ anti-Valentine night out after all and you’d have thought I’d won the lottery and promised to share it out. Sharon and Dana (‘Pronounced Day-naah, long final vowel’ as she always introduced herself) leaned on my desk with their pert derrieres up in the air until the office manager coughed meaningfully and we all got back to the job in hand. Lunchtime had never been so easy. I’d brought a sandwich and didn’t even pinch one of Dana’s chips. What’s more I walked back up the stairs to the office, three flights, and only had to spend five minutes in the toilets before I was fit to go back to my desk.

On the ninth week after Christmas, I went to Slimming World. Dana was a long-term recidivist and had signed up already to lose the half a stone she’d put on over Christmas. She had half a stone that she repeatedly gained and lost over the course of a year. We were all kept up to date on her successes and failures in minute detail. Dana didn’t do any of the meal planning, that was too much bother. She just had two of the shakes every day –  ‘two hundred calories and all the nutrition I need’ – and went twice a week, at five pounds a time (sterling), to be weighed. In between times, when she was putting the half stones back on, she didn’t worry about nutrition much, she just replaced the calories. I, however, intended to learn the lessons they had to teach me. ‘A diet is for life, not just for Christmas’, as they say. I thought they were joking when they brought up the subject of ‘syns’ in the introductory talk. What thoughts went through my head when she said described the syns we were allowed? I thought , if I was going to have a sin, I’d want a proper one. Sloth, for example, or greed. Somehow fat-free chips didn’t have the same appeal. The weigh-in was good news though. I’d lost five pounds at last. On the way home, Dana stopped for a kebab. I left her to it and walked back through the park as fast as my shrinking legs would carry me.

On the tenth month after Christmas, I felt like a new girl. Sharon, Dana and I hit town to find something to wear for yet another night out. Between us we tried on pretty much every dress and top in the High Street. We tromped through the shopping centre, arms linked, doing that leg braiding walk that had us crying with laughter. We rocked up to the changing rooms with arms full of clothes and argued cheerfully about how many we could take in. Okay, once inside, I slunk off into a cubicle leaving the other two to display their wares in the open plan bit but I’d come out to show them or get my zip done up and even to look in the mirrors and take artistic selfies. I hadn’t been clothes shopping since I left school. The occasion that broke me was when my Mum had dragged me round to find something for the Leavers’ Ball. She’d actually walked out and left me when I’d commented loudly that they ought to have wider aisles in shops for fat people. I had thought she was going to hit me right there and then. I didn’t go to the Ball, I just left school.

On the eleventh month after Christmas, my GP said to me,

            ‘Well! You’ve worked a miracle here. Your tests are all within normal range and you’ve lost more than two stone. How do you feel about that?’

            D’you now what? I knew what I felt about that. I felt proud and happy and I felt twenty five not fifty five.

            ‘I’m really pleased.’

            ‘I don’t need to see you again unless you have any problems.’ Dr Callaghan leaned back in his chair, hands behind his head and beamed. I walked out past the reception desk; I didn’t need to book another appointment. I went down the stairs at a trot and past the pharmacy entrance. I didn’t need any medication either. I unlocked my bike and set off for the gym.

           

            Now it’s twelve months after Christmas and time for a parteee!