Life & Style

‘I see my belly, and my belly sees me. Yes, my diet has really gone belly up’

Enda Sheppard: I resemble more and more a front-loading camel, stocking up for the long winter ahead. Except it’s nowhere near winter

It’s either make my peace with obese, or gut riddance to the belly. Photograph: iStock
Enda Sheppard
Wed Aug 21 2024 - 06:00

I just can’t seem to shake off this monstrous protuberance that has lately risen from the gaseous depths of my own overworked entrails. My belly.

Actually it’s been here a while, but I ignored it. Just blubbering, I mean blundering along. Eating and drinking as in the days of my flat-bellied youth. Oh, the signs were there...

Rumbling and rippling beneath the flattish plane of my stomach, threatening to erupt, until finally, the beast could no longer be contained, and bubbling upwards, he lifted my lowly lap up with him into the higher spheres, to where it would finally come to rest, stranded, like Noah’s Ark, atop the Mount Ararat that is my very own pleasure dome.

Or my tummy, as I used to call it.

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Of course Mount Ararat could be cockney slang for the dreaded F word that rhymes with cat, bat and splat.

Worst of all, I don’t think this volcanic disturbance has finished yet, nor do I yet know what new geological cycle of bodily dissipation, distortion and dysfunction is upon me.

Nor, I fear, is there a natural subsidence imminent. Not the way I have been feeding this bloated behemoth of overindulgence.

I see my belly, and my belly sees me. My independent gut is growing up – and out – taking on a life of its own now. We’re growing apart, my stomach and I, only we can never be really apart, not while it is a part of me.

The swell season is upon me, and it looks like it’s only going to get sweller.

Lying down, I am especially aware I have become a human landslide of blubber and corpulent catastrophe.

[ We need to talk about excess body fat ]

Any day now, my guts will finally burst through from the depths, a ton of mush and excrement flying through the air... like that exploding monster creature bursting up from John Hurt’s belly in the original Alien movie.

The only person who can do anything about this disquieting development, quell this uprising, is me.

Actually, I can shake it all right, this rising belly moon pressing out my loose-fitting XL shirt, pushing it out, out like a hot-air balloon being pumped for flight and take-off... up, up and away... just like my waist size.

I’m lying in bed and instead of that more or less level incline of yore, my fearful hand slides down until it hits the first foothill of my stomach, and proceeds up a precipitous slope that is soon almost perpendicular to the horizon of my chest and the rest, and pretty soon my hand is lost altogether in the clouded altitude of my upper breadbasket, before finally reaching the peak of this rotunda of flesh. My flesh pot.

Yes, my diet has really gone belly up.

Oh I can blame the awful summer, and the long periods indoors. Or the fact that working from home, my visits to the fridge are more and more frequent, followed by forages in the wilds of the treats cupboard.

I’m like the Cookie Monster in Sesame Street, my eyes popping in anticipation of another blissed-out sugar delirium, burbling out “Cookie!’ as I squash the crumbling confection into my slavering jaws. Or so it seems sometimes.

And I give out to Lily, our permanently ravenous hound, for following in my wake in search of a few of my castoff grains.

I resemble more and more a front-loading camel, stocking up for the long winter ahead. Except it’s nowhere near winter.

Do I get any support or indulgence from my beloved life partner as I ponder my portly predicament?

I finally bring myself to concede that yes, I might be overindulging, sharing some of the imagery that has presented itself to my well-fed imagination.

My good wife is soon chirping romantically about wonderful recipes involving culinary atrocities (my take) such as lentils and sunflower seeds, nuts... tomatoes (which I do like... in a sandwich stuffed with ham, cheese, onion and whatever else I can wedge between two slices).

I am fighting my usual urge to zone out when the topic of healthier eating shoulders its way into a decent conversation. Nothing like talk of diets and calorie counting to make one ravenously peckish, I have found, even as I feign collaboration with the forces of lean cuisine and culinary charlatanism.

Fat-free (aka flavour-free) and all that insipid stuff that those health zealots try to flog in lifestyle magazines and the like... please!

But I have come around to the unpleasant reality that middle-aged spread will never do so thinly again.

And so I must seriously consider confining the full Irish nirvana to the occasional indulgence (oh, let me count the days!) and take knife and fork to mushrooms, tomatoes (grilled, of course), poached egg (two?). “Just one of those fabulous chipolata sausages, pleaseeee!!”

“No!” my well-intentioned tormentor wife will say firmly.

[ ‘We judge people based on size. I have that unique perspective because I was both sizes’ ]

With a lovely Greek yoghurt-slathered potpourri of melon, strawberry and blackberry to follow.

Before I partake of this feast, my recalcitrant tummy must first whine for proper fare… like Bella, our older dog, has taken to doing, when she wants water, taking out, or something we can’t decipher. Pitched at a level no human can resist, it wafts in under the doors of our perception and paralyses the nerve endings. It’s the insufferable sound of fingernails scraping at a locked treats cupboard.

Enough, enough. The time has come to reduce my massif central to a manageable hillock, or a low seafront promontory with a nice view, unimpeded by my paunch.

I will wax and wane: there will be the cravings, and the giving in, the guilt.

I may renounce bread, and be found wandering hollow-eyed, dry-mouthed, muttering “croissant, butter”. Passing couples will glance at one another, one touching the other’s arm, and whispering: “he’s off the bread, you know”.

Enough, enough, this mound of flesh must come down, and it’s all up to me.

It’s either make my peace with obese, or gut riddance to the belly.