Make Peace With Obese … Or Blow Off ThIs Jelly Belly!

Shake the belly, as in shake it off. 

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

Actually it’s been there for a while, but I chose to ignore it. Just blubbering … I mean blundering along. Eating and drinking away like in the days of my flat-bellied youth.

It’s not like the signs weren’t there …

Rumbling and rippling beneath the flattish planes of my stomach, threatening to erupt for ages, until finally, the beast could no longer be contained, and bubbling inexorably 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.

Of course Mount Ararat could be cockney slang for the dreaded F word … the one that rhymes also 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 disfunction 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, we’re glaring at each other … 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 that I have become a human landslide of blubber and flesh.

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 natural explorer of my own depths and vicissitudes, I know 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 takeoff … up, up and away … just like my waist size.

I’m lying in bed and instead of that more or less smooth 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 consequent long periods indoors. Or the fact that, working from home, the long hours spent here are punctuated by more and more frequent visits to the fridge, followed by forages in the wilds of the treats cupboard.

Did I say treats cupboard? In our house they shouldn’t be called treats, but rather entitlements. 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 …

My belly is like a pannier in front of a bicycle, Except mine is built in. I resemble more and more a front-loading camel, stocking up for the long winter ahead. Except it’s the First of July as I write.

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

I finally bring myself to admit that yes, I might be overdoing it on the food intake front, sharing some of the imagery that has presented itself to my well-fed imagination.

“I feel a blog coming on,“ I say.

“A blog? More like a blob,” she replies, gleefully.

At least her quip has left me, for once lately, a little deflated. 

My good wife is in her element, of course, chirping romantically about the need to cut back, waxing blithely and lightly about wonderful recipes involving such culinary atrocities (my take) 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 know it’s only a start, but I am fighting my usual urge to zone out when the topic of healthier eating shoulders its way into a decent conversation. By now, without any mention of meat or sauces, I would usually be eyes locked but mind shut down as I feign collaboration with the forces of  lean cuisine and culinary charlatanism.

Now if she had broached the word ’vegan’, I might have exploded altogether, or ran foaming at the mouth to the treats cupboard.

She’s much cleverer than that.

But fat-free (aka flavour-free), gluten free, all that insipid stuff that those nut job health zealots try to flog in life style magazines and the like … please!

And yet, but yet, I am coming 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 to the next one!) … and take knife and fork to the very real breakfast concoction prepared by my wife, and well-intentioned tormentor, that is mushroom, tomatoes (grilled, of course), poached egg (two?) … ‘Just one of those fabulous chipolata sausages, pleaseeee!! What, no!!’ …

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

Before I partake of this feast, my recalcitrant tummy must start by whining for proper fare … like Bella, our older dog, has taken to doing, when she wants water, taking out, or — nightmare — something we can’t decipher. This piteous whine persists, and resistance is futile, for it is pitched at a level that no human can resist, no matter how you try, or even succeed momentarily, to screen it out. It will waft in under the doors of your perception and take control of your nerve endings. It’s like chalk screeching on a blackboard, fingernails scraping at a locked door — insufferable. She must be heard and indulged.

So I have to overcome the white noise first … and dig into this banquet. 

I’ve got to ease off, at least, find a way of enjoying my food, without ending up like that character in the movie The Whale.

Maybe I can at least reduce my massif central to a manageable hillock, or a low seafront promontory with a nice view, unimpeded by my paunch.

And I know it will not that easy … I will wax and wane: a few hours abstinence marked by the cravings, the wants, and the giving in … closely followed by the guilt.

I fear I will renounce bread, and in a matter of days, I will be found wandering hollow-eyed, a lost soul, 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 …