FATGIRL SEEKS VITALITY

By Anna Crystal

Every year I vow that I will appear at the Vitality Show in London looking svelte and lovely, the kind of figure that Posh Spice would whisper, How does she do that? But every year I appear at Olympia fatter, dishevelled and desperate.

THE ROAD TO ENLIGHTENMENT IS PAVED WITH SNACKS

After listening to Rosemary Conley talk herself hoarse for an hour in a speech that would inspire a size O to diet, I follow her around as if she is the Pied Piper back to her stall and am dutifully rewarded with a plastic bag containing a magazine and a pen. Clutching it like it’s the last map to the Holy Grail I scuttle off into the crowd to exercise to Native Drums. However, I am sidelined by an organic sausage and collapse on a giant fushia bean bag musing that I put on too much mustard and relish. Oopps! One hour and much heartburn later I shuffle over to where a crowd of people are listening to Ian Marber talk about his nutrition program which advocates three meals and two or three snacks a day while combining carbohydrate with protein to stabalise blood sugar levels. He talked of his recent appearance on Richard and Judy where he took several children with health problems and changed their diets. After several weeks on his program their health and weight improved. While he talks about being kind to yourself and allowing yourself eat a few treats 20 per cent of the time if you are healthy 80 per cent I cheer up when I hear he does allow himself a coffee a day. Unfortunately at that point I gave a loud belch and sixty or so people looked in my direction so I had to slink off to another stall.

Still desperate to decide which slimming book with become this year’s summer bible as they all contradict each other I study each of them. The problem is they all contradict each other and lets face it PMT week if anyone came between me and my high salt snacks and comfort chocolate they’d end up on ‘Forensic Detectives’.

There must be a magic formula and if anyone knows everything it is Patrick Holford, the founder of the Institute of Optimum Nutrition who was next to give a lecture about his new creation GL which is a bit more complicated than GI Diet. I looked pleadingly at him but I fear he recognized me from every seminar for the last 20 years and writes me off as a hopeless case.”

Can’t say I blame him.

Meanwhile key workers of the show were endlessly handing out bit size samples of chocolate and I stood there eating as many samples as I could stuff until two security guards threatened to carry me bodily from the hall. So with reluctance I moved on…

Then, in a sugar indused fantasy haze, I spied a woman who could tell me the answer to my ultimate question: How can I get slim?

Joanna Hall, celebrity fitness guru and author of countless books, looks incredible in the flesh, what there is of it, and is unbelievably nice, upbeat and positive. Yes, she assures me, I can be slim as long as I do the secret thing that all Celebrity Fitness gurus know, it is, wait for it: walking! Yes, she invited me to join a walking club. So lets review, I pay someone to walk my dog and then pay someone to walk me. Maybe the dog and I should get together.

On arrival home I gleefully inspect my goody bag which contains tea bags, a make up bag, samples of various food bars which promise everything and taste like last years Christmas cake left out in the rain. I don’t think I cracked it this year as Dorathy would say “There’s nothing in that basket for me.” Perhaps a good fairy will arrive in a bluebell and make me slim Until then I’ll be back at Vitality next year looking just as desperate and sending Patirck Holford into therapy. As Bruce Springsteen says, “No retreat, no surrender.” Ha! That gives me an idea! Two weeks at a retreat eating only filtered water and wheatgrass would start my diet Oh no..better have a pizza as starvation is imminent! Watch this space! Till next year!