Fat Woman is defrosting

Fat Woman and Personal Trainer have been having a froideur. Fat Woman is not entirely sure that it was solely her fault, but would guess that Personal Trainer would think it was. Fat Woman is prepared to acknowledge that she has been poleaxed by the following:

(1) Boxing injury. Fat Woman could feel the muscles in her arms were tight and not right. A trip to the osteopath about her knees ended in a return trip the same day to fix her arms. Osteopath said that in all his career he had never seen a bicep that tight "without being torn". Fat Woman allows that the muscles were awfully tight but thinks that someone who was probably at school with Personal Trainer can't have had that long a career. Osteopath did some manipulation of her arms that was uncomfortable, but it was the work he did on her deltoids and the pectoralis minor which made Fat Woman actually yell. A return trip a week later and Fat Woman is still feeling myofascial pinching. Given that Fat Woman dedicated herself to her super healthy lifestyle in order to keep her arms in use and to recover from an incredibly severe case of computer based RSI it was an incredible shock to find herself back at square one. This isn't Personal Trainer's fault, but Fat Woman would appreciate a bit more concern. Personal Trainer is meant to be looking after Fat Woman.

(2) The food issue (see last post). Fat Woman thought she had been getting on awfully well. After Personal Trainer persuaded her to have a diet review Fat Woman agreed to adjust the balance of her diet, swapping carbohydrates for fat. Fat Woman has been eating a low GI diet for five years. Her "good" food has been carbs. Hungry? Eat a piece of toast. Need lunch when out? Grab a sandwich. Taking bread out her diet leaves a hole which Fat Woman has not been totally able to fill. Scrambled eggs on toast work. Scrambled eggs on Ryvita don't work. Of course, Fat Woman could eat bread if she wanted to, but she's going with the plan for a bit. The constant thinking about food is wearing Fat Woman down when she had been so free before.

(3) The food monitoring issue. Fat Woman's one big food issue is that she hates it when people monitor what she eats with a view to controlling it. This stems from the attitude of people who thought that Fat Girl didn't need to eat because she was fat. When Fat Woman was talking about people withholding food when she was hungry to Swimming Coach he exclaimed: "But that's torture!" Fat Woman adores that man sometimes; he gets it.  Fat Woman hates, hates, hates it when people make uninformed judgements about what she is putting into her mouth. Despite Fat Woman having two days of fraught correspondence culminating in a face to face serious talk with Personal Trainer about the fact she had issues with people allowing (or not allowing) her to eat, Personal Trainer jumped into this bear pit with both feet. Ironically, he did so when Fat Woman was waiting for him to discuss her diet plan.

Personal Trainer had chosen 11am as the time to meet. He was more than an hour late, so Fat Woman was late for lunch. Fat Woman's diet is like quantum cryptography: the very act of looking at the data causes changes. Fat Woman had not eaten as much as she could have for breakfast and was in desperate need of food. When Personal Trainer came to find her at nearly 1 o'clock Fat Woman had just taken the lid off her Marks and Spencer's prawn salad. For international readers, Marks and Spencer have a premium grocery store famed for excellent convenience food. The prawn salad had been on special offer at just £2. Fat Woman would have been happy with any of the following reactions from Personal Trainer:

• "I'm sorry I'm so late." 
• "I'm sorry that I am so late and I also can't talk straight away because I have another client."
• "A salad? Well done. Those prawn salads are low in carbs and calories and high in protein."
• "I'm really sorry that my lateness is messing with your eating."
• "Don't eat that! I'll buy you something better to keep you going until we can talk."
• "Do bring the nutrition label of your lunch to our talk so we can discuss it along with your meal plan."

Fat Woman would have actually preferred Personal Trainer to say nothing. Fat Woman agrees with Mr Ronan Keating, that when it comes to nutrition Personal Trainer says it best when he says nothing at all.

What Personal Trainer actually said when he got Fat Woman's attention after appearing behind her as she sat on the steps outside the gym was: "I don't like those."

Since giving up Diet Coke Fat Woman no longer suffers quite so badly from low blood sugar. This is lucky because Fat Woman's car couldn't take many more dents. However, whilst Fat Woman is able to be hungry for a while there comes a point when she takes on a demeanour not dissimilar to the Hell Hound in this video:



Like the poor maligned beast in this video Fat Woman is a cute and cuddly being most of the time. That time ends when Fat Woman goes past hungry and very hungry into FEED ME NOW! Yes, just like Audrey 2.



Fat Woman tries not to become a snarling, slavering beast but honestly, she had just peeled back the shiny cellophane and hadn't even had a chance to dig her fork into the lovely fresh, crunchy salad and then this whippersnapper starts making oblique comments such as: "I don't like those."

Instead of yelling: "Who the hell cares?" and scooping out a handful of prawns covered in marie rose sauce to shovel into her mouth, Fat Woman hung on to her civility. It was only just, but Fat Woman is quite fond of Personal Trainer and didn't want to slaughter him on the spot, if only because she needs him to turn up at 11.30am on Monday. The civil response Fat Woman came up with was: "You mean you don't like prawns? Or do you mean you don't like me eating prawns?" Fat Woman didn't intend to put a savage emphasis on the last sentence, but quite honestly what can anyone expect when they stop a fat woman from eating a lunch, the very lunch from which they have been keeping her? That Personal Trainer went on to divulge that he disliked such salads because they had mayonnaise in them was a testament to the young man's blinkered certainty that he was (a) right and (b) other people should know this.

Fat Woman saved Personal Trainer from certain death by telling him that she would catch him on the other side of his training session when she wasn't so low in blood sugar that a doctor would make her eat glucose. Fat Woman ate her salad, which had been quite spoilt, and met with Personal Trainer an hour later, when he told her that he wanted her to reduce her carbs from 220g daily to 100g and to replace the calories with fat.

Unfortunately, the damage was done. Personal Trainer had effectively plastered a DANGER - MINES sign over himself. Fat Woman was constantly waiting for him to ask her what she had for breakfast and tell her how she had failed in some way. It made Fat Woman quiet in training sessions, almost to the point of hostility. Fat Woman couldn't help it; she no longer felt safe. This made Fat Woman feel very sad as Personal Trainer had been her rock for nearly six months. Personal Trainer is a sensitive little puppy and picked up on Fat Woman's change in mood, and Fat Woman knew this, but there Fat Woman simply didn't have a handle on her feelings yet. Withdrawn and compliant and not too sarcastic was the best she could manage.

(4) The thyroid issue. Fat Woman is concerned about the impact of eating low carb on her thyroid hormone levels. Fat Woman has read that a low carb diet can increase reverse T3. The end result of this is that she would feel like death but the blood tests available to her wouldn't show any change. Fat Woman isn't going to discuss this with Personal Trainer because she doesn't think he knows about this. Nor is Fat Woman keen to discuss it with her GP as they are such generalists they are unlikely to know about anything other than the eat less move more edicts.

Fat Woman has done a lot of thinking and has decided that Personal Trainer is not allowed to talk about nutrition unless she brings it up or it is at monthly review. Fat Woman now feels a lot better about this and found she has defrosted no end. Taking responsibility for the situation (which she feels is a very adult thing to do, especially when she would much rather someone said ohh! poor baby) Fat Woman texted Personal Trainer the night after training:


I am not really grumpy moody client. I'm just poleaxed because I started training to keep use of my arms, and now I'm sitting back at square one. I'm just scared. I'll get past it by next Monday. Sorry. 

Fat Woman lied in this text. Hurt arms is not the only reason she is upset. It might not be even the major reason, but she didn't want to lose the friendly, positive relationship she had with Personal Trainer. Fat Woman does feel that Personal Trainer is responsible for some of her predicament - he certainly never said "Don't hit anyone too hard, you could damage yourself" - but he obviously does the best he can with what he has. Fat Woman is trying not to project too hard and doesn't need him to acknowledge any culpability.

Personal Trainer didn't mention the text but he did make an effort to seek out Fat Woman, even making time to do in the gym rather than waiting until they crossed paths in the café. Fat Woman knows Personal Trainer well enough to take this as an expression of concern. Fat Woman was more her usual cheerful self after this.

Fat Woman is still on her guard though.