Bob, the man we had all been waiting for, finally arrived at 10 a.m. He was a famous motivational speaker from California and was going to be Fat Camp’s life coach: the positive voice to help make the positive change that would positively reduce in a negative decreasing way their physical size. He had called True Love as soon as my unauthorised advert had gone to press.
‘Kate …’ he had said, sounding exactly like Woody Allen (and on meeting him I discovered he was the exact same size). ‘Kate, this is such a wonderful idea. People become stuck, Kate. They become stuck. To give them a chance to realise their dreams, however small or large, to let life surprise them, in a good way, well, that is truly a wondrous endeavour. I want to be involved.’ He then emailed me a hyperlink to a TED talk4 on achieving change, and a 10% discount for his new book available on Amazon and Kindle.
‘Ladies, we all know that certain foods aren’t good for us,’ Bob began, positively beaming at the room. ‘We know that exercise can make you thinner, that if you exceed your calorie intake you’ll store the food as fat. We probably also know that a lot of people get bigger when they fall in love. There are literally thousands of studies published on the subject. But I don’t want to talk about that. I want to talk about the woman who lives down the street from you, let’s call her Catharine. Catharine meets a new guy. She falls in love. She moves in with him. Someone asks you how Catharine’s doing and you say “Oh, she looks really well,” but what you really mean is that she looks really happy and she looks really really fat, because that is what most of us do. Not the Brangelinas5 of this world—us, the real people, the normal people. We meet someone. We want to stay in with them. We want to kiss them. We want to feed them nice food. We’ve waited so long to meet this special person we want to indulge in it. And we should. And … we … should! Plus our boyfriend says he likes our new curves. We love him so much we find his squishy new tummy so cute and sexy. But when the honeymoon period comes to an end, and it always does, you don’t feel sexy and curvaceous any more. You wonder why you can’t fit in most of your clothes, why your thighs spread to fill the chair when you sit down, or your boobs barely fit into your bra. And that’s before we mention those bat wings under your arms, or your bum that is bigger but also somehow closer to the ground like a blancmange slowly sliding off a plate. And his love handles, they’re not so lovely any more. And everyone feels a little bit less sexy and a little bit fed up. You have lost your body and somewhere along the way you have lost a little bit of yourself, while gaining a whole load more of yourself if you know what I mean!’ He beamed. The room was very very quiet. Bob did nothing to fill the silence. He just looked off into the middle distance, for ages. Eventually his thoughts came back to the room and he put his hands in a pray position, resting his index fingers on his lips. He looked from face to face before speaking.
‘I’m sorry, guys, I can’t lie to you. You all seem like really nice ladies, you really do. So I have to admit that I don’t know anything at all about weight loss.’ There was a group gasp and the Fat Campers started looking to each other, and to me, to see if he was joking. ‘I don’t know anything at all about diets. Everyone in this room probably knows more about calories and eating plans. You all,’ he said, pointing to the headshots on the wall, ‘you all already have the information you need to be slim. You could probably open your own healthy-eating university and lecture on it. Fat people always know a lot about food.’ He nodded his head, then shrugged his shoulders. ‘You have all the facts and yet you are all so fat.’ He crossed his arms and sat heavily in Chad’s red heart-shaped chair. ‘And yet you are all so fat!’ Bob yelled. This time the group gasp was louder, angry, insulted. Bob bounced excitedly out of the chair and started smiling. ‘And that is why I am here!’ And now he was speaking fast. ‘We don’t need to overthink this. Two plus two doesn’t need to equal four. We don’t need to know the facts. Knowledge doesn’t lead to solution. Do you think the smokers of the world don’t know cigarettes cause cancer? Of course they do!’ he squeaked. ‘But they can’t stop! Do you think the alcoholic thinks drinking is improving his life, making him smarter, sharper, richer? No! But he drinks anyway. People can’t stop. Knowledge doesn’t equal power. The fact that you haven’t lost weight in spite of your knowledge is not your fault. We are all the same. But for those of you in this room, today marks something new. The way we will work is in 30-day blocks. Every 30 days, as in every month, we will try something new. Anyone can commit to one thing for 30 days. I know a man at Google who lives his whole life by the 30-day rule. Every month he promises himself he will do something new. In the month of August he learnt a Spanish word every day. In July he gave up sugar. In December he took one photograph every single day and made them into a photo-book. His life is coloured by new experiences, of growth and development. And he could pack so much in. One month he made himself write 1,500 words every day. Some days he wrote total nonsense, but he did it anyway. At the end of it he had 45,000 words. That’s the length of some novels! So he self-published and now he’s got his own book of nonsense!’ The room giggled. ‘Sounds like fun, hey! It is fun. So we start today, and our 30-day challenge this month is that we will all do one form of physical exercise, together, every single day. One thing, even if it’s just for 15 minutes. The more fun, the better. No questions asked. All we have to do is show up every day, just show up, and we will arrange everything. Everything you need is here.’ He nodded to Federico, who started handing out Peter Parker’s gift packs. ‘And showing up will be a common theme throughout our experience together. If you tell the universe you really want something and every day you show up for it, you turn up, you drag yourself out of bed and you yell, “Universe, I am here! I want this! I need this! But I can’t do this alone, help me!” you will be surprised how often the universe delivers. And what you ladies don’t realise is that you already did just that. The day you wrote to True Love, the day you agreed to join this programme was the day you set an intention, showed up and said, “I want something! I need something! Take notice! Here I am!” And guess what, people? Guess what? We took notice. This is the beginning of your new life. Welcome.’ The room burst into rapturous applause while Federico sat weeping in the corner.
‘I am a Human Fountain,’ he mouthed at me before blowing his nose into an enormous silk hanky then running into the middle of all the over-excited ladies and squeezing them all very very hard.
4TED Talk - TED.COM - website with hundreds of inspirational talks from an assortment of incredible people. TED believe in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and, ultimately, the world. Their website offers free knowledge and inspiration from the world’s most inspired thinkers, including Bob.
5Brangelinas - Brad and Angelina, somehow greater together than the sum of their parts. Ridiculously skinny and beautiful in spite of love, and childbirth and crippling work schedules. In short … not the norm.
pepperpots life sanctuary
‘to be a star you must shine your own light, follow your own path, and never worry about the darkness for that is when the stars shine brightest’ (anon)
The floating restaurant at Pepperpots is one of the most bizarre eating establishments I have ever come across. It’s a circular building constructed in the middle of a giant lake accessed by a wooden footbridge that resembles the Millennium Bridge6. The restaurant itself stands one storey high, is completely glass-walled and has two enormous decked terraces on either side. And it was here that I had been instructed to wait for Delaware O’Hunt, the movie starlet from the golden era of the silver screen.
It had taken some time to secure a meeting with the elusive Delaware. She’d cancelled twice, not shown up once then one day, out of the blue, she’d called and invited me to come and meet. We’d agreed upon the afternoon before Pepperpots’ annual fireworks display and I’d arrived early so I could watch Grandma in all her organisational glory. She was coordinating the evening’s sparkly event and I could see her on the shoreline assembling a herd of volunteers who just happened to be a gaggle of handsome axe-wielding men. Grandma had them chopping large bits of wood, dragging around heavy pieces of scaffolding and generally doing anything that