Battle With The Bulge

When I was about 9 years old, my grandmother and mother decided that I was too skinny and sickly. I don't know what got into their heads. I had a father whose nickname was Fei Lo, roughly translated to Fatty, and so I could be anything but. In fact, I was blessed with fat genes from Day 1, for goodness sake! But, I concede, since young, I have always been sniffing and having a runny nose due to a sensitivity condition called allergic rhinitis. And that might have given them the impression that I was sickly.

So, my grandmother and mother asked the wise medicine men at the Chinese Medical Hall for advice and they recommended something called Waterbury's Compound. I have always pinpointed this event, rightly or wrongly, to be the start of all my trouble with the bulge (if we were to disregard the gene theory for a while).

This wonderful tonic was sold in a darkly-tinted red-labelled bottle and was hugely popular at that time. Everyday, my mother would pour out this black liquid into a tranparent measuring cup and I had to swallow that yucky tonic. The medicine men were good - the tonic was very effective. The results soon showed and my puppy fat began to pile.

When I was about 9-10 years old, I was so overweight that I had to tailor-make my dark blue pinafore that I wore as my school uniform. I still have some photos taken during that period which, ahem, shall remain in my private collection. Fortunately or unfortunately, there was no TAF or any well-being programmes in school at that time and so my weight was not monitored officially. I was ballooning for everyone to see and had no clue that it was undesirable. I was just a clueless kid.

The one who came to my rescue was the most unlikely person - my eldest brother. My eldest brother is my Yee Ma's elder son who always fancied himself as being hip or in today's lingo, what we call, cool. You know... popular, fashionable, "in", with a good dress-sense. Ten years older than me, he probably saw where I was headed and was troubled enough to buy this teen annual called Jackie for my younger sister and me.

Jackie was a UK magazine, with articles on make-up, fashion, hair and pop stars - all meant for teenage girls or tweenies, of which I was one at that time. It dawned on me thereafter that being fat was something that I, as a young girl, should be very concerned about. I began to ask my mother to buy the magazine for me fortnightly. From then on, I found myself gradually getting immersed in British culture. I also learnt the rudiments of weight control.

No longer clueless, I began to assert myself as to what I would eat and what I would not. Thus, since I was around 10 years old, my battle with the bulge had begun.

I remember my unwavering determination to win the battle. At that time, my cousin's girlfriend was working as a cashier at the local supermarket and we could buy ice-cream from the kiosk at greatly discounted staff rates. Every trip to the supermarket would see us pampering ourselves with a cone each. That had to stop immediately. I did not eat any ice-cream for years after that. Seriously. Not a single scoop, not a single spoon, not a single lick. I told myself my whole campaign would be ruined if I were to give in just once - for if I could give in to temptation once, what was there to stop me the second time?

For years, I also did not eat Kentucky Fried Chicken - I only ate the potato and the salad - and when I relented much later, I only ate the chicken meat and tore off all the skin. I tried to count calories (the western style of dieting that was popular then) but it was not possible. There was simply no calorie counter for the local, Asian food that we ate. There was no point knowing how much calories a single helping of bread-and-butter pudding or 100g of roast beef contained, was there?

Though I could not control the food that was served at the dining table at home, I tried to control the amount that I consumed. And that led to inevitable battles with my mother. My mother belonged to the generation of mothers who showed their love through food. When we ate a lot, she would beam. But when we rejected the food, it would seem like we were rejecting her love. Of course, at that time, I did not understand this, and when I rejected the food, I am sure she must have felt hurt, and so there would be battles.

Exercise was never part of the equation, but in my secondary school days, I must have burnt a lot of calories doing the march-past under the hot sun.

Driven by vanity, rather than health reasons, I count myself a success of my strict diet regime. When I entered secondary school, I was pretty much a normal teenager, in terms of weight. Nobody would call me slim, but neither can anyone call me plump either.

I know the fat cells in my body would never go away. They always threaten to swell at any hint of indiscipline - and so, throughout my life, I have always been aware of what I ate.

Today, I should be dieting for different reasons - for health reasons - but the will is getting weak. Darn, the metabolic rate is slowing down so fast that it seems to be grinding almost to a halt! Anyway, life is too short to deprive myself any more of the joy of food. Now I enjoy all my food.... but I control the quantity. If I take half a piece of that delicious carrot cake, I would already have reduced my calorie intake by 50%. Wow, isn't that an achievement? *Twinkle*