Stomique

After applying liberal quantities of food and drink to my person over the Christmas period, I came out of the festive break with a touch of a tummy. A wee pudding bowl clamped to my midriff like the early stages of pregnancy. A bonsai belly. It didn’t shake when I laughed like a bowlful of anything in particular, but it was still a noticeable addition.

I’ve had a tummy before. I’m informed by my better half that when we first met I had quite a pronounced pot belly. Lean everywhere else, but round in the middle as a result of a physical part-time job but too many pints on the days off.

Anyhow, I’d shaken off the quaky bits and was reasonably happy with myself towards the end of 2009. I wasn’t an olympic diver or anything, but I’d slipped down a jeans size, and was fairly confident buying Medium sized tops without trying them on first. So when it came back at Christmas time, I wasn’t too concerned – I figured I could shake it off again fairly easily.

But this one’s apparently not for shifting. As a result, I’ve stepped up my efforts, and am now trying to lessen my snack intake. Meals are fine, but I’m trying to be more aware of the treats that come in between.

All this has done is to leave my hungry in the evenings, just at about the time that all the cookery shows come on. Thankfully Gordon Ramsay doesn’t feature a lot of crisps or choc-ices – his show leaves you wanted to slap a steak under the grill. This still leaves me feeling hungry, but at least the craving is for something less convenient.

I’m also noticing how many non-edible items in our house seem to have been unnecessarily flavoured. Our washing up liquid certainly smells of apples, although I’ve not been tempted to taste it yet. More appetizing is my other half’s dressing table, which I realised the other day includes a cornucopia of fruity treats. Cranberry shimmer lotion. Blackberry hand cream. Strawberry lip balm. I suspect the cocoa butter body lotion isn’t as nice as it sounds, even if spread on a crumpet (There’s incidentally a shade of eyeshadow here called ‘Burnt toast’). But I could still probably make up a decent proportion of my five-a-day just by grazing on make-up.

On a day off, with all this stuff within arms reach, it’s debatable whether I’d even get out of bed – my only exercise being trying to frisbee new box sets into the DVD player.