The Lard Arms

Fern Britton Gets A Gastric Band - Part Two

Wow! Fern Britton's gastric bypass/gastric band surgery is big news. Since writing yesterday's post, it seems that Ms Britton is the second This Morning presenter to go under the knife to help reduce the pounds. Apparently, Alison Hammond - she of Big Brother fame - also took the surgery option to shrink.

It's got me thinking about why so many people feel so strongly about Fern's private - until yesterday - decision.

Some feel that she lied - promoting certain weight-loss products - and that she should have been up front about HOW she lost all that weight. Others feel she has 'cheated' because surgery is seen as an easy option (as if!). I wonder if Fern will become the symbol of people who are 'too lazy to slim' in the same way that women who have elective cesareans are dubbed 'too posh to push'.

I also wonder why Fern felt she couldn't go public about her surgery. Except, of course, I am not really surprised she kept silent. As my LighterLife Counsellor sometimes observes, it's obvious that people like us have an issue with food ie an unhealthy relationship with food. And whereas smokers, drug addicts and alcoholics can hide their addictions, we can't! And the British media does not take any prisoners in the weight loss wars. If you are not a blemish-free and size zero woman, you are lampooned for not making the grade. Did Fern feel too ashamed to admit that she and food may not co-exist happily in the world? Was Fern uncomfortable admitting that food is her drug of choice?

For someone as successful as Fern Britton, it seems it's open season on her weight. And are the criticisms because we expect our celebrities to be perfect or is it because, deep down, we know that - much as we would love to believe that there is a magic bullet for permanent weight loss - there really isn't?

I hope Fern's surgery works for her; I hope she has managed to make peace with food. Sadly, the statistics from the US are not encouraging but I hope that she will prove to be the exception to the rule.

For Goombagirl (and Me)!

There is a definite correlation - my blogging efforts go UP when I should be doing something else (and have access to the computer)!

Anyway, I found this today and it made me laugh (out loud) and I thought about our 'boring' exchanges. I thought Goombagirl's comments were spot on about isolated teenagers but that's a whole other discussion!

In the meantime, I am reproducing Carol Midgley's piece in yesterday's Times for you all to enjoy - it's reframing, alright!

Oh, why the sad face? You haven’t been reading that tosh about middle age being the unhappiest time of your life, have you? Researchers in Britain and America claim that for women the most miserable age is 40 and for men, 50, regardless of whether you’re single, married, rich or poor. Well, I’m here to tell you to look on the bright side. It doesn’t have to be so bad. There are many reasons to celebrate being middle-aged now. Here are 15 of them:

— You don’t give a stuff about Facebook.
— You feel no guilt about spending £9 on a bottle of wine.
— You’re too old for 18-30 holidays, too young for a Saga cruise.
— You no longer apologise for wanting to sit down in pubs.
— You know for a fact that youth is wasted on the young.
— You don’t have to pretend to talk like a teenage rapper to seem cool to your friends.
— You’ll never again have to dance in public if you don’t want to.
— You avoided tuition fees and got drunk for three years on the State.
— History programmes on TV are no longer boring.
— Gardening and Su Doku excite you far more than Ecstasy.
— You missed the entire alcopops/WKD/Hooch era.
— Far from making you angry, wolf-whistles from a building site can make your day.
— When you’re caught looking round Topshop, you can pretend that you’re shopping for your daughter.
— Clubbing – it’s history. Hooray!
— You can afford Botox.

I don't do Botox, I still would love to go clubbing but much of the rest...especially gardening, rang true! Ha ha!

PS Peridot - your blog has got me thinking about relationships. Will post something! But you are not wrong to want certain things. I can say that...as a 40-something woman! xxxxx

Help! We live in an "obesogenic" society...

So, the experts have spoken: obesity is 'not individuals' fault' because we live in an 'obesogenic' environment.

According to the BBC, "Individuals can no longer be held responsible for obesity so government must act to stop Britain "sleepwalking" into a crisis, a report has concluded. The largest ever UK study into obesity, backed by government and compiled by 250 experts, said excess weight was now the norm in our "obesogenic" society."

Since starting LighterLife, I am already seeing how much of an impact my lifestyle has on my weight. And when you add work (long hours and all that) in the mix, the outcome is not great.

My husband is back home now; he leaves at 6.30am, drives to the station (10 miles away), gets the train into London, works all day and comes home at 8pm. He is unlikely to have done 10,000 steps or been to the gym. When he was client-side, he was working 18 hour days, with meals provided and no chance of a trip to the gym. Hmmmmm.

For me, I can see how one day's bad eating can easily morph into three days' poor food choices, if I am not careful. On Sunday, I did an all-day training course. I wasn't organised (essential to keep weight gain at bay) so did not bring my own snacks/food. Lunch was a lardy chicken, cheese and pasta mess or vegetable hotpot. By the afternoon, I felt a slump - went in search of fruit but there was none. Just the vending machines. I bought some sweets. Poor choice but at least it wasn't chocolate. I came home very late and didn't feel like a healthy option meal. I wanted comfort.

Sunday was typical of a working day for many people; our whole lifestyle is NOT geared up to taking care of ourselves. I'm still not in my own home but, when I do get back in there (two weeks and counting), I really believe that my eating habits will have changed fundamentally. Eating bad food makes me feel...bad. Of course, some would argue that no food is bad but I'm talking about poor food choices. And those choices are usually fairly addictive.

"Obesity, the authors concluded, was an inevitable consequence of a society in which energy-dense, cheap foods, labour-saving devices, motorised transport and sedentary work were rife."

Apparently, there is talk of passive-obesity, too; by not really changing your lifestyle but by consuming an extra biscuit or even an extra apple, more or less every day, you will get bigger over time.

It strikes me as ironic; for the first time in my adult life, I am working hard to be slim while, in the meantime, everyone else is getting bigger! (Well, not EVERYONE!)

RIP Dame Anita Roddick

My husband has just emailed me - we can't speak since neither of us has good phone coverage - with the news that Dame Anita Roddick has died from a "a major brain haemorrhage" at 1830 BST at St Richard's Hospital in Chichester, West Sussex. For personal reasons, the news has extra poignancy.

This was a massive shock and within the space of a week, another one of my heroines has died.

Anita Roddick was unique; a force to be reckoned with - yes - but someone who, without doubt, changed the face of business for the better.

I applied for a job at The Body Shop's headquarters over a decade ago and was devastated not to get it; in my work, it would have been a fantastic opportunity. Never mind; I knew lots of people who did strike it lucky and maybe I would have not enjoyed seeing the real side of working with a powerhouse.

When I completed my NLP Master Practitioner course, we had one exercise where we had to pretend we were the person we most admired. I chose Anita Roddick; at the time, she stood for everything I wanted to be (!) - a tireless campaigner for women, a phenomenally successful entrepreneur and someone who did not compromise on her values. I revised that view when she sold out to L'Oreal, a business deal I never understood since money never seemed to be her motivation. One thing that Ms Roddick understood was the importance of self-esteem, which underpinned many of The Body Shop's campaigns.

Anyway, what has this got to do with lard busting? Well, not much, directly but it's just a very timely reminder that life is short and very precious. Look how much she achieved in those 64 years.

Whether you agreed with her politics or not, the world is most definitely a poorer place without Anita Roddick.