Broadstairs writer and KentOnline columnst Melissa Todd is feeling “poorer and fatter” after the excesses of Christmas.
But, she wonders, will traditional new year resolutions to lose weight and get fit be as meaningful with the rise of short-cut weight-loss drugs like Ozempic?
Melissa Todd asks whether new year health kicks will hold the same significance when everyone’s on weight loss drugs. Picture: iStock
Did you have a nice Christmas, people keep asking, and I don’t know how to answer. What would be nice? What is a nice Christmas? Isn’t it just eating too much and watching telly? And while I did accomplish that, for many days, it didn’t seem that interesting or difficult. I suppose this smacks of my immense privilege, that I can do nothing but eat too much cheese for weeks and not find it thrilling, but rather dull, a tedious interruption to my frankly excellent life. So, I suppose it has been a “nice” Christmas, in the sense that it’s made me realise how lucky I am to feel no desire to escape my usual daily grind and bury my woes in carbs and naps.
(Obviously, I don’t say any of that. I say, “Super, thanks! And you?” for I have learnt over the years what humans expect. I don’t mean it and they don’t listen but nonetheless the proper protocols must be observed, or you get a reputation for being weird. How I’d hate that.)
Genuinely, I think the only way to have a ‘nice’ Christmas would be to devote yourself to ensuring someone less fortunate than you had a jolly time. Go volunteer in an old folks’ home or puppy pound or something. Self-indulgence just isn’t interesting enough to sustain anyone over a fortnight. Maybe a morning, tops. And I despise altruism usually: there are many studies linking altruism with aggression, with its implicit assertion of moral superiority. But altruism does make sense, sometimes, for one’s own sake, as long as you‘ve courage enough to acknowledge it is for one’s own sake, rather than pretending it’s for someone else.
I saw Ballet Shoes at the National Theatre. That was the highlight of Christmas for me. Do you know the book, by Noel Streatfield? It’s truly marvellous. It tells of finding the passion which will stiffen your spine through all the rest, in which you can lose yourself and always find joy, despite bills, taxes and leaking roofs; the love that’s always waiting to embrace you, be that ballet, or acting, or mechanical engineering. Well, I have found my thing, and Christmas gets in its way.
KentOnline columnist Melissa Todd
I have got fatter, of course, and poorer, so I shall spend the next few months attempting to remedy that. I do wonder if our modern Christmas was invented merely to keep us occupied with projects until spring. Constant pleasure quickly feels wearisome and stultifying; instead we begin to crave a salutary dose of self-sacrifice to redress the balance. Kale and jogging after a month of sofa-based grease-gorging. Top up the old coffers, flatten the old gut, you know, the one you worked so hard to swell all yuletide, round and round, and so the seasons pass.
Of course, now thinness is so much easier to achieve, with all these thrilling new meds, I guess achieving it will become less time-consuming. I do wonder if, in consequence, it will become less desirable. Body types tend to be prized according to which is hardest to obtain. It has been easiest to be fat in the West: now it feels just as easy to be thin. (In other countries, of course, it’s extremely difficult to be fat, indicative of immense wealth, and a source of great pride when it’s achieved. I remembered a friend telling me his Nigerian wife went home to be told, “Oh my God, you’ve got so FAT!” intended as the ultimate compliment, obesity being trickier to achieve in Nigeria, although she, being firmly westernised, was far from flattered.)
Here, the link has been broken between gluttony, punishment, and redemption through suffering. The marketing industry doesn’t seem to have spotted this yet, or else is stubbornly ignoring it: on Boxing Day my phone brimmed with advertisements for slimming clubs and gyms, just as the week before it had insisted I spend my cash on stilton and port. Ozempic has changed the game’s rules: no motivation or effort required. The number of people I know who are half the size they were six months ago, who’ve genuinely lost all interest in cakes and chips, is truly extraordinary. It may take our collective psyche a while to adjust.
And one day soon the seasons may cease to possess their former significance.