Aunty Em: Battle with the Bulge

Is your New Year’s resolution to lose weight failing? Are your jeans shrinking and your cupboards empty? Look no further than Aunty Em.

Dear Aunty Em,

After Christmas, New Year and exam period, I am piling on the pounds like it’s
going out of fashion. Snacks, wine and many, many roast dinners later, the waist,
love handles and thighs are expanding into Radford. Now that exams are over,
the wine intake will be at one its highest. Although I want to lose some pounds,
I’m not going teetotal to Crisis, let alone Ocean. Please help.

Dear expanding reader,

Have you thought of will power? Self-control? But saying that, I don’t know any
girl who can stop after just one piece of a Galaxy bar.

On Tuesdays you must take all measures to avoid Domino’s menus or any day of the week for that matter. After a night out, cheesy chips and such delights are unavoidable, but attempt to restrain yourself – just get the cheesy chips, rather than both the chips and the pizza.

One way to avoid this is to have a pizza when sober, you’ll soon realise you’re not a fan of cardboard. Ever thought of sealing your letterbox? ASOS knocks, but the endless menus will keep flowing until they’ve taken over your hall and kitchen table. Piles and piles of  potential cheap, stodgy food – do not have those in sight when you come in from a night out or even the next day!

There’s loads of gyms in Notts, so maybe join one of those. Some don’t even have the shirt-lifting-mirror-obsessed guys! If that’s not for you, there’s always Pilates or even Hula Hoop society!

Then there’s the sports that attract a certain type of man, pick the right one and you might get a variety of workouts… If you’re not into a casual, then maybe grab yourself a boyfriend – exercise on-demand and you don’t even need to leave your room.

But there are some things you mustn’t do, if you go out for a meal, do not get a salad, you’re paying £10 for a salad, no! You would not pay £10 for some leaves in any other context. As for diets, this no-carbs malarkey, what is going through your crazy minds?! No pasta, no bread, no chips, not even potatoes. 

Carbs are pretty much in everything except meat and cheese, so if you want leaves and cheddar for dinner then go for it. But, don’t complain when you have serious hangovers, your stomach starts making delightful noises in lectures or when you have an aggressive outburst of jealousy when your housemates crack out the B and J. Also, if someone buys you chocolate do not reject it and that includes Easter Eggs, yes, they are already in the shops.

But to be honest, everyone had Christmas and New Year, so unless they’ve an aversion to roast dinners, in which case they haven’t the right to refer to themselves as British, they’ve also gained a few pounds so really, everything’s still in proportion.

They’re all a little big bigger, so no one will even notice…well, we can dream!