This birthday resolution was indeed going to be different, I told myself, as I battled to breathe and tie my shoelaces at the same time. It was my 39th birthday and a fear of being fat at 40 was enough to spur me into action. An early-morning purchase of Johannesburg’s finest cheesecake (an elegant version of the obligatory office offering) was followed by a visit to a ‘wellness†clinic. Hundreds of rands later — it would have been more than a thousand were I not a repeat offender — and I was almost ready to start four months of nasty sacrifice. But before receiving my customised diet two weeks later, I savoured every last bite of that sublime combination of savoury and sweet — one cake for them and the second for my waist.
It’s now a year later and I’ve managed to maintain most of my weight loss. While I no longer weigh lettuce leaves on an electronic scale, I still prefer green vegetables over orange and limit my intake of beetroot. (My rejection of a childhood favourite is not a matter of principle — I still love garlic and olive oil — but rather based on the stigmatised vegetable’s penchant for raising blood sugar levels.) Starch has now crept back into my meals, although seed loaf and sweet potato have replaced cornbread and koeksisters. My thin clothes still fit, I’ve finished three sub-two-hour half marathons in a row and — and — and I’m still as miserable as always: still single, still highly stressed and still wondering whether this is as good as it gets.
Okay, okay, a little overstated perhaps: my new addition to road-running does temper the severity and frequency of my tantrums; a smaller waist does make deep vein thrombosis class more bearable; and regular healthy eating does take away the guilt of weekend excess. And let’s not forget the effective management of acid reflux without resorting to medicines (for the record, the same cannot be said in respect of that virus that does indeed cause that syndrome), not to mention the affirmation that accompanies weight loss! Thus while not exactly fab at 40, I’m not altogether unhappy. As we all learnt after wishing a certain Cabinet minister out of her portfolio in 1999, things could always be worse.
Ordinarily more the half-empty than the half-full kind of person, my war of attrition with my appetite has accustomed me to lowered expectations. That way, I don’t get disappointed all that often. To the contrary, merely averting a disaster now seems like a major victory. Take the recent set of proposed amendments to the Correctional Services Act, for example. In the past, I would have entertained the silly hope that a new Bill would afford Parliament the opportunity to improve the statutory framework. Not any more. Now the task is much easier. I simply identify the ways in which the proposed law would make things worse and trust that the submission might one day be included in court papers.
But, instead of having to be satisfied with merely leaving a paper trail that might prove useful in any future constitutional law attack, most of the unpalatable provisions were indeed to be rejected. Headed by a chairperson who appears to take his job seriously, the portfolio committee did not take kindly to what the department was proposing. Two issues of principle were to remain non-negotiable: an independently staffed Judicial Inspectorate and no blank cheques for the minister. Unlike many other committees, this one was not happy to approve the undermining of an oversight body. Nor was it happy to approve ministerial powers that would be exercised in the absence of legislative guidance.
But I digress. I started off talking about food, moved on to lowering the bar so as avoid what would otherwise be inevitable disappointment and ended up alluding to the sorry state of our national legislature. Now, back to food, fat and 40th birthday festivities. This year, to celebrate my newfound state of mind, I’ve decided to lower expectations. Instead of a big party that may never end in drunken debauchery, as it should, I’ve decided on a smaller dinner for a handful of close friends. Hopefully we’ll have polite conversation, eat healthy food and share a moderate number of bottles of Fat Bastard chardonnay. If we’re really brave, we’ll try to avoid discussing work. Who knows, we might even shriek and giggle a little.