Dieting Through Your Break Up Hell

BEFORE:

Health is not something you tend to think about too much when you’ve had your heart broken, unless of course you’re a woman, in which case you’d probably be: Dieting Through Your Break Up Hell, dropping dresssizes like hot potatoes, buying crop tops galore, getting your hair done, and your nails while you’re at it. Maybe a facial too. If you’re a man however, health is definitely not on your agenda, bu tit should be.

For man cannot live by bread alone, although if it is spread very thinly, covered with anchovies, tomatoes and cheese, baked to a crispy delight and comes with a six pack, he’ll give it a red hot go, and that’s where the problem lies.

You see, the heartbroken male doesn’t understand nutrition, nor does he recognize the usual food groups: carbohydrate, protein, muesli, cabbage and the other two. To him there are only four food groups: fried, sweet, beer and pizza and as long as he consumes at least one portion from each every day e.g. one bucket of chips, one packet of Tim Tams, one pizza and one six pack, he thinks he’ll be OK – besides there’s no one there to tell him not to anymore so why shouldn’t he enjoy himself for once?

Very soon however, this temporary lapse into Homer Simpson-like living becomes the norm. There’s no one at home to tell him that lounging around the house all day in nothing but his underpants eating ice-cream by the litre is a little less than a good idea, and when he is mixing with other people he’s only ever with his mates and do you think they’re going to tell him that he shouldn’t be ordering a pot for each hand? I don’t think so.

So while his ex is botoxing and step-classing her way to tighter buttocks, his arse is spreading faster than bird flu in a chook shed.

Before you can say, "where's my Mou mou?" You end up doing this:
AFTER:

Not that he’d notice.

The newly single man never notices these things. He is invincible: a predator. Lock up your daughters daddy; there’s a real man on the loose. He is a cock for hire; a blade; a lover; and he is also the proud wearer of the biggest pair of beer goggles the world has ever seen, except in this case they’re not focused on that frumpy girl in the corner, they’re focused on himself and he’s getting better looking round after round, day after day, night after night.

“I can eat and drink whatever I like,” he tells himself, “because I have a high metabolism. I just burn it up, I do, I just burn it up, plus I jog and I go to the gym”. And it’s true to an extent. Not the bit about the metabolism: who really knows about that crap, but he does go to the gym and jog, albeit about once every six months, and he’s still convinced that the one month’s intensive exercise he did back when he first noticed his middle spreading years ago will carry him through. He thinks it lingers.

But they know it doesn’t.

They don’t tell him though because they’re his mates. They think it’ll pass, that it’s just a phase, and anyway he’s a good laugh when he’s drunk. They don’t have to see him stumble out of the kitchen in his underpants, unwashed and unshaved with a can of creamy rice in one hand, a beer in the other and a bag of salt and vinegar chips clamped between his teeth, heading back to bed and to the TV to watch yet another footy marathon.

They don’t have to do anything - they're his mates.