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.

Another year of the bloody Dogs

Why can’t I just choose to barrack for a successful team instead of constantly putting myself through this agony?

The answer is nobody chooses to barrack for Footscray.  You’re geographically marooned out there - you have no choice no matter how many bloody preliminary finals you lose.

I remember asking myself that question in 1996 when the club finished second from the bottom, managing to beat only one team all season: Fitzroy that year’s wooden spooners.

That was the year immortalised in the film Year of the Dog, a documentary made by someone who spent a year with the club, and one which should be compulsory viewing for anybody contemplating supporting any of life’s more unlikely causes. This clip from the movie shows you what the club was like at that time - Tehy just didn't know how to win. Watch at 2:27 for the famous "I'll spew up!" line form Plough.

It’s a film full of pathos, of sadness, of struggle and of disintegration.  It’s a film in which the weak, and sometimes the strong, are put to the sword.  Plots are hatched, backs are stabbed and careers are smashed.  It’s compulsive viewing because it tells the truth.

Good does not triumph over evil in that film.

I watched Year of the Dog with all the fellas the night before Footscray played in that horrible Preliminary Final against Adelaide, the one which, had they won, would have delivered the dream Grand Final featuring football’s perennial losers: Footscray and St Kilda.  Everybody’s second favourite teams, cute, lovable and harmless, Except for last night - bloody Saints.

As it was they squandered a huge lead and went down by two points. Adelaide after having an average season went on to win that flag, and the next one, despite the fact that Footscray, in those two years was far and away the most attractive and successful team in the competition.

I remember we all sat there in shock as we watched that film rolled on and on - had that season really been that bad?

We’d blocked it out of our memories already.  Each loss, each extraordinarily large defeat was somehow new and perhaps even more shocking in the reliving, as we were ten, a mere year later, basking in the unlikely glory of being Preliminary Finalists.

it's no big deal Gillian

Eight days after you moved out, Gillian - the very next Saturday to be exact - three people tried to pick me up.  This is whathappened.

Dan dragged me along to this fancy law firm do.  I arrived at the party feeling that peculiar mix of confidence and self-loathing I feel when I’m wearing a suit.  The place was crawling with classy types, which didn’t help, but with the words: “You say you like to dance, I think I'll take a chance, Ooh, baby, maybe it's time for romance,” from the immortal classic, Ladies Room, (From the album Rock ‘n’Roll Over. Yes I know you hate Kiss.) tripping through my head, I thought bugger being a sad tosser, tonight I’m going to be fabulous.  And I was.  So much so that three of the classy ones thought I was interesting enough to want to go out with. Three of them.In teh one night.

One stunner of about 30, an older woman who, had I met her when I was about 20, could have fulfilled all my older woman fantasies and a young male article clerk, who as he was leaving, pulled me to one side and whispered, “ I don’t suppose you’re at all gay, are you?”

Of course I didn’t follow through on any of them, although I slipped the girls’ cards in to my wallet.  I was still too raw and, having never been great at one night stands, didn’t fancy a quick one, besides having been single only a week, bachelorhood hadn’t set in properly yet, but it does tell you something doesn’t it?

“What precisely does it tell you Bill?” you’d say.

Well it tells me, that unless they were absolute desperadoes, and unless Dan paid them to make a fuss of me, three people, three totally separate strangers, on the same night wanted me, which at the time, made your not wanting me seem a lot less of a big deal than it did beforehand.

Hello World!