My sister lost about 40 pounds last year. She did it the old fashioned way, by eating healthy foods and exercising. She joined a gym and did aerobic exercise and strength training while eating less. She's a size 4 now, bless her heart. She goes with my nieces to the Karaoke Bar at the bowling alley. Men half her age hit on her at the gym. She will probably live forever.
Like many a reformed sinner, she now wants to save the rest of us who are mired in gluttony and sloth. She is trying to market herself as a "lifestyle coach". She will help you find a healthy diet and start an exercise program. She will help you join a gym and a hire personal trainer, if that's what you need. She will go through your pantry with you and toss out fattening foods. She will grocery shop beside you and help you read food labels and figure portion sizes. I think she's really on to something here. A lot of people need encouragement to be healthy, and most people don't get that encouragement from their environment.
I haven't signed up for her services, however. The following two poems are more my style.
The Hymn of a Fat Woman
Joyce Huff
All of the saints starved themselves.
Not a single fat one.
The words “deity” and “diet” must have come from the same
Latin root.
Those saints must have been thin as knucklebones
or shards of stained
glass or Christ carved
on his cross.
Hard
as pew seats. Brittle
as hair shirts. Women
made from bone, like the ribs that protrude from his wasted
wooden chest. Women consumed
by fervor.
They must have been able to walk three or four abreast
down that straight and oh-so-narrow path.
They must have slipped with ease through the eye
of the needle, leaving the weighty
camels stranded at the city gate.
Within that spare city’s walls,
I do not think I would find anyone like me.
I imagine I will find my kind outside
lolling in the garden
munching on the apples.
Fat Is Not a Fairy Tale
Jane Yolen
I am thinking of a fairy tale,
Cinder Elephant,
Sleeping Tubby,
Snow Weight,
where the princess is not
anorexic, wasp-waisted,
flinging herself down the stairs.
I am thinking of a fairy tale,
Hansel and Great,
Repoundsel,
Bounty and the Beast,
where the beauty
has a pillowed breast,
and fingers plump as sausage.
I am thinking of a fairy tale
that is not yet written,
for a teller not yet born,
for a listener not yet conceived,
for a world not yet won,
where everything round is good:
the sun, wheels, cookies, and the princess.
I found these two poems, and many other wonderful bits of poetry at the Library or Congress web site page, 180 Poems: http://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/
