I asked Mick how he felt about going on a diet; he wrote me a short letter on the subject:
Dear Tim
Diet is a four letter word.
It’s an ugly word that will get you beaten up by Italian restaurateurs and pastry chefs the world over. It’s a word that points fingers at your ever-expanding gut that has been doubling in volume every three years from the age of 25, and shouts, ‘NA-NA-NANA-NA!’
It’s a word that precedes the taking away of so much that you love.
A word that springs to mind every time I look in a full-length mirror.
It’s the precursor of deprivation, the third horseman, the lock on the fridge door.
DIET.
Get dieted you dieting old diet! Yes, it’s offensive. It’s the dishwasher telling the chef how to flambé a lobster … The student trying to instruct the master … The egg laying the chicken.
DIET.
It’s an ugly word that reminds you of other ugly words like diarrhoea, death, dirt and disease.
The very concept entombed in that word will make any Old Fart worth his ‘two fried eggs, bacon, tomato, hash browns and sausage’ breakfast shudder to his muscle-less core and shout, ‘How dare you use that word to me, you no-calorie shadow? Let me tell you something, Mr Skinny, I have been eating very successfully from the age of birth without you telling me what, when and how to do it and I don’t think I need you to start now.
‘You, with your flat navel and six-pack abs may look at my bouncing belly in disgust, but to me it is a symbol of how well I have done in the eating stakes, and I mean that in both senses of the word. So take your D word and shove it.’
But that is just a gut reaction to an ever-growing problem, if you’ll excuse the pun. I hope this note makes my feelings on the matter clear.
Yours sincerely
Mick
***
No room for misunderstanding there.
But for those of you who seriously want to change your shape and the way you feel, exercise without a diet is only going to get you halfway there.
For those of you who are not that serious, take heart, this book is for Old Farts of every description and dimension. It’s a suggestion not a medical prognosis, so crack another beer, open that packet of crisps, lie back on that couch and read on.
If nothing else, this book will make a fabulous coaster.
***
I pondered on how to best broach this subject. For the Micks of the world, that one word can be hurtful, so how to take away the hurt. I replied to Mick’s letter:
Dear Mick,
DIET.
There are literally hundreds of diets out there, no thousands. When you’re at the doctor’s office waiting for the check up you are going to have before starting your new gym programme (notice how positive I am?), pick up any one of the thousands of women’s magazines that proliferate doctors’ waiting rooms, flip it open and you’ll find at least one new fangled diet thinning out its pages.
Women’s magazines have specialised in creating madcap diets for hundreds of years. They have diets that will make their bums smaller and get rid of boring boyfriends, all at the same time. Exotic diets used by Olympic athletes in countries once locked behind the Iron Curtain that can only now be revealed. I suspect that women who try those Iron Curtain Olympic diets might grow a pair and need to shave their chinny-chin-chins daily, but what the hell, if it works we can call it a fashion.
And so much more!
Some dietician from the University of Talkcrapistan will have written an article on her research into the fat-reducing properties of eating nothing but page five of Ann of Green Gables for a month … and so on. As far as I can see, 90% of the women are stuffing their faces with something that should carry the warning ‘this packet contains a substance that when eaten will put a large amount of fat on your ass’, and eating it while reading about the diet.
You can almost see their minds working, ‘If I read about this diet while eating my favourite fat ass food, surely it will balance things out and I won’t get any fatter.’
You can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can fool yourself all the time. ‘There’s no fool like an old fool’ is only topped by an old fat fool. ‘I can’t remember eating today and yet somehow I’ve put on 3 kg!’
Others treat dieting as though it were some form of religious ritual, much like an act of contrition (penance), only for fat people. ‘If I go on this arduous diet and eat nothing but orange skins and bat guano for a month, as expounded by the prophet Oopera in her July issue of ’09, surely all the fat gained by eating like a pig for the rest of the year will be forgiven, and I will be returned to a bikini shape, glowing in full health and free-flowing arteries for ever and ever. Amen?’
Most magazine diets are based on the simple philosophy that the less money readers spend on food the more money they will have to buy magazines.
And that’s the problem. Thanks in a large part to women’s magazines, most of us think of a diet as some form of starvation that will give instant results. In short, we are led to believe that deprivation equals success, less is more and that idea is bat guano.
This is the reality. Starvation diets force our metabolism to use the stored fat and muscle we have to keep our heart, lungs and minds working. So yes, if you starve yourself you lose weight, but here’s the problem, the moment you start eating again your body cries out, ‘Food! I must save some of this in case the supply dries up again …’ and turns any surplus into fat, which is its most efficient method of storing nutrients. The body does not replace muscle it used up, it expects you to do that.
Great, now you are fatter than ever with less muscle to support yourself and all your new fat … and so we fall into the circle of lies, and pick up another magazine to search out a new and bizarre way to make ourselves even less healthy.
At 50 it takes much longer to build muscle than it did when we were 25. It’s also the last thing we want to lose through some stupid diet. We have to eat the foods that feed the muscle. Muscles use energy to work, energy stored as fat. Fat uses no energy, it does no work. It just hangs around clogging up the works like bureaucracy. No one needs more bureaucracy. Well, no one who isn’t in government, that is.
Now that I think about it, have you seen the size of most of our government ministers … talk about living off the fat of the land …
Think of it like this. Your body is still, physically, back in the Stone Age, it has not evolved in 100 000 years. Way before bureaucracy, before fast foods, your body design and function was created by nature to let hunter-gatherers with big brains survive in the wild. It responds to feast or famine in the same way that a caveman’s body survived hunting and gathering and the occasional Ice Age. Treat it to starvation and it looks to store fat in case the Ice Age returns.
Feed it low-fat meat, wholegrain seed and fresh vegetables, five or six times a day, and it won’t need to store fat. With a diet like that your body will give you the energy you need to chase game across the tundra or hunt bison on the Highveld and still feel like a vital man at any age.
Deep down we all know this stuff as it’s in our genes. We know a good meal makes you feel good and satisfied for a good reason; why else would the caveman bother to chase the dangerous animals across the wilds, search for tasty roots and pick berries and seeds to eat along the way? Then, full and satisfied, having eaten that low-fat protein, he feels the need to sit around and do absolutely nothing, which allows his body use the nutrients to repair and rebuild all the damage he’s done to muscle, tendon and bone while chasing down the food. As Disney said, ‘It’s the circle of life.’
Simple, take it from the caveman.
Our bodies were created to do physical work and be rewarded with good food. Hunter-gatherers did not eat three meals a day; they grazed like other primates on wholegrains, seeds and berries, low-fat meat and fruit of the tree. Our lifestyle may have changed, but nobody told our bodies about it, so ‘Old Stone Age’ is lying around on the couch, beer and chips in hand, packing on the fat and waiting for winter.
It’s amazing when you read all the latest research into health and longevity, practically every new idea on diet and nutrition they have discovered is exactly what our ancient ancestors did naturally hundreds of thousands of years ago. The latest, cutting edge scientific advice on health and longevity boils down to eating like a caveman, drinking in moderation (like a puritan) and getting lots of exercise.
Hope this changes your mind.
Yours even more sincerely
Tim
***
The Fitness for Old Farts Fellowship had been dodging the diet issue from Day One.
Like a monk blessing every bottle in the cellar so he could be a holy drunk, we knew a fall was coming, the only question was who would be the first to stumble onto the subject.
Mick was a long shot at 500 to one.
Paul and Jerry were running neck and neck, with John being my odds-on favourite by more than a head. He was, after all, the most knowledgeable on the subject.
Up until his late 30s, John had been a marathon runner and something of a fitness freak. In his time, he was the nutrition and diet guy that other runners went to for advice. He’d even been my diet guy when I started becoming serious about gym. In fact, the low-fat GI diet in this book is one of John’s that has been adapted for gym and weights training, and then refined by Cliff.
John stopped running marathons aged 40-something, then gradually went off the diets and lost his fitness freak title before finally succumbing to LOFness in his 50s. But he still knew his stuff. On his first day at the gym, after we had talked through his weights programme, John brought up the subject on his own and without any prompting from me.
‘You haven’t mentioned diet,’ he said. ‘I would have thought it was hugely important.’
Anything I said would be wrong, so I made like Jerry and merely nodded.
‘I mean, my legs are still reasonably strong from running,’ he said, bouncing up and down to demonstrate. ‘But I need to strengthen my shoulders, neck … basically my whole upper body … and this gut has got to go.’
Continuing with my Jerry act I helped the conversation along with a chatty, ‘Right.’
Tapping his new training book, John fixed me with a weary look, ‘I’m very happy with this weights programme you’ve put together for me. It’s exactly what I need, but shouldn’t I be on a muscle building diet as well?’
Head slightly to the side, eyebrows make a quick up and down, mouth makes a half-smile and head nods halfway between yes and no … Jerry is on to something.
‘So then you agree with me. I should go onto a high-protein, low-fat, no-carb diet?’ he added, although how he got that from my head tilt and eyebrow action I have no idea. In keeping with the ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ theory, I tilted my head and waggled my eyebrows some more. ‘Great, well, I’ll bring in a low-fat, high-protein, no-carb diet for us to go over tomorrow.’
Thumbs up, smile and nod in a definite yes. ‘Fine,’ I said.
‘What about the rest of the guys?’ he asked, smiling and nodding in return. ‘… You’re going to talk to them about diet, too?’
I loved the ‘too’. We were entering dangerous territory here. After all, the guy who opened the diet debate to the gathered Flatulence was not going to be popular. Not sure how to answer, I ended up giving a seated rendition of a ’70s disco dance, my head wobbled in a ‘yes – no – maybe – who knows’ motion, accompanied by raised shoulders, a half-smile, squinted eyes and a hand waving in the classic so-so fashion. All I needed was a pair of bellbottoms, long hair and sideburns to complete the picture. By the end of this conversation I was going to be exhausted.
‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘But somebody is going to have to bring up the subject,’ he finished, picking up the rhythm and nodding along sagely.
It was time for a change in tactics. ‘One thing at a time,’ I said, hoping that actual words would get me off the hook, ‘getting into shape is a bit like putting your pants on.’
‘Sorry?’ queried John, eyebrows raised and head forward, mouth up on one side … this Jerry thing is catching.
‘Exercise is only one leg of the trousers, diet is the other leg … you put on your pants one leg at a time.’
‘Oh, great analogy,’ he said, smiling to take the edge off the sarcasm. ‘And what do the zip and buttons represent, oh Great Master, cardio and supplements?’
I smiled in what I hoped was an enigmatic, inscrutable manner. ‘As you know, I’m not into supplements. At our age and with the right diet, food should give us everything we need. You taught me that.’
John did his own seated disco dance, head wobble the lot. ‘The student has become the master, I see,’ he said throwing the ball back into my court. ‘I am justly reprimanded, but still curious as to the meaning of the zip and button, my Master.’
Not to be outdone, I tried to match the inscrutable smile with the kind of inscrutable crap you get in magazines. ‘The zip is realising you need a diet and the ability to fasten that button is proof that the diet is working.’
***
So it came as no real surprise to me that, just a couple of weeks after forming our fraternity of ancient Flatulence, John was the one who crossed the diet line first. On a balmy Sunday evening the guys had gathered to view my first set of humiliating photos, as shown on page 18. And yes, the need to gather and giggle at the photos was also decided by a vote of four to one.
I’d like to think it was the sight of my Volkswagen Beetle bonnet belly that gave him the courage to break this final taboo. ‘You Old Farts are going to have to change your diets, you know that, don’t you,’ he said in a tone that let them feel his sorrow and determination in its quavering baritone timbre.
Everything stopped.
DIET!
There it was, out in the open.
At the mere mention of the ‘D’ word, most of our Fellowship felt their rings tighten along with a sudden urge to run off and hide behind the fridge. Talking about getting into shape and gym and exercise programmes and all that was one thing, but no one had dared to go any further.
For two weeks, the ‘D’ word had been like an elephant in the room that everyone is hoping will go away quietly if we ignore it. Now, John ‘The Bastard’ O’ Flanagan had taken the elephant by the trunk and pulled it front and centre, poked us in the tummy and said, ‘The time has come to meet this ugliness face to wobbling jowl.’
‘Oh, God,’ gasped a struggling Mick. ‘What else are we going to have to give up in the name of feeling better? Air?’
Paul smiled at his shaken-if-not-stirred audience and tried to soften the blow, ‘Somebody give Mick a chair, I think he’s going to faint.’
No such luck, he just sat down and complained, which was fun, but not as entertaining as it would have been to see the 76-kg Jerry trying to catch the 156-kg Mick.
***
My mind flashed back to a conversation I’d had with my old friend and mentor, Rex Garner, years before.
‘Comedy,’ he explained, ‘is hard. You have to understand that it is funny if someone slips on a banana skin and falls on their ass, but it’s funnier if that person is a nun.’
Drama, I discovered, is the same.
Thirty years later, we were on tour in Cape Town, performing in a new play I’d written called Breakfast with Dad, which explored the relationship between a father and son after 30 years of separation, a poignant comedy that Rex performed beautifully. Sadly, it proved to be the last play I did with Rex before he stepped off the boards for the last time and graced the stage no more. No, not dead, retired … see what I mean about the nun?
At 86 Rex had agreed to come out from England to play a huge role that required him to be on stage for most of the show, performing six nights a week, remarkable. It was three weeks into the run and Rex was feeling a bit poorly. I whipped him off to our friendly theatre doctor for a check. At 86 you do not want to take any chances.
So there we were on that fun-filled Wednesday morning, sitting in a cheery brown and grey waiting room, with the wind howling a merry tune outside and the rain beating on the windows like some demented percussionist trying to keep up. I was gingerly paging through a pile of magazines that definitely had more germs and viruses per page than useful information while Rex had found some health quiz in a five-year old copy of Vitality that looked distinctly tired, and was working his way through it.
Finally, after about ten minutes of grunts, giggles and sighs, Rex took off his reading glasses, hoicked his feet up onto the coffee table and waved his pen in the air. ‘According to this quiz, everything I like to eat gives rats cancer,’ he announced. ‘What am I to do?’
I thought about it for a second, ‘Well, that depends how fond you are of rats, I suppose?’
He nodded. ‘Oh, rats, politicians and producers all hold about the same level of affection in my heart,’ he said holding forefinger and thumb together in the shape of an O.
‘Well, then,’ I said, ‘do you care if they get cancer because of your diet?’
‘No, you’re right,’ said Rex sounding very relieved. ‘Fuck ’em, I’ll eat what I like,’ and tossed the magazine over his shoulder.
Sorry, I digressed … again. My point is, be realistic about what you want to change in your life and at your age. Live in your time.
***
Back at the house, John had our attention. ‘We are talking about changing your diet, not going on a diet,’ he said, most directly in Mick’s direction. ‘We are going to be changing the food we eat and the amounts we consume in one sitting moving forward for the rest of our lives. We are talking about diets that you can enjoy and live on comfortably for the long term, diets and eating patterns that will, over time and in combination with exercise, improve the way you look and feel about yourself.’
‘Great phrase, “over time and in combination with”. I’ll be slipping that into my casual conversations from now on,’ quirked Paul. ‘Haven’t been rehearsing this impromptu talk, have you, John?’
The banter that followed does not warrant reporting, much like most diets.
I tend to trust diets that health professionals and professional athletes have used to get into shape, but in moderation. I trusted John.
I’m not saying that some trainers and body-builders and the like do not have extreme diets that they crash on top of steroids and tattoos and piercing, but I’m talking about the diets trainers and bodybuilders that have lived beyond the age of 30 have been on, and are still looking good.
Perhaps the difference between their body-changing diets and those found in most magazines is that body-builders and trainers have proved the effectiveness of the diet they are on, while most magazines have a new diet monthly, so no proof is necessary.
If you are on a programme and want to speed up your fat reduction to get to your desired weight and shape quickly, there is a diet that will help you do that. If your aim is to gradually lose fat, gain muscle and tendon strength while building bone mass, there is a diet that will help you do that.
If you have reached a body shape and fat to muscle ratio that you are comfortable with, stick to what you’re eating, it’s obviously working for you.
If, however, you are lying on the couch eating chips and laughing at the idea of diet and exercise, make sure your will is in order.