No life
Weighty matters
Toby Young
The only time I have got down to my ideal weight was in New York two years ago when, for a magazine article, I hooked up with a personal trainer called Mattie Caldwell. Her clients included Claudia Schiffer and Frederic Fekkai and, for the Purposes of profiling her, I decided to entrust her with my body for eight weeks. I looked truly appalling in the 'before' pic- tures, posing in my Union Jack Speedos. Mattie had urged me to bulk up, hoping for a dramatic contrast with the 'after' pic- tures, and on the day in question I weighed in at 1661b. My body looked as if it had been squeezed out of a toothpaste tube. The magazine in question, Manhattan File, Is read by all the best-looking women in New York so I was determined to lose as much weight as I could. The only way I could survive the humiliation of the before pictures was to make sure I had a six-pack in the after pictures. Mattie Caldwell turned out to be a stern taskinistress. She arrived at my New York apartment on a Harley Davidson and intro- duced herself by telling me she was a black belt in aikido. I later discovered she prac- tised competitive pistol shooting in her spare time. With her pneumatic, souped-up body and hip, punky outfits, she looked like a cross between Tank Girl and Lara Croft. For the next eight weeks I was in a world of pain.
She began by putting me on a diet that, as far as I could tell, involved cutting out anything that was remotely good to eat. Starting tomorrow,' she ordered, `no wheat, no sugar, no beer, basically no alco- hol at all. Wheat, bread, pasta, muffins, cereal, all that good stuff out the window, forget it.' I couldn't even eat fruit. Instead, I was limited to a diet of pure protein eggs, green vegetables and lean meat. The one-hour work-out routine, which she forced me to do every other day with- out fail, began with some Tibetan warm-up exercises taken from a book called The Ancient Secrets of the Fountain of Youth. They were supposed to reverse the ageing process but they left me feeling at least ten years older. Then the fun really started: bicep curls, one-leg squats, military v-ups, split lunges, side deltoid raises — each exercise more diabolical than the last. I have never been to a dominatrix, but I can't imagine it's that different from being trained by Mattie.
Needless to say, it worked like a charm. Eight weeks later my weight had come down to 1481b, my waist size was reduced from 35.5ins to 32.5ins and my body fat fell from 17.5 per cent to 11 per cent. I was no Greek god, but I wasn't the Pillsbury Doughboy I had been two months earlier. Even the photographer gasped when he appeared to record my progress. It was mission accomplished. The article duly appeared about six weeks later. Everything about it was exactly as I had expected apart from one minor detail: they hadn't bothered to publish the after pictures. The only pictures Manhattan File had used were the ones of me looking like the Michelin Man. I called the editor to find out what had happened and was told that they'd lost the after pictures. I explained that the only reason I had taken the exercise seriously was because of the after pictures, but the editor was unmoved. `Hey, Toby,' she said, 'take a good look at yourself in those before pictures. We did you a huge favour.' She was right. Staring at myself in the bathroom mirror this morning, I look exactly like I did before I met Mattie Cald- well. It's time to go back on the high-pro- tein diet — but not until I leave La Poudie. There's foie gras on the menu tonight.
I wonder if there'll ever be a ban on Blair baiting.
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