Reasons I’d rather be chubby – Opinion

Laura Ghafoor tells somethingyousaid.com why her gym membership isn’t utilised especially regularly:

I think I was a size-ten aged ten. “It’s puppy fat, Princess” – my Dad’s a glass-half-full kind of person. So am I. And a plate full. And seconds sometimes. So, it didn’t ‘drop off’ when I grew up. I’m a chubby girl and that’s okay. I’m not one of those self-depreciating, ‘I’m going to make myself the butt of all my own jokes’ kind of cubby girl. The media tells us all that skinny is sexy, but actually I, for one, like a woman with curves. It’s sexy. Boobs are sexy. Thighs are sexy. An arse… Well you get the idea.

So here are the reasons that chubby girls should embrace their curves:

We don’t like sport… Brazilian volleyball spectating during the Olympics aside (shockingly, my girlfriend’s also a fan), sport makes me feel edgy. I only once got picked for any kind of team at school and that was netball, because the usual goal defence was out with a nasty ankle sprain. My parents, knowing this was the first, and likely to be the last time their daughter would be picked for a team, were the only parents to turn up to cheer us on, bless them. We lost something like 32 to 2. I don’t want to be in your team, thank you very much. The thought of sport and other people relying on me to win, or at best if I’m playing – not lose, brings me out in a cold sweat.

And speaking of sweat. Do I want my fringe all stuck to my forehead? That’d be a no. Who does? No one looks their best when they’re makeup-less and a bit smelly. Plus I don’t look good in those gym legging things. I just don’t.

We like food… I love to eat. I like to eat takeout and bread and kebabs (sometimes even when am sober). It’s good. Who doesn’t like eating until they can’t breath at an all-you-can-eat? (Don’t judge me, you’ve been there). In fact, I see the buffet as kind of a challenge. On a recent visit to one such newly opened establishment I actually struggled getting back to the car, and I liked it. And while we’re on it, who craves vegetables? No one.

ASOS curve… I spend far too much of my wage on this so actually it’s a terrible, terrible thing. What they do is they make clothes for chunky girls that are flattering… And can fit over your thighs. Nice one.

I don’t have time… I’m meant to work 35 hours a week. What I actually do is more like 45 plus travelling there and back then there’s the nights where some knobhead has forgotten to fill up their car with petrol and they’re on the side of the bypass blocking up a lane and causing a 2 mile queue up the road. And I can say that because not so long ago I played petrol-light roulette and lost. It’d been one of those weeks that was somehow simultaneously long and fast. Monday seemed an age ago but somehow it was already Friday evening and I was plodding along on my way for an M&S meal for two (with my girlfriend, I wasn’t having two curries to myself- cheeky) and the petrol light had been on since Tuesday. But Wednesday and Thursday had whizzed by in a blur of to do lists, dog walking and I’ll-do-it-tomorrow-ing and I’d not been to fill up. So here I am quite happily driving along and suddenly my car was stopping. Ah. It’s comical now but it wasn’t then, particularly when ‘PC Somebody’ pulled over to ask what the problem was and I lied that my car had broken down, I didn’t expect him to wait until my (long suffering) Dad rocked up with a jerry can of unleaded. Car dramas aside, I was happy as Larry until my Twix ran out, then I really started to panic. My girlfriend got medium cross with me after this incident, but I keep telling her that my ridiculousness is actually endearing, if nothing else she goes along with it just to shut me up.

Anyway, it’s time consuming “eating clean” and I’m simply too wrapped up in… Life.

It’s expensive… I do have a gym membership, believe it or not. Apparently having one isn’t quite enough though, you do have to attend for it to have any effect. And not just attend and sit on one of those sitting down bikes sulking (which is what I did the day my phone dropped out of my pocket on the rowing machine after no less than four strokes – is that the correct term for the forward/backward movement on such machine? You tell me.) That phone had been dropped out of car doors, onto concrete it’d been dropped so many times I’d lost count. But it dropped four inches from my jogging bottom pocket on the rowing machine and that’s when the screen shattered. Obviously. If that’s not a sign then I don’t know what is. I think it’s quite understandable that after that performance I couldn’t be arsed and I went home, not to return for over two months.

So there’s the membership, a nice portion of my [girlfriend’s] wage gone on payday. And, before you consider me a snob, we aren’t members of a really fancy gym which a sauna and coconut shower gel. Just a bog standard council gym where there’s need for a sign asking patrons to “please refrain from dying your hair in the showers”.

Diet food doesn’t come cheap either. Two shakes for a fiver? I could have a KFC for that and be at least 80% happier. At least.

The gym is terrifying...Why do I want to go into a room with a load of people who think running is fun and clomp around, looking like a sweaty beetroot after two-and-a-half minutes while some girl in a crop top and Primark-special leggings runs while wearing fake eyelashes and looks like some kind of Disney Princess?

So while my girlfriend pays for our joint gym membership (which I think is a good pre-marriage test; if she agrees with my excuses she’s a keeper), I rarely utilise it.

I wake up on a Thursday with the best intentions for Monday. That’ll be when I really start, really crack on. Diet and gym at least 4 times. But then I’m all “I’m tired/I’m pressing snooze one more time/I need to do something more fun” and I’m back to square one…

This all being said I do want to be healthy. I don’t want to be stick-thin but I do want to wear a nice bikini when I go on my honeymoon next year. So I’m going to do my utmost to get fit (and remain curvy). I start Monday. Watch this space…

Words by Laura Ghafoor.