Getting Fat and Being Happy

There is a particular issue at the Home that I don't think I've touched upon in my blog. Weight. One of the first things new volunteers get told is that they will put on weight. There is no question as to it happening, the only differential is how much weight they will acquire. If they are only here for 3 months or they are determined not to gain weight they probably will put on less than those who are here for a year and don't care!

Now I'm not in anyway skinny. I'm decidedly short and fat, I was when I arrived and I will be when I leave. I don't care how I look, I don't care how other people see me, actually no that's a lie, I do care what people think of me, just not enough to change for them. So it interests me how obsessed some volunteers are with how they look. There is a fairly new volunteer who refuses to accept that she will gain weight and has someone drive her some place every day and she runs for 20 minutes before she gets picked up again. A lot of volunteers start off like this before they get bored and resigned to their fate and just be happy. Or there's the volunteers who don't think they're going to get fat, then get a bit chubby round the edges and attempt diets and going to the gym more often and what-not. It's insane. So many people obsess over the numbers. How many kilos they weigh now, how many kilos they've put on, what size their waist is, blah, blah, blah.

Here at Home we get a plate of hot food every day if we want it. It is usually chicken and rice (sometimes potato or semp) or some kind of pasta, so there's a lot of carbs. And the vegetables are almost always sweetened with cinnamon bark. And then we get donations! Almost every day we get donated food from Woolworths (not the English one, the SA one. Equates to English Waitrose or M&S) or Spar. It's often microwave meals, salads and puddings (all out of date of course) such as ice-cream, chocolate mousse, pastries etc. The Home also gives us peanut butter, bread, (full fat) milk, jam, butter (margarine pretending to be butter) and weetbix. Combine all this food with boredom and you can see why it might be a problem for some people.

My motto: Get fat, be happy.