Mmm, what to do with those lockdown kilos now?

A good friend has recently taken custody of two dog-children. Anxious to show them off to their fairy dog-mother, he messaged me to arrange a socially-distanced walk.

His next SMS was telling: he wrote almost casually that he and his partner had both put on 8kg of lockdown ballast, sharing this info apropos of nothing at all, with lols and smiley faces.

But I know the truth: I know it was a plea not to shriek with mirth when I meet him, not to grab him by the muffin-top and jiggle him, yelling “blubber-blubber-cookie-flubber!”

He was asking, despairingly, that I please be nice.

As if I could be anything else, for his is an anxiety that I recognise all too well…

With luck – cross fingers, hold thumbs, touch wood – 12 nights from now I should wake up in my childhood home in South Africa, back with my mum, at last.

I’ll see my sisters.

I’ll see my best friends.

And they’ll see my expanded girth.

So how do I lose 4kg in two weeks?

Yes, I too sport the lockdown lumps, the corona kilos, the cobesity of the moribund.

A faraway friend told me the average weight-gain this pandemic is akin to that put on over a particularly happy Christmas, at 3kg – whether through comfort eating or not being able to afford wholesome nourishment – and we laughed grimly about being above average.

I suspect she also told me this as a request for kindness when I see her. Ditto, maaitjie.

Frankly, those who didn’t end up picking up a bit of excess baggage themselves – at least in the first few months – likely never grasped the seriousness of the situation, for sensible people kept an emergency box of chocolate digestive biscuits to hand, because if you were going to be eating your last meal anytime soon it sure as hell wasn’t going to be lettuce.

As for exercise, if you were taking your last steps, you didn’t want them to be lunges or burpees.

But now we’re back exercising and eating salad again, because this is the new normal.

Meanwhile, my friends, rest easy that when I do finally see you I’m going in for big hugs, and as far as I’m concerned the more there is of you, the merrier.

Jennie Ridyard

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