Fatt Fook-loh!

AT ONE time when poverty was the only lifestyle for most people and food was scarce, carrying a potbelly was an obvious sign of great wealth.

The Chinese, in particular, would heap praises on you especially if they had not seen you for a while. “Waah, fatt fook-loh!” They would exclaim while noting your potbelly.

In not so many words, it means congratulations, you must be enjoying great prosperity – never mind the high blood pressure that’s exacting a toll on your heart or bad cholesterol clogging up your blood vessels.

The perception is changing now. Thanks to Hollywood and a greater awareness of good health, carrying a potbelly would invite some critical stares and unsolicited but well-intended lectures on heart diseases and diabetes.

And if you are living in a Cantonese-speaking area, you may be called Fei Lo or Dai Fei Lo which means fatso and big fatso in Cantonese. The rather unpleasant nickname may stick and follow you for the rest of your life unless your body shape changes.

In a nutshell, being portly is no more in vogue and not something to boast about like a Rolex, a Rolls-Royce or a diamond ring.

People want to keep trim and fit nowadays. All men aspire to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger, with bulging muscles in all the right places.

And the women? They want to look like Julia Roberts if they are younger, Jane Fonda or Raquel Welch if they are of that vintage.

To achieve that stunning physique is quite simple. You can sweat it out and burn off all the unwanted fats at the gym as done by Arnold, Jane and Raquel, but thanks to modern science, there are also short cuts – going under the knife or take a slimming course.

Slimming products are now flooding the market, each promising a miracle that will make you slim and take decades off your looks.

No prescriptions, no surgical knife, no bandage and no scars and no hiding from the public, just take the pills or drink certain concoctions on a regular basis, it’s as easy as popping a pain-killer or drinking a glass of teh tarik.

So, can I be blamed if I fell prey to such hype?

In short, I took a 21-day programme, partly because I was curious and partly because I was getting tired of those remarks about my spreading “middle kingdom.”

It was a simple dieting course in which I only had to skip one meal a day and in its place, take a pack of “diet drink” which was supposed to contain all the nutrients needed.

It sounded like a good bargain. Skipping a meal a day was a small sacrifice if at the end of the 21 days I could look like Arnold, minus the height, of course!

Come to think of it, even looking like Mr Bean minus all the idiocracy would not have been too bad. Mind you, he is slim enough to squeeze into his yellow Mini with ease.

So I went about it with all the eagerness and enthusiasm of a new convert during the first few days. I took a normal lunch and, despite all the temptations, no dinner. Just the diet drink and plenty of water.

It was clean living and I felt good, except for the frequent visits to the toilet.

The best part of it was that it worked. I lost two kilos within the first few days! My trousers were not that tight anymore and I felt lighter.

My morale was high and I told myself I could grit my teeth and go through it.

But alas, the next few days was a struggle against temptations. Somehow, my eyes were easily drawn to the hawker centres along the journey home and my nose became more sensitive to the aroma of food and my stomach growled angrily.

Never had I missed so much the prawn mee, laksa, yong toufu, beef steak, mutton curry, ice kacang, fried koey teow and even bak kut teh which I had not touched of late. And they had never tempted me that much until I was on this slimming course.

“Hi, you have already lost two kilos, how much more do you want? After all, you are not that fat. And those diet drinks are simply yucky. You don’t need to suffer like that!”

I could hear a small voice telling me all this but I resisted. I told myself I had the resolve and discipline to stick to the whole programme, period. Checking my weight had become a ritual. Every morning I would weigh myself and members of the family would crowd round, either giving encouragement or poking fun at me.

Secretly, I just wished that I could shed another two more kilos.

Unfortunately the needle on the weighing scale refused to budge after the first week or so. And I’m still far from looking anywhere near Mr Bean. But I did lose two kilos, so isn’t it great?

Then came an overseas holiday and a family celebration and I was promptly back to my old self, dining heartily and snacking in between.

I have not weighed myself recently but have a sneaky feeling that I have regained the two kilos I paid to lose.

Currently, my wife is taking a slimming product in order to look like Jane or Raquel.

With so many on the market, I hope she has chosen the right one, lest I end up having to share with her a piece of my liver