chapter 1: weights and measures

I remember very clearly my thoughts when I first met Jade. First of all I saw her face peeping over my computer screen as she walked into the gym - and a very pretty face it was. It was round in shape and framed by dark hair, and had a peachy tanned complexion, green eyes and wide full lips that added a tantalising touch of lusciousness. She had soft dimples, smiling eyes and naturally upwards-turning mouth corners that gave her an air of feline satisfaction.

'The cat that got the cream.'

When I stood up to greet her, though, I recall thinking it wasn't just the cream she'd got - it was the whole damn cake shop. Her gorgeous face sat above a plump body that seemed to have been constructed wholly from curves and bulges.

'Dammit, she's a fat girl.'

She wore dark jeans, a black T-shirt and a short leather jacket, below which burgeoning love-handles muffined generously over her belt. The shirt was not low-cut but her breasts were still very much in evidence, straining the jacket's single button. The star of the show, though, was her protruding stomach which jutted shamelessly in front of her. A slight depression in the taut t-shirt fabric showed where her navel was, the ample roll of pudge beneath it giving a perky bounce as she walked. At first I wondered if she was here for one of our pre-natal water gymnastics classes, but the seismic wobble of that belly as she stopped in front of the desk told me it was pure fat.

As a personal trainer you become efficient at assessing people's body types quickly, and starting to match up the types of programme they might need. My first impression of Jade, formed as she gave me a cheerful "hello", was that she was naturally a curvaceous but slim girl who had fairly recently fallen into bad habits and succumbed to regular overindulgence. She was very obviously one of those women who carry extra weight on the belly - indeed, her arms and legs were still quite trim, although that's not to say that her hips and behind had escaped piling on a few extra pounds. I could see from the mirror opposite that her butt was large but perkily rounded - not a hint of sag from the extra weight. Standing at around 5'4", she was quite the perfect little butterball.

In short, she was a million miles from the trim, hard-bodied women who made up 90% of my regular clientele - and who, in my private life, I considered to be my 'type'. Being a fitness fanatic myself, I always admired the discipline and self-respect that come with keeping in shape, and I had a definite disdain - perhaps even disgust - for women who let themselves go.

'Well, fair play to her - she's trying to make a change and shift some of that flab.'

My next thought was not particularly charitable, but I recall the exact words that ran through my head, so I may as well record them honestly:

'I'm going to do everything in my power to turn this hog into a hottie.'

She spoke again and I looked back up at her gorgeous, smiling face, suddenly aware that I had been running a critical eye over her overweight body for a moment too long.

Her voice was musical. "I've just started working around the corner and I'd like to sign up please - I've got so out of shape recently!"

"Certainly," I replied, still trying not to stare at her jutting stomach. "If you just fill in this registration form, I'll give you the tour of the gym and we can talk about your fitness plan".

As she took the pen and leant over the desk to fill in the paperwork, the bottom of her plump belly popped out of the black t-shirt and hit the counter with a smack, before wobbling to rest there. She blushed and pulled the material down to cover the pink flesh, and then continued, the bulge of her gut still squashing against the desk.

She finished the form and I showed her around the gym; she took everything in enthusiastically and didn't seem to notice the raised eyebrows and smirks from some of the gym bunnies who were breaking a sweat in there. Next we started talking about a workout plan for her.

"So," I began, "we need to figure out where you are, where you'd like to get to, and the time period in which you'd like to achieve your goals. The first step is to take some height and weight measurements, if you'd like to follow me".

A lot of women, and particularly the chunkier ones, prefer not to be measured and weighed in the open gym, so I turned to lead her to my office. However, the weighing scales were on the way, and before I could even continue, she had hopped on. She squashed in her stomach with both hands so that she could read the digital display, and waited for it to settle and flash up a number.

"104 kilos!" she exclaimed - not exactly loudly, but I sensed that everyone in the gym was listening. One of the thin blonde girls on a nearby treadmill tried, and failed, to stifle a snigger.

"Wow, that's like 230 pounds. I really have packed it on recently," Jade continued.

I noted down her weight, then helped her down from the scale. Next I measured her height and found that my estimate of 5'4'' was spot on.

"OK", I said, "now I just need to take a measurement of your body fat, using the callipers". I showed her the tool, and explained how I would take a pinch of skin at certain locations on her body and measure it, in order to ascertain the thickness of the subcutaneous fat layer.

As I helped her out of her jacket, I could feel again that all eyes in the gym were on Jade. I looked around; one young guy, doing concentration curls on a nearby bench, was openly staring at her with a smirk of expectation. I could see that she had noticed too, as she glanced quickly around and blushed a little.

"Ready?" I asked her, and she nodded.

First I pinched a vertical fold of skin at the back of her arm, carefully gauged its thickness with the plastic callipers, and wrote down the measurement. Next I carried out the same measurement at the front of the arm, marvelling at the silky softness of her skin. The third measurement was just below her shoulderblade at an angle, so I had to ask her to hitch up her t-shirt. She turned around and did so, revealing substantial rolls of fat around her bra-strap. As I located the right spot, squeezed her flesh and measured it, I thought I felt her breathing quicken a little. Again, I wrote down the measurement. Finally, I needed to take a measurement at the bottom of the stomach, where it meets the hip. I hesitated a moment.

"Er, Jade? If you could just turn around and hitch your t-shirt up a little higher at the front so I can take the last measurement?" She eased the black fabric up over the generous bulge of her belly, which jiggled in front of my face.

I couldn't even see her iliac ridge or her hip-bone beneath the thick layer of fat, so I just had to take my best estimate. I pushed the waistband of her jeans down a little and watched even more flesh spill out, then pushed my fingers into her fat to find the hip-bone, took a meaty pinch and closed the callipers on it. As she stood there in front of everyone with her big stomach exposed, I heard another loud snigger. I was concentrating on getting as accurate a measure as possible, but I sensed that Jade had looked around to see where the laugh came from.

"OK, all done", I said as I noted down the final measurement. I stood up and saw that she had blushed a deep red and now looked rather subdued. I felt a wave of compassion for this out-of-place fat girl and decided to hurry on.

"Right this way, please. We'll step into the office and go over the results." With the floor show over, the noise in the gym picked up again as everyone went back to their workouts.

In the gym office, I showed Jade to a chair, then quickly added the four readings together and compared them to the relevant chart.

"This measurement gives a combined total of around 180mm, which suggests you have a body fat percentage of around 50%. For a woman of your age, a healthy level is something like 14-21%. While we should repeat those readings to improve the accuracy, they certainly suggest that you're carrying far too much fat."

"And you've seen the other measurements, Jade - at 5 foot four and well over a hundred kilos, it won't come as a surprise that you're very overweight for your height. You are what's technically classed as obese - borderline clinically obese, actually. You really need to drop some of that weight to get healthy."

"I know, I've turned into such a fatty!" she replied, a little frown of worry crinkling her brow. "I was always really sporty at school, then at uni I just went off the rails a bit. I grew a beer belly in my first year, and since then my weight has just shot up. I've got five pairs of jeans that I don't think I'll ever fit into again! But I was only 95 kilos a couple of months ago when I last weighed myself, so 104 is a bit of a shock. I started my first job a couple of months ago and I guess it's been pretty stressful. I know I've been eating far too much, and pretty unhealthily - that's where this comes from!"

She pulled up her t-shirt, which lifted her round gut before spilling it out and letting it plop into her lap. It undulated for a moment then settled into an almost perfect ball of fat, punctuated in the middle by a soft fold-line with her navel at its centre. She squeezed the mound of blubber between her palms so that it bulged out towards me, then gave me her sweet little smile again, then said: "You must think I'm such a pig!"

I didn't know where to look. I found it incredible and a little repulsive that that such a pretty young girl should have such a huge stomach, but I couldn't stop staring at it. "Yes...well... no, I mean, let's talk about your... how we can help you shift some of that excess fat."

She eased the t-shirt back down again and I watched the roll of jiggling flesh vanish out of view. This little piggy was certainly going to be a handful.