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Over the past couple of weeks there’s been a familiar seasonal sighting around our Dublin house. The object in question usually appears when I’m stepping into the shower or getting ready for bed, and it’s a 100% reliable sign that summer and autumn have ended and colder spells are on the way.
I’m referring, of course, to the return of the winter paunch.
Until a few years ago, this predictable expansion of my midriff was a matter of some concern. Having remained relatively fit and trim from March to October, I considered it unseemly that I might need to start pushing my belt out an extra notch in late autumn, once the clocks went back, or perhaps even contemplate buying pants with an adjustable waistline.
Then I looked around me and saw this was the way things were meant to be. Every other mammal prepares for winter by plumping up. Unless flight is a possibility. In which case it’s time to head south.
Around suburban Dublin – which has been my natural habitat since I moved to Ireland in 1992 – squirrels collect extra nuts and rely on a thickening coat to see them through until spring. Ditto for foxes, hedgehogs, and other metro scavengers. What makes the modern human animal so special that we can ignore this biological imperative?
Plus, I won’t even mention the tantalizing appeal of a hibernation period. If you’re a sports fan, the idea of spending the winter curled up on the couch, remote in hand, snacks at the ready, seems as perfect a natural design as one is likely to find. Especially if you have access to a streaming service featuring the top European soccer leagues, U.S. college football and basketball, and NHL hockey.
This approach is certainly more appropriate to the season than dressing up in Lycra leotards, throwing on an overcoat, sliding into the car, and heading for the gym. After an hour’s exertion on a treadmill or a rowing machine, you’re likely to emerge sweaty and red-faced. Then a week later, you’ve got a chesty cough and a temperature because you defied the natural way.
And before you say a word: I realize that in the 21st century it’s no longer necessary to live like our ancestors, those hardy souls who worked their tails off during the finer months of the year, tilling and harvesting, and then wrapped themselves up tight, settled down in front of the fire, and waited for the first snows to fall.
I visited Plimoth Plantation as a quizzical fourth-grader and the place made a profound impression on me. I still remember the waxed paper windows and the dim, chilly interiors of the colony’s rudimentary dwellings. The clothing and speech of the historical re-enactors working there transported me and my classmates to another world as well.
On the bus back to school that day I remember thinking: I wouldn’t care to live like that, thank you very much.
So I hear you: We have to move on. But surely we weren’t meant to evolve into trendy exercise obsessives, grinding away precious hours on high-tech gym equipment, accompanied only by our own reflection and prejudice-affirming podcasts, as we turn the local health spa into a second home.
Which makes me think that maybe I was a bit hasty, all those years ago, when I dismissed the substandard living conditions in Colonial Massachusetts. Maybe what the early settlers lacked in household appliances (and modern workout equipment), they made up for with the sustained physical effort and mental determination they needed simply to survive.
Or put another way: Long before TV was invented, the Pilgrims were the original American Survivor show. (Aided by a supporting cast of indigenous people in the locality.)
Now I’m not saying that leading an exercise-free life taps into some kind of robust pioneering spirit. Far from it. As anyone with eyes will attest, there are slight seasonal bulges, brought on by short-term indolence, and then there are the gargantuan tummy protrusions that can engulf even the largest of belt buckles. The line between the two is not as fine as you’d think.
What I’m arguing for is sense and moderation – though this is hardly the season for either, I suppose. Through circumstance or design, we eat more and move about less at this time of year. And that’s just the way it is – unless you’re a committed hunter-gatherer roaming the Maine woods for your daily crust or a diehard winter sports enthusiast who insists on “touching the void.”
In the end, maybe there’s a happy medium. Maybe a winter paunch is a quite natural development, to be accepted (if not cherished), with the proviso that come the first flush of spring we’ll take steps to send it packing.
For many of us, this arrangement should be enough to do the trick. Those few extra pounds – laid on during pleasant evenings in the pub with friends or as a result of one too many holiday hors d’oeuvres – will fall off naturally enough as the weather warms up and our lives become more outward-looking.
But the most effective motivation to slim down is the oldest of them all. I don’t know about you, but I’m still vain enough to care about what kind of figure I’ll cut on the beach next summer.
Medford native Steve Coronella has lived in Ireland since 1992. He is the author of “Designing Dev,” a comic novel about an Irish-American lad from Boston who’s recruited to run for the Irish presidency. His latest paperback publications are “Entering Medford – And Other Destinations” and “Looking Homeward - Essays & Humor from a Misplaced American.”
