Would You Like Gagging With That?

Young people are drawn to fast food restaurants the way moths are attracted to light bulbs. The food is cheap, there are no parents to badger you and it’s usually full of the opposite sex.

Fast food chains spend a great portion of their advertising budgets attempting to draw in teenage boys because years of market research has told them the same thing: to a teenage boy, the fastest way to get to first base is by buying a girl some fries and Coke.

I know this because I was once that stereotypical teenager, who spent her first date in a smelly, grimy fast food restaurant.

A teenage boy took me there because 1) it was probably all he could afford 2) it was more private than his parent’s living room and 3) he wanted to get to first base.

Unfortunately, when you choose to dine on super-sized junk food that is loaded with preservatives and sugar, a normal kind of date is completely out of the question.

After ordering our food we squeezed ourselves into a booth, which had the kind of lighting that made my chin pimples look like a row of ice-capped volcanoes. I then told a joke that was not remotely funny to anyone but myself. Whilst caught in the grip of hysterical sugar-induced laughter, I took a slurp of my soft drink.

Two terrifying seconds later, my throat was constricting, my eyes were bulging and I knew at that moment I was choking, quite badly, and there was a strong chance I might not survive my first date.

There is no attractive way to choke; the gagging noises emitted from my throat that day were reminiscent of the alien sound effects used in Men in Black, which was ironic since we had only just watched that movie an hour before. I was unable to point out this amusing detail due to the fact I had no air supply but from the horrified look on my date’s face, it was clear he had made the connection.  

So in a last and desperate attempt to salvage some dignity, I threw myself sideways and ran for the bathroom. I felt it was much more gracious to slowly suffocate amongst female patrons queued for the toilet, than choke to death in front of a handsome French boy. But as I slumped to the floor of that seedy fast food bathroom I finally started to relax and the next thing I knew, the horrible gurgling and raspy breathing had stopped and … I was still alive!

The morals of the story:

• If you laugh at your own jokes, stop.
• And if you go on a first date, suggest a homemade picnic in the park.

Text © Jessica Rosman 2015

The Laughing Maniac

Hi, I’m Jess and I am a recovering sugarholic.

That’s what I would say if there ever was a Sugarholics Anonymous. Perhaps in the future there will be. Perhaps in the future there will be pale, sickly individuals who congregate in the basement of their local health-food shop to talk about their highly unwise dietary choices, the way I am going to do now.

I guess I knew that I first had a problem when the Creative Director of an advertising agency I worked at, told me that in the two years he’d known me, he had never understood a word I’d said. Instead of talking clearly like a normal human being, I had laughed and giggled my way through presentations, spluttering out the odd word here and there.

On reflection I’d say that was partly due to nerves. “So you (ha ha) want some (ha ha ha) award-winning ideas (ha)?”

It goes without saying that I was retrenched shortly after. But like all big changes in life, this one came with a wonderful silver lining: I finally had time to sort out my health.

The first thing I did was give up refined sugar. Why sugar specifically? With all the free time on my hands, it was just me, myself and I and it became clear to all of us, that I was a moody cow.

So I started reading books and discovered that too much refined sugar in the diet can put huge stress on the body (cross to intelligent chart on the right), leading to many of the emotional and physical symptoms that I suffered from.

There were tears. There was denial. There were times when I needed a straitjacket to stop me from picking up sugar-laden favourites in the supermarket. But I pulled through and overtime the cravings stopped. The incessant laughing stopped too.

Other happy extras (which you won't find on a chart):

• I stopped needing nanna naps.
• I discovered my boyfriend was not a nasty evil man after all.
• I lost my muffin-top.
• I stopped housing the kind of bacteria that throw loud and boisterous parties inside my gut.

Oh and there was another wonderful thing that happened as a result of cleaning up my diet. I wrote some books that encourage children to eat more fruit and vegetables. And after years of only ever wanting to be a published author, I became one.

A nice ending to a horrible diet.

text (c) jessica rosman 2015