Yes, it's shocking but true - skinny and scrawny old me is morphing into blubber boy. I can see all the signs now: my pants are getting tighter; the lines demarcating my six-pack are barely discernible – even when I flex them till I turn blue in the face – and I pant uncontrollably when climbing up a flight of ten steps. Brunei has ruined me! All the months of hard toil to build up my fitness in BMT and 4SIR have come to naught in the wake of my sedentariness and relentless gluttony. Oh, you might say, “Go exercise! Cut down on the snacks!” But it’s easier said than done, it takes A LOT of discipline to work out on your own, especially when the environment is not conducive – I’m incarcerated in my tiny white cell almost 24/7 – so it’s easy to lapse into slothfulness.

Then, I ask myself, is it really that bad to be fat? What’s wrong with a little paunch peeking from under my shirt? After all, it is a mark of prosperity in the eyes of the Chinese. The instant reaction these days is a resounding no – fat is not a sin - which is followed by the rhetoric on how beauty goes beyond the skin. But is it really alright to just let the fat cells accumulate remorselessly (health reasons aside), and is society’s aversion to fatness just merely a result of its preoccupation with beauty? I would think not.

A fat exterior reflects the attitude of the person: laziness. Very often, when a person fails to wear neatly-pressed clothes, we would unhesitatingly chastise him for being sloppy. However, when a person is fat, we don’t tell him the same thing – I’m assuming that people are generally not mean – because fatness is a touchy issue. So why then is sloppiness in personal grooming not considered an off-limits issue? After all, clothes and physique are facets of a person’s appearance. Going by this thread of logic, it follows that fat people should be equally castigated for being sloppy.

One might argue that a person’s physique is not as easy to change as his clothes and that more often than not, fat people are restricted by the genes dished out to them at birth – it’s not their fault. Then, how is it that there are instances of people scoring better in examinations than those with higher IQ? Two words: hard work. These people do not wallow in self-pity, and accept the fact that they can’t do well just because they weren’t endowed with Einstein’s brain; they worked hard than their smarter peers to change their lot in life. In the same way, fat people can change their appearance only if they are willing to make a disciplined effort to.

Having said all that, I concede that not every fat person is lazy. Some do make the effort to slim down, but the effects are just not so visible. I applaud these people for their courage and hope their indomitable won’t waver just because the results are not so forthcoming. However, for the rest of us, especially those who were once skinny (and that includes me), there is no excuse. I exhort all of you to heave yourself away from the desk now and tone those flaccid muscles.

A trimmer and fitter body awaits.