The Weight-Watcher's Soliloquy

¦with apologies to Will Shakespeare!

Tubby, or not tubby: fat is the question:
whether 'tis nobler in the mind to consume
the sweets and mallows of outrageous feeding,
or to take arms against a sea of cellulite,
and by abstaining lose it. To diet? To slim?
No more! (and by slimming to say we end
the gut ache and the thousand caramel chocs
the flesh will sag to!) 'Tis a consummation
devoutly to be wished?

To diet. To slim.
To slim - perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub,
for as we starve to death what creams may come
when we have shuffled off this mortal flab,
must give us pause. There's the dessert
that makes calamity of so long abstinence:
for who would bear the nips and chews of lettuce,
the depressing crispbread, the gourmet's contempt,
the pangs of eternal hunger, the jaw's decay,
the indolence of orifice, and the churns
that vacant corners of the stomach make
when you yourself might your quietus make
with a bare gherkin? Who could ever bear
to shrink and sag under a boring diet,
but that the thought of something after dinner¦
the undiscovered pantry, to whose shelves
all serious eaters return, unmuzzles the gob,
and makes us hap'ly scoff those things we want,
then sample others that we know not of.
Thus, chocolate does make cowards of us all,
and thus the native hue of resolution
is sicklied o'er with the tempting whiff of chips,
and sticky buns of great size and density,
with this regard their currants multiply,
and lose the name 'forbidden'.