First Gentleman with Wilson Orhiunu
Email: babawill2000@gmail.com Twitter: @Babawilly
Behind every great fortune lies a great crime said French novelist, Honore de Balzac. Well, anything you can do, I can do better (Annie Get Your Gun-Betty Hutton and Howard Keel), and so try this for size- Underneath every great belly lays a great six pack. Babawilly; Nigerian something.
With my ground breaking quotation out of the way, let’s proceed with the real deal Holyfield. Where is my six pack? Who moved it? I wondered for a while till inspiration struck by way of the scripture – seek and ye shall find. Sometimes things declared missing were there all along, so just to be sure my six pack did not emigrate to David Beckham’s abdomen I started my search with a private Ultrasound scan as I would have been too embarrassed to tell my GP what I was searching for. I paid my cash and got my proof. They gave me a print out which showed that my Rectus Abdominis muscle was resting in peace. (Too much peace if you asked me).
Now that I was fully reassured that the muscle was there, my next stop was the gym. I took my belly straight to the gym and demanded an instant meeting with my trainer. I felt detached from my belly and I got that feeling parents get when they march their child to school for a meeting with the teacher asking why exorbitant school fees have not translated into an Albert Einstein level of mathematical abilities.
He looks at me without a word while I lambasted him for his lack of effort and talent. I told him how I paid him good money and was always at the gym on time yet when the Premiership foot games I watch come to an end, I am reminded of my abdominal muscular inadequacies when the players exchange shirts.
“Well Dr Orik… Oriun… is it ok if I just call you Wilson?”
“Call me what you what, just give me a six pack”.
“Well your records of attendance are not bad. One hundred and eighteen gym sessions in 2014. And I understand you do a fair bit of running”.
“I do”.
“You started the 2014 very well. Twelve sessions in January, fifteen in February and fourteen in March. You dropped off to an average of eight sessions a month till August but attended just once in September. What happened then?”
“I cannot remember. Oh, perhaps I was building up my street running towards the half Marathon in October”. Then my brain kicked into gear.
“Oh! How could I forget, we had a baby”.
“Aww. Boy or Girl?”
“Boy. Please don’t distract me. I am looking for my six pack, I need answers”.
“Didn’t you turn 50 last year?”
“I did”.
I shifted nervously in my chair wondering if he was about to tell me I was past my prime. Ageist nonsense! Up-start. Just because he uses steroids he feels he can insult me? (That is my ‘sour grapes’ escape mechanism. Everybody more muscular than me is either on steroids or much younger than me. ‘Wait till you get to my age’ is another good phrase.
“I only wanted to wish you a happy birthday,” he said.
He weighed me and measures the fat on my arms and belly and took notes. I did not like the way he grabbed my abdominal fat and made a silly face when it was his fault that it was there in the first place. If he did his job well my wife would have been cracking palm kernels on my abs. Unfortunately my abdomen doubles up as the baby’s bouncy castle.
“How are you carbs?”
“I eat bread and rice daily. Pounded yam nights are frequent also”.
“I understand you Africans cook with saturated oils”.
“Cook with? We empty the whole bottle of palm oil in the pot. We are Nigerians you know, we love our flavour”.
“Dr Wilson, would you consider cutting out the carbs and your oily soups?”
I laughed a bit then proceeded to search my brain for a parable.
“Have you heard about Fela?”
“Yes, I am a fan,” he said
“Then you would be familiar with this phrase, -No agreement today, no agreement tomorrow”.
We both laughed. The carbs and oil stay.
“Liposuction?”
“No!”
“Ok, talking about Fela, he had a diet similar to yours. How come he had a six pack throughout his life? Well I never met him but the shirtless pictures told a story”.
“I do not know,” I responded. I thought of the tours, the rehearsals, the imprisonment, the arson attack on Kalakuta and the police beatings; enough to keep ones weight down and muscular tone up.
“Perhaps I should take to playing the Saxophone. That could improve my lung function and make me run better,” I replied.
“Do you have the time?”
“No”.
“It looks like the money is on the diet mate”.
I reluctantly agreed.
Nutrition has got to change if I am ever going to see the six pack again. Till then I have my Ultrasound scan picture to look at.
