Poor Myf Warhurst. She’s rather distressed by a comment made by food writer and MasterChef judge Matt Preston in which he called her his “short and slightly wide” cravat, a reference to a
chapter about cravats in his new book, ‘Cravat-A-Licious’.
“I’ve had a few challenging moments this year,” she retorted in The National Times. “I got sacked from my job on commercial radio, nominated by a tabloid paper as worst dressed at the Logies, yelled at by a 12-year-old at the footy, “Hey, you’re that fat slut from the telly”, and told by a comedian that “a treadmill’s not gonna save you, luv”.
Haven’t they heard the one about people in glass houses…? After all, it’s not as if Mr Preston has the most perfect body on the box.
I recall an interview I did years ago with Dale Atrens, a psychologist at Sydney University who was writing a book called ‘Freedom From Fat’ at the time. Atrens had spent a lot of time in the lab measuring the oxygen intake and consequent fluctuations in the metabolic intake of rats.
“We all know thin people who eat a lot and never gain weight and fat people who eat very little and never lose weight,” he told me. “I believe this is due to differences in metabolic rates between individuals – those who have really good adaptive systems convert food to heat; those who don’t convert the excess energy input into fat.
“Food seems to have replaced sex as as a major source of guilt in Western societies and fat-oppression has become a multi-billion dollar industry.
“There’s more misery in the world created by our attitudes towards obesity than by cancer. Thin women are also victims. There’s hardly a woman, thin or fat, who doesn’t worry about her weight. There’s often an unmistakable bitterness over the price they have to pay for having a socially acceptable body.”
So Myf, you’re not alone. Take heart, and don’t let those big boys get you down.

Myf Warhurst