Professor Jimmy Bell, Imperial College, London, created another four letter acronym, to typify a certain class of people, the TOFI. As Der Tagesspiegel explains, TOFI stands for thin outside, fat inside and describes folks, who have lots of visceral fat (fat around their inner organs), although they are slim with very little fat under their skin. This visceral fat is quite bad, as it is very active in creating lots of health-problems, without the person in question even being aware of it.

I can assure you, that I am in no way affected by this new scourge of humanity. I am certainly the FOTI type (if this abbreviation didn’t exist untill now, I claim authorship!). FOTI stands for quite the opposite and reads: fat outside, thin inside.

It describes perfectly, how I feel and look most of the time. This condition is also a big health risk. As one gets shocked everytime, when passing a mirror. The obvious clash of signals from your optic nerve vs. your mental image causes your heartrate to increase significantly, also your blood pressure goes through the roof. These shocks are often followed by prolonged phases of clinical depression. Same happens, when wanting to dress and surprisingly, again your wardrobe dwindled to “impossible, you can’t go out like this” or worse: “can’t even get into it anymore”. This endangers not only ones health (see above), but also brings one to the brink of bankruptcy, having to go out for clothes yet another size bigger than what you last got (I store an array of full sets of clothes in various sizes, just in case). Untill shopping – usually described as blissful activity by most women – gets depressing in itself. Even graver are the effects, when using a scale, which I avoid, if at all possible, to not further endanger my health. Best to stay put and calm oneself down with the known felicific side effects of something sweet…