Getting Waisted (9 page)

Two weeks later, I was home making popcorn when Nick called. “I miss talking to you.”

I let out a long held breath. “I miss you, too.” We both missed the banter, the flirtation, and the possibility—but that component was gone. Nick wanted a phone buddy to play with. I wanted the man. Our conversations never got back their groove. He asked why I hadn’t been truthful. I laughed and responded, “We would have been done weeks earlier. We never would have met.”

He said, “You don’t know that.”

A touch bitterly, I assured him I did. History was funny that way. Our banter had turned into a battle. He went in hard to the crux of it all, “Omission is the same as lying.”

I fought on the side of survival, throwing down the gauntlet, “Say it. Say what you mean. I dare you to name the lie.”

The silence got louder. Finally he asked, “Why don’t you lose weight; you have such a pretty face.”

Blecch!
I was in a fury. “I like being fat. I choose it as a fast-track asshole discovery test!” I slammed down the phone. As I stormed out of the kitchen with my incinerated popcorn, I caught my reflection in the toaster and thought,
I am a liar. I don’t like my body either
.

8

Bowing to
the Master

Diet #9
The Master Cleanse

Cost
$6.00

Weight lost
16½ pounds

Weight gained
0 pounds, but crushing
insecurity on the rise

How much more rejection,
humiliation, and degradation could I take? I suspected I’d better buckle up, as living with a pair of beauties was not easy on my ego and I often felt like the third wheel, barely hanging on to my seat in a race car being driven full throttle and pretending to love the ride. My job title was clearly “best friend” with nearly identical character traits as described in any dog book under “Labrador retriever.”

Labradors have a well-known reputation for
appetite
. They are persistent and persuasive in requesting food. For this reason, the Labrador owner must carefully control his/her dog’s food intake to avoid obesity. The steady and loyal temperament of Labradors and their ability to learn make them an ideal breed for search and rescue, detection, and therapy work.

Detection, yup, I could always find food and therapy. No, not for me . . . for my friends. Yet, it always surprised me how much they wanted my counsel on so many things and it made me feel appreciated.

Every night I would pray to the Gods of Gravy to leave me alone, and every morning I would begin my day praying for the willpower to not eat. I sat with my hands in prayer pose and summoned Buddha. This was a deity I could relate to, and not just philosophically;
he
was fat! Every morning at the crack of dawn, I would vow to eat clean—a simple piece of toast, a barely there smear of cream cheese, a cup of black coffee, and a medium-size chunk of cantaloupe. But by eleven, the need to feed would be overwhelming and I’d think,
Maybe just a small piece of cheese and a couple of Wheat Thins . . . or four.
When that didn’t do the trick, I’d bargain with myself again,
Okay, how about one stick of gum? No, that would just make me salivate, which would make me want more, but more of what?
It didn’t really matter because, sooner rather than later, I would cave in to whatever heart-attack snack was on hand, and then would come the cycle of remorse and regret. It wouldn’t last, however, because it was in my nature to find the positive in most situations. I was drilling deep to find the upside in being fat. Much like Ivory soap, we fat people float, we retain heat—which makes us great to have around if you become stranded outdoors in wintertime and are in danger of hypothermia—and we are built for comfort, not for speed, which is great when a spare pillow is not available. We are also easy to pick out in a crowd, although not so much in Las Vegas or Germany’s fabled Baden-Baden Spa, often filled to the brim with large swim-suited women taking the thermal waters. It’s easy to poke fun at anyone who stands out but I knew that for me it wasn’t the only way I wanted to stand out. I wanted to be known for my talent, my humor, and hopefully a few good deeds along the road rather than just for my dress size.

There were so many diets to choose from, all making the same promises, but then one day, while standing in the supermarket checkout line, my arms full of potato chips and other snacks, my eye caught a story about several starlets who collectively lost a thousand pounds after a week or so on the Master Cleanse. I was immediately attracted to it as I felt a sense of confidence in a diet with the nerve to label itself as the Master. This was a program that was perfect for me—no food whatsoever. I have always been so much better at dealing with stringent rules without choices;
that
I knew how to do. What I couldn’t do was the whole small portion thing. If given any leeway in food choices, this big girl needed big portions. I bowed to my new Master who required loyalty only to the simplest of regimes—ten days of nothing but water mixed with a pinch of cayenne pepper, the juice of a lemon, and a squeeze of maple syrup plus a little dash of herbal laxative mixed in to the drink, followed by a once a day chaser of saltwater. Yum. The first day was easy. I was so into the promise of pounds falling off quickly that I didn’t notice any hunger pangs. By the third day my breath smelled like bilge and my eyesight began to falter, but the pounds dropped off like cans of Crisco hitting the deck with a thud, which served to galvanize my will. I was in the zone. I vowed to never eat again. I was one step away from becoming a Breatharian. These people (dare I say, nutcases) believe they can live on air alone without food or water. Unfortunately, there are none around to testify to this—they are all dead.

Temptation was everywhere. I scanned bakery windows fully loaded with sugary, chocolatey temptations all screaming my name. The potent scent of BBQ seemed to be coming through the air vents. Even my beauty products were trying to seduce me: peach facial scrub, Tahitian vanilla-infused body cream, berry scented shave cream, grapefruit shampoo, mint body wash. I wasn’t having any of it; I was Mother Teresa and no earthly vanities could toy with my resolve.

I had been invited to yet another engagement party for one of my many girlfriends who had found her mate and was preparing to claim their berth on the ark. I had lost a bunch of weight but I was hardly sylphlike. Still more circular than oblong.
Uggh.
What would I wear? Never easy when a person is fat, dressing well doesn’t just happen. There are no easy, “just toss it on and then off we go” moments. Dressing well requires conscious scrutiny and a great deal of careful planning. Tops needed to match bottoms in order to give the illusion of a longer, leaner silhouette. No jumbo florals, or large prints. There was always the danger of being mistaken for an armchair. There’s even a temptation to buy clothes several sizes too small, partly because we believe that’s how we’re supposed to look, and partly because after being on a hundred and ten diets, wish-fulfillment comes into play. We desperately hope that weight loss is right around the corner, so buying it on sale is the smart move—unless the weight doesn’t come off or stay off—and even if it eventually does, the jumbo padded shoulders or asymmetrical hemline will be out of fashion. There is nothing worse than a diet begun with the accompanying delusion that makes us run out and buy a whole new wardrobe suitable for a whippet, but we keep every teeny, weeny outfit . . . because we want so badly to believe we will succeed.

Winter is a chubinski’s best season; we love quilted down and polar fleece and those shawls and scarves, all of which help to even out the playing field. Everyone looks like the Abominable Snowman. Fall is a great second, we look fabulous in the layered look; after all, we are layered. Spring can be a touch sketchy; the layers are peeled off revealing the truth. The slim girls float around in short pencil-slim skirts and silky nothings, but we are resigned to concealing the damage with artful draping, mostly executed in black, making for large shapeless shrouds accompanied by fabulous jewelry—we know that
always fits. The darkest days for fat women occur in the summer because dressing for heat is a nightmare. We shun mini skirts that will reveal our thunder thighs and cellulite; skimpy little tank tops or anything sleeveless will only accentuate the flapping of fat swallowing up our triceps. Shorts are . . . well . . . too short and an invitation to come to the lake or to a pool party just brings on panic; it’s the one time burkas make sense to me.

I tentatively dipped into the back of my closet where the thin clothes lived. I pulled them out and apprehensively tried them on. To my absolute astonishment, they were loose!

As exhilarated as I was, I also felt nervous. I had been down this road so often; the compliments, the praise for doing a good job, mostly from mere acquaintances, but the more my body changed, the more uncomfortable everything became as I struggled with the responses of some family and friends who up until now had wanted me to change but, now that I had, didn’t seem to like it. There would be gushing compliments that I looked great but I needed to be careful not to go overboard. “You suit a little meat on your bones.” “You look fantastic, but don’t go crazy buying new clothes. I’d hate to see you throw your money away. We’ve seen what happened with that plan before.” People like us to stay as we have always been no matter what they say to the contrary. It’s so much less work for them. My weight loss scared them because I might no longer be the same funny, accommodating, dateless, best friend—me. It scared me, too. It was a case of be careful of what you wish for.

Rewarded as I felt by my success, this transformation was complicated and not always pretty. I had no sense of this me and I didn’t know how to handle the sudden onslaught of male appreciation. From the ubiquitous whistles from men holding jackhammers to cabbies, sleazy old guys, and my girlfriends’ boyfriends, who now gave me a whole new kind of appreciation. I wasn’t used to being objectified. What scared me t
he most: I liked it. Oh, how I wanted it and oh, how angry it made me that it came because of my new, thinner body.