Such a Pretty Fat: One Narcissist's Quest to Discover if Her Life Makes Her Ass Look Big, or Why Pie Is Not the Answer (6 page)

CHAPTER FIVE

Lookin’ Good and Feelin’ Fine? Not So Much

Motivation.

I squeeze my eyes shut and try to concentrate.

Motivation.

I clench my jaw and grit my teeth.

Mo-ti-va-tion.

I break down the word, saying it slowly in my head and concentrating on each syllable.

Motivation?

Yeah, I’ve still got nothing.

I stuck to a low-fat, low-calorie diet for a brief period, but then we had the gas leak (and resultant macaroni explosion), and now I can’t seem to find the will to get myself back on task with exercise
or
nutrition. My motivation is as elusive as Britney’s underpants.

If I’m going to get myself in gear, I need to figure out what drives me. (Fletch promised me rewards, but I’ve already lost interest in them.) I’m aware that I do well when I have a deadline, but anything with a due date is linked to compensation. Checks with my name on them certainly propel me toward achievement, and I’m sure I’d lose weight if I were being paid. Unfortunately, there aren’t a lot of employers out there needing people to “be less fat.” A pity, really.

Motivated by the thought of all the custom cabinetry and guest bathrooms $250-large could help buy, I tried to get on
The Biggest Loser
last year, but I acted like myself in the audition and the screeners cut me. I didn’t even get past the initial casting call because obviously they didn’t want strong, confident women who liberally employ the F word. (They’d have so many bleeps during my workouts, it would sound like an episode of
Springer
.)

Speaking of the Losers, it seems like the contestants stay on track because they hated how they looked and felt when they were heavy. Unfortunately for my waistline, I’m fine with both these things. In the casting process, I said in no uncertain terms that I’d never be the pusillanimous fatty who broke down and cried on the show. I imagine I’d be all,
Hey, when you pussies are done with your meltdowns, come and get me at the pool. And bring me a daiquiri!
With all the emotional upheaval in the program, I often wondered if participants wouldn’t be better on a therapist’s couch rather than the treadmill. Fletch and I would watch over plates full of pork chops and scalloped potatoes, giggling at everyone’s Scary Problems.

Seriously, how could America
not
fall in love with me?
⁴²

Knowing the ass I’d have kicked on
The Biggest Loser
does nothing to help me find my motivation today. I really
should
be driven to change because of my health. Honestly, my doctor said some terrifying stuff, and I prefer not to die anytime soon, whether it’s the result of a faulty furnace or my own gluttony. So you’d think my fear would propel me into the car and on to the gym, but it doesn’t. There’s an O. Henry level of irony here that I can finally afford the occasional pedicure again, yet being borderline diabetic, I might eventually lose my feet.
⁴³
I’m scared enough to consider these factors . . . but not quite enough to be spurred into really doing something. I’m wrapped up in angst, not action. Sure, everything Dr. Awesome said was real and frightening when I was in her office . . . but now that it’s a few weeks in the past, her dictates feel slightly less relevant.

Too bad I’m fighting with my mom at the moment, because parental involvement has always provided me with motivation to lose weight. After my freshman summer, I was in great shape for a long time. However, my weight started to inch up again during my third junior year.
⁴⁴
This time the bloat
was
beer related, since I’d turned twenty-one. Because I was finally a legal adult,
no one
was making me stand on a scale against my will. And yet Mom’s will was just as strong. So she—ever the crafty one—employed a different approach.

One day she and I were looking at my sorority composite photos. I began to bitch that my collarbones were almost the only ones you couldn’t see in the off-the-shoulder black drape and pearls my sisters and I wore for the shot. Naturally, I thought I was cuter than everyone else,
⁴⁵
but with my insanely competitive nature, I didn’t like them being thinner than me. Sensing an opening, my mom leapt on the opportunity like Maisy on a Milk-Bone. She offered to “help me” before our photos were retaken in the fall. Oh, yes, she promised, my collar bones
would
be defined. Help consisted of her paying for membership at a fly-by-night diet center.

Without a doubt, the Nutri-Bolic center provided the worst diet food ever. My meals were mostly packets of dried powders claiming to be “soup” and “oatmeal,” although none resembled any soups or oatmeals I’d ever tasted. Had I been in a coma, perhaps I’d have appreciated the thick, starchy liquid texture of my meals. Too bad I was conscious, because I found myself telling random strangers, “I just want to chew something, damn it!”

Interestingly, this “food” gave me a brand-new appreciation for all the staples of my mom’s repertoire. I craved every atrocity to ever originate from our badly wallpapered, low-ceilinged, harvest-gold-appliance-having kitchen. Hot dogs shriveled in the microwave to cocktail-frank size, paired with stale buns? Yum! The three-bean salad that looked exactly like the organic matter we pulled from our pool’s filter? Deelicious! Unseasoned rubber chicken served on a bed of still-crunchy brown rice? Bring. It. On! Even those grotesque onion-and-Worcestershire creations my dad, Dr. Ronald McMengele, grilled just long enough to make the blood run down our arms when we picked them up were suddenly appealing.
⁴⁶

Consuming a thousand calories a day with very little protein, I felt lightheaded and weak every second for three whole months. I wasn’t just hungry. I was famished. Starving. Ravenous. Not only did I want to consume my parents’ cooking in vast quantities; I was in such a state that I’d look at the love of my life, a 140-pound Great Pyrenees mountain dog named George, and I’d fantasize about his tender, meaty flanks, charbroiled over a hickory-wood fire and served with a side of home fries.

I didn’t lose weight that summer because I was eating sensibly—I lost it because I was starving. I dropped more than thirty pounds, but at the cost of a portion of my sanity.

The clothing store where I worked was right across from a drugstore in the Glenbrook Square mall. At the end of the day, I’d sail past the displays of Generra and Guess T-shirts in our front window to buy a Little Debbie brownie. When I got to my car, I’d open the package and spend five minutes smelling it and marveling at the smooth icing and dense, rich, nut-studded cake. No matter how hot it was, I’d keep the windows of my sassy little Toyota Celica rolled up so none of the scent could escape. Overcome with desire, I’d finally stuff the whole thing in my mouth, chew it to a fine paste . . . and then spit it back into the wrapper. Had I not been so concerned with keeping my teeth white and esophagus intact, bulimia would have been a viable choice. Regardless, the simple act of having solid food in my mouth—even if I didn’t digest it—kept me from going all Shannen Doherty on everyone.

One dark day, my coworker Meredith left a cup of ice cream in the break-room freezer, which I discovered when I reached for my container of plain yogurt. I meant to sneak only a tiny spoonful of rocky road to wash away the sour taste of the unsweetened Dannon, but the second it hit my tongue, I
lost it
. With three deft bites, I swallowed the entire thing
and
licked the cup dry. The way I panicked and stuffed the empty container back in the freezer, you’d have thought I was holding a smoking gun.

Even though twenty different girls worked in that store, and despite my tacit denial, Meredith clearly knew I’d eaten her ice cream because I hardly talked about anything except food. As Meredith and I folded the acid-washed jeans and organized racks of scrunchies, I’d chatter on about the boutique where they sold the giant cookies and the calzones at Sbarro and all of my favorite pies, listed alphabetically. Meredith would smile and nod well into the third hour of my “All Things Arby’s”
⁴⁷
soliloquy, in what I assume was an attempt to keep me from losing my mind and biting our customers.

Poor Meredith. We worked together only when I was following that insane diet, so she never knew I wasn’t completely batshit crazy.

Since I can’t find any compelling reason to cart my big ass to the gym, I decide it would be fun to see whether I can locate Meredith online and confess my crime. Maybe I can even find an address where I can send her the seventy-five cents I still owe her. But before I can pull up , I’m hit with stabbing pains up and down my arms and in my chest.

Oh, dear.

The good news is, I’m fine. I took an aspirin and antacid and felt better. The issue was less “heart attack” and more “too many slices of cheesesteak pizza from Philly’s Best.”

The bad news is, Dr. Awesome wanted to see me again anyway. And now I’m here in her office, and her hideous nurse is
making
me get weighed after I’ve dodged the scale during my past few visits.

After five minutes of what I consider to be a highly unprofessional argument, we compromise and the nurse finally agrees that if I just step up on the damn thing, she won’t say the numbers out loud.

While my weight registers, I position one hand over the digital display and one over my eyes. Somehow the nurse finds this to be a personal offense. Oh, come on; I’m not the first person to do this. Stacey says she turns around when her trainer weighs her, and she’s never once mentioned his agitated foot tapping or disgruntled sighs.

The thing is, I’ve got a pretty good idea of my number already because I have a bizarre talent: within a minute, a pound, a degree, and a dollar, I’m somehow intuitive enough to predict the time, my weight, the temperature, and how much my groceries cost.
⁴⁸
Based on the way my pants have bitten into my flesh since I finished the second book, I’m afraid to let the scale confirm the scary digits floating around in my head. I mean, I know, but I don’t really want to
know
.

With quiet resignation, the nurse writes my weight in my chart and tells me I can step off the scale. “All right, it’s over,” she says with a voice far sharper than the situation merits. What
ever.
If weighing in is such a treat, why don’t we put you and
your
childbearing hips up here, lady?

The nurse leads me back to the exam room, and as soon as I sit down, I whip out my bottle of hand sanitizer. When I worked for the HMO, I was in and out of doctors’ offices all day long. Not coincidentally, I was always sick from touching germy doorknobs. I’ve since become completely OCD, and this is the fourth time the Purell has been out of my purse since I’ve been here.

Nurse Big Hips instructs me to sit on the paper-covered table, and she takes my blood pressure, only the cuff feels a whole lot tighter than usual. Shortly thereafter, a thermometer is jammed in my mouth and I correctly guess that my temperature is 98.4.
⁴⁹

Last time I was here, there was a question about my blood pressure. I’d attributed the inflated numbers to my having run for the bus, and I would have thought nothing more of it, but for the past month, I’ve noticed an odd tingling/numbness in my arms. Yesterday after my initial bout of pain, they still felt weird after I had aspirin and antacid, so the doctor insisted I come in.

After Nurse Booty leaves the exam room, I seek out the hand sanitizer again to rub the area where the BP cuff was because what if the patient before me had tuberculosis or chlamydia? I dig around in my glorious new handbag for the bottle.

Okay. You caught me.

I admit it.

I bought a new purse with my royalties, too.

Sure, said royalties came from the book I wrote about spending all my money on designer bags and then going broke, but the irony isn’t lost on me, and I promise I learned my lesson.
⁵⁰
Plus, it’s the first new purse I’ve gotten in about five years, which anyone would agree is totally reasonable, especially since it
isn’t
Prada.

I love this bag so much, I promise to carry it every day until it completely disintegrates. It’s a large brown and tan satchel with glossy leather handles and a leather bottom, and it’s got tassels and some random equestrian-looking hardware on it. I bought it specifically because it’s large enough to comfortably carry a variety of items—restaurant doggie bags, books, Fletch’s BlackBerry, etc.

I’ve never had such a big bag, so I’m totally taking advantage of it. This puppy is
full
. I can even carry a bottle of wine in it, though I’d caution anyone else before doing so. A week ago Fletch and I attended his company’s holiday party, which was kind of weird because everyone he works with is so short. When we sailed in, I swear we were a head taller than anyone else there.
⁵¹
Anyway, I had a good Cabernet tucked away to take to another fete later that night, and the weight of it turned my lovely handbag into a military-grade battering ram . . . which I learned only after accidentally nailing the dour company president in the crotch.

Jen’s Life Lesson #8897: Making a “hitting someone’s Yule log at the Christmas party” joke totally
is
funny. It’s not my fault none of the wee folk in his company have a sense of humor.

After cleaning my hands again, I pull out my book and begin to read, having learned the hard way that the doctor’s computer cannot be used to access my Gmail. In my defense, they shouldn’t have left me bored and shivering shirtless on a cold metal table for half an hour that one time.