The Weight-loss Diaries (14 page)

the months that you’ve known me—I may have looked like someone who has a
few healthy habits. But at any moment I could flip back into my unhealthy (fatter) self
.

The whole marathon idea sounds insane, but I told her it sounded interesting. There are lots of outrageous ideas that gain momentum at parties, and you never hear about them again. This has to be one of them.

Month 4 (April)

Tell your friends your clothes don’t fit—and not because they’re too tight—and you won’t get a whole lot of sympathy. At least I didn’t. I’m definitely detecting some resentment—some people are about as subtle as a marquee. One friend snaps that I’m “wasting away” and that if she didn’t see me eat from time to time, she wouldn’t even believe that I do. Another accidentally forwards me an e-mail that includes a catty remark about “whether Courtney’s gym schedule will allow her time off for a movie.”

I never imagined that the very personal decision of what to put in my mouth could change the social landscape of my life, but somehow it does. I’m no longer the friend always willing to go for 3:00 a.m. nachos after a night out (it’s not the same for everyone if I go but don’t eat—women always feel less crummy about what they eat if someone is sharing with them). Not too long ago, anyone could call me past midnight on a weeknight, but now I don’t stay up as late because I know I have to get up for the gym. And—especially in the case of friends who have been “meaning” to get to the gym or to start eating more healthfully—sometimes I’m treated as if my decision to order a salad or skip dessert is a silent critique of someone else’s higher-fat selection.

Sometimes I can’t help thinking how much easier it was to be fat.

Diana tells me all the time that I’m no fun anymore, as if the only fun we’ve ever had together was raiding the refrigerator when my parents were out and sneaking to the grocery store for cupcakes with buttercream frosting.

Even Diana can’t eat like that anymore—pig-outs in recent years are mostly restricted to a box of low-fat Nilla Wafers and nonfat whipped cream. But now I’m “psycho” because I won’t join her even for those.

Maybe she’s right. Am I crazy—either eating everything in sight or sticking rigidly to a diet? Nancy says that when you lose weight you’re still the same 69

Copyright © 2004 by Courtney Rubin. Click here for terms of use.

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person, there’s just less of you, but I’m not sure I believe her. Suddenly I spend loads of time thumbing through magazines, dog-earing pages of clothes I now could actually wear. I shop too much, I spend too much, I look in the mirror too much, and I’m a lot more critical of other people’s weight and what they’re wearing.

I’m pickier about men, often judging them the way I’m sure many of them have judged me. I’m not as grateful for any attention as I was when I was heavier. I agreed to go out with a guy who’s a good three inches shorter than I am and didn’t think:
Hey, I’m on a date
, or
If he’s willing to look past
the fact that I’m overweight, I should be willing to overlook that he’s short
. I spent the whole dinner looking for reasons not to like him. He picked a restaurant—an Indian place in Georgetown—that I think last had customers seven years ago. He ordered carrot juice, which in my mind I turned into an anecdote (“What’s up, Doc?” in my best Bugs Bunny voice) before the date was even over.

“A doorknob would make better conversation than he did,” I imagined myself telling my friends in the postdate report. “And he seems to have sprung from the womb at age forty.”

There will be no second date.

Sometimes the hardest part of losing weight is recognizing what’s going to be really lethal for you, and I’m not talking about fettuccine Alfredo. I’m talking about the party weekend where you’re going to spend the whole time thinking about how you’re the heaviest girl there or the dinner with a “friend”

who always makes you want to dash home to your other friends, Ben & Jerry.

Sure, you can’t avoid the world and stay home, swathed in a cloud of cotton, eating bagged salad with balsamic vinegar and one carefully measured tablespoon of olive oil. But I’ve been learning from Shari Frishett that a big part of taking care of myself—besides eating healthfully and exercising—is not putting myself into situations that make me feel unsafe emotionally. I should quit searching for the way to steel myself to get through certain situations, she says, and instead just take myself out of them completely. I shouldn’t make overeating the only way I’m nice to myself.

I told Shari I had to spend a birthday weekend with some slightly wild friends where it was virtually guaranteed that I would eat poorly, have a bunch of drinks, and not exercise—all of which would make me feel crummy about myself. I wouldn’t budge on the idea that I
had
to go, so she suggested I come up with options. Could I find a way to exercise one day? Even just a

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walk? (Not sure—depends on whether I feel like I’ll be missing out if I go off by myself.) Could I arrive late or leave early? (No, I don’t have a car, and the bus isn’t a viable option.) She asked what would happen if I didn’t go. (My friends might be insulted and I’d feel loserish and left out and otherwise controlled by my diet.) And then she told me to think about the fact that I was choosing other people’s needs over my own and at my own risk.

That’s the crux of this whole weight problem, isn’t it? It’s constantly choosing other people’s needs over my own or at least being unwilling to ask for what I need and feeling secure enough that I’ll get it or that life will indeed go on if I don’t. I’ve always admired Mary’s ability to announce at the last minute that she needs a breather on a Friday night to sit home, paint her toe-nails, and then watch crummy television with her cat. It rarely matters what’s going on—if she doesn’t want to go, she usually doesn’t. I can’t do that so easily—it’s those “What if I miss something or don’t get invited again?” fears. I also have a problem announcing that I want to go to such-and-such restaurant or that I need to eat by such-and-forth time. I don’t want to call attention to myself or my diet. I just want everything to be normal, and it isn’t.

As for the party weekend, I went anyway, but with a game plan I

promptly failed to follow. And I did indeed feel crummy. Cranky, too. I would have felt controlled by my diet if I’d stayed home, but I was equally controlled by it away—my entire outlook seemingly determined by what I put in my mouth. I couldn’t stop wondering how much butter had been used to cook my fish, whether everyone thought I was being annoying, and whether I’d gain weight from this excursion even though I wasn’t really having fun. I hated feeling like I perpetually was waiting for the next meal, then either breathing sighs of relief for having jumped hurdles or kicking myself for falling. I hated feeling like I was getting through the weekend instead of living it, enjoying it.

Today Mary came shopping with me for a dress to wear to Brent’s wedding.

The shopping experience wasn’t perfect, but it was so much better than it would have been if I were my old size. Of course, if I were that, I probably would have gone shopping alone, because I wouldn’t have wanted anyone to come with me to the plus-size department, and I would have gone at the absolute last minute and grabbed whatever fit.

Now that I can fit into a size 14, I found myself avoiding dresses that were cut small and would require me to take the next size up—a 16. I know no one knows the size except me, but honestly, I feel fatter in the size 16s. Dave

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Barry once wrote a column about how all clothes should come with the label of a size 6 to make women feel better about themselves. He was definitely onto something.

Because I loathe the sight of my arms, I ended up buying two dresses.

One of them, an Ann Taylor dress, is sleeveless. I bought it first, when it looked like there might not be a single wedding-appropriate dress in the Washington area that had sleeves and didn’t look like something a mother would wear. I like it better than the other dress I bought, an ice-blue short-sleeved one, but there is the arm problem. Got home and tried on the sleeveless one with a cardigan, but it looked wrong, like gym socks with a prom gown. I was feeling annoyed that I’ve lost nearly thirty pounds (way more than the eighteen to twenty I estimated I’d have lost by now) and been lifting weights religiously—and my arms still look as big, white, doughy, and grandmotherly as they did three and a half months ago. So of course, then the one-woman cheerleading squad arrived.

When I was in the bathroom, Diana tried on the Ann Taylor dress. She had asked to try on my jeans when she came in, but I’d said no. Anyway, the dress looked better on her, but who cares? We’re about the same size! Highly doubt she’s as excited about it as I am. Before she left, she knocked the pale blue dress off the hanger while “looking at it.” I’m sure it was only the size on the label she wanted to see.

Tonight at dinner I finished a bottle of balsamic vinegar—the first time I’ve ever been almost proud to have finished any type of food. To me, the empty bottle is a trophy: it means I’ve eaten dozens of salads with balsamic vinegar and olive oil. I can’t remember how many times I’ve gone out and bought healthy things because I planned to start eating right, used them once, then let them sit in the refrigerator until they went bad.

Just when I really felt like I was making progress, something—rather, someone—came along to remind me how far I had to go.

Emboldened by my ever-progressing exercise routine (I can run on the treadmill for a half hour straight at six miles per hour) plus my newly developed ability to make it through an advanced step class, I got a little overam-bitious and signed up for a boxing class. During the second class, in the middle of jabs and hooks, the instructor told me I needed to lose weight. Just like that.

I felt like clobbering him.

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I also felt like ripping off my gloves and plunking myself on the couch with a just-beginning-to-melt pint of Ben & Jerry’s chocolate-chip-cookie-dough ice cream. At the same time, I felt like shrieking, “I’ve lost twenty-eight pounds, you insensitive [string of unprintable words here]. I’m
working
on it.

Why do you think I’m here? You actually think I’m here to learn to box?

Everything I do is a ploy to lose weight. Hello, you’re talking to the girl who took a writing job solely because she thought it would force her to lose weight.”

Instead I stood there, stung. The room got a little blurry as I concentrated on trying not to cry. When I got home, I tried on the contents of half my closet to remind myself that I had indeed lost weight. It wasn’t enough. Yes, my friends have commented about how good I look, but it hurts to realize that they mean in comparison to how I used to look. I still don’t look good, period—good, no qualifier needed.

As the heaviest person in the class—yes, I can’t help noting these things—

I’d already felt a little self-conscious. Maybe it was my imagination, but even before his unsolicited “advice,” I was sure the instructor was watching me carefully and noting, with disapproval, when I stopped for a breather. On the first day, I thought I saw him raise his eyebrows when I walked in, thinking, I was sure,
That fat girl isn’t going to last five minutes in my class
.

Of course I know, as the friend I’ve finally managed to share this with (Alexy) has pointed out, that I shouldn’t care what some guy who knows nothing about me—and who isn’t exactly svelte himself—thinks. But the fact is, his voice is drowning out all the others, all the weeks I so joyfully recorded that Mary said I was looking very thin or that I’m overwhelmed by clothing choices in “normal” stores. Whereas before I could look in the mirror and be sure I saw the results, all of a sudden I see a me who is, if not heavier than ever, certainly a long way from where I want to/need to/should be. Sure, I’m being irrational, but this is one of the times when no amount of reasoning with myself seems to work. The only consolation is that I haven’t cheered myself up with fudge brownies from Marvelous Market. At least not yet.

At work the morning after boxing class, a coworker and I discussed afternoon snacks, which inevitably led to a discussion about weight. I said all I wanted right now was to be at the point where the first thing people noticed about me was not that I was overweight.

“But you’re there,” Leslie said.

I wish I could believe her.

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Midmorning I decided I had to get out of my office—away from myself and all the thinking about what I could and couldn’t eat and about how much I wanted something to take the edge off. I headed for Borders, hoping maybe a quick flip through some fitness magazines would inspire me to keep going. Why I thought this would work I don’t know—these days those magazines just frustrate me. I’m doing everything they say—drinking water, exercising, eating more vegetables, keeping a food diary, not letting myself get too hungry (though it seems that even after a meal, I’m still a little hungry). I’m so drowning in diet advice already that what are the chances of my finding one little tip I haven’t already heard that makes a huge difference? But still I have to look.

Today was not my lucky day. The first magazine I flipped through had a success story from a woman who started out at 5 8½ and 180 pounds (essentially what I am now, except I’m half an inch shorter). She went on about how overweight she was. Depressing. She lost 50 pounds and now weighs 130. Getting that low seems an impossible task.

Of course, then my mind—and my gaze—drifted over to the café sec-

tion of Borders.
Why not?
I thought.
I’m never going to weigh 130 pounds—I’ve
never weighed that in my entire adult life. In college I couldn’t get below 168, no
matter how hard I tried.

But I can’t give up now
, I thought.
If I can’t lose weight with the publication pressure of a column on me, when am I going to do this? If I can’t do this
now, I’ll never be able to do it
, I thought—
and I’m not ready to concede that yet
.