Baby, it ain't the jeans...
Remember the roller coaster with the sign that said, “You must be this tall to ride?” Similar rules apply to jeans. If the tag on your waistband is in the double-digits, hand over your ticket, proceed to the exit, and haul your fat ass to the gym.
Of course, don’t be looking for sympathy there either. My friend Erin, a personal trainer with the relentless enthusiasm of a camp counselor on crack, recently talked me into a trial membership at her gym, the kind of place where people go more to stay in shape, rather than to get in shape. I lasted all of 25 minutes. Thankful not to have stroked out on the elliptical machine, I staggered back to the ladies locker room to hose myself off and escape the punishing stares of the glistening beauties in their tastefully coordinated workout attire. The complimentary towels were anything but. Picture a terry-cloth post-it. I wondered if this was the gym’s version of a not-so-subtle motivational message: “If you can’t get our towels around your gigantic arse, drop the shampoo, and get yourself back upstairs to the cardio room for a minimum of 40 more minutes. You fat bastard. Cheers, The Management. P.S. Yes, our scales are accurate.”
Needless to say, I haven’t been skinny enough to rock a pair of jeans in months. OK, years. It’s no coincidence that the last time I wore jeans was sometime in 2005, a year after I’d decided to go back, I mean, go to college. I’d heard about the Freshman Fifteen, but no one had said shit about the Sophomore Sixteen, not to mention the darker perils of junior and senior year.
And then there’s my husband. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a lovely, brilliant, amazing human being, and, as it happens, one hell of a chef. If I were a better person, I’d tell him to dump my ass and get on with his life. Thankfully, I’m not. That said, the man has been trying to kill me with food since the day we met. He lives to feed me, and seemingly finds my ever-expanding girth no impediment to his amorous advances. That’s the good news. It’s also the bad news.
“Baby, no – I can’t have an entire platter of pesto gnocchi with freshly grated parmesan and a hunk of garlic bread for dinner. I’m, like, you know – trying to lose weight.”
“But you’re beautiful. And it’s so good – it’ll make you happy. And i want to make you happy. That makes me happy.”
And who am I to deny him his codependent culinary urges? Especially when they go down so nicely with a bottle and a half of cheap French red? For a while, though, I did try to counsel him on portion size, using a salad plate as an example of how much food I should have. Bless his heart, he did his best, but his servings stayed the same size – they just got taller. It was like a bizarre form of water displacement.
There are times when I think, screw it. Why fight the inevitable? Let’s just become that couple, you know the one: the pencil-necked, skinny guy with the sunken chest and drawn eyes because he’s had the life sucked out of him by his whale-like, bossy wife, the one hovercrafting along beside him in her voluminous muumuu, fat, glowing and serene.
Or I could just set myself on fire.
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