| 11/14/00 - ENC3310 The Devil, the Grapefruit Diet and Fat Pants or Feel the Burn: Weight Loss for the New Millennium I’m possessed. I’ve been possessed my entire life. Half god, half beast, the monster rules me like my mother only wished she could. The master forgives me for my reluctant worship, because I am a faithful servant who gives frequent offerings. I’m Eve in the Garden of Eden, and my stomach is the Serpent. Weight loss has been my constant adversary and my constant redeemer. We walk the line between love and hate on a regular basis. The battle of the bulge demands of people the things that would ultimately lead to success in other areas of their lives, and therefore, they do not possess – willpower, confidence and motivation. I find some of these qualities in myself from time to time, fall willingly into the throes of passionate exercise and dieting, only to be heaved back, betrayed by my own laziness and appetite. Feel the burn. Along with drugs, sex and atheism, I have been groomed to think that fat is bad. I’ve been a bad girl. “You’re pretty, but you would be prettier if you lost some weight.” Gee, really, Mom? “How will you find a husband if you are fat?” Gee, I don’t know, Grandma. I didn’t even know that I was supposed to be concerned with these things in grade school. Life was chasing boys on the school playground, piano lessons and a Glo-Worm lunchbox. The mania would start whenever I’d asked Mom to switch the Doritos and canned pudding in the Glo-Worm lunchbox to crackers and fruit. Yum. The little devil would sit on my shoulder, taunting and teasing for a few days, and then I’d faithfully return to the cheesy chips and chocolaty pudding. Losing weight hasn’t gotten any easier. How could it, surrounded by the Jennifer Lopezes and Catherine Zeta Joneses of the world? A new standard of beauty is set every day. It was once size six. And watching the size standard dwindle like a young entrepreneur watches his stock market earnings, I have grown discouraged or, at best, complacent with my pudginess. I don’t care if Marilyn Monroe was a size 14. She didn’t have to wear the ass-tight pants and skimpy tops that are all the fashion today. There is pressure coming from all directions, – movies, fashion magazines, advertising and “hints” from my mother – things to tell you that you could be so much better. The weight-loss cycle begins when I start to believe that I can achieve this “better” me. I see more and more positive influences around me and I find some determination. My subscription to Shape magazine will start paying off. The “No-Diet Diet” sounds too good to be true and reading numerous success stories shows me that other women have reached the seemingly far-fetched goal. This newfound enlightenment usually occurs during a period of self-contentment or man-lag (when there is no potential romance to disrupt my emotional independence). Getting to the gym becomes the first realized step after enlightenment, a veiled betrayal to my demon appetite. After a couple of weeks of saying, “I’ll go tomorrow,” I’ll finally make the trek to the gym. I pay my tithe to the woman at the front counter then make my way in. It’s overwhelming at first. The gym is an automaton, a concoction of levers and pulleys, weights and chains. The gear-movements and gyrations of those operating the gym-machine are rhythmic and droning. I take my station on an elliptical trainer and set to work. Gradually, I’ll add more and more machines to my fitness repertoire and I’m no longer an apprentice. I’m possessed. I want more than the allotted 30 minutes on my machine. I do more and more reps on the ab machine. I learn the names of different muscles – pectorals, triceps (“Ohh… So those are the flabby things under my arms…”), quadriceps, rhomboids, gluteus maximus – and even better, I begin to feel them. I’ve reached a high, almost a spirituality, from my higher metabolism. I try not to pay attention to the skinny girls next to me on the machines. They always have something bitchy to say about some other girl or talk about how they didn’t eat breakfast, lunch or dinner at the “house” because they’re on a diet, which for them means starvation. I will not let them disturb my worship of the gym. |
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| propaganda My Worldview 5.26.98 Maligayang Bati 10.5.00 The Devil, the Grape- fruit Diet and Fat Pants 11.14.00 Lies: Kid-tested, Mother-approved 8.6.01 |
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