“Pain of mind is worse than pain of body” – Latin Proverb
If several fires erupted at every single scale manufacturer throughout the world, I am pretty sure that it would be ok, as I would still have a mother who knows and notices my weight every single time she lays eyes on me. And she doesn’t do it in an obnoxious way but if we have lunch together after such an instance she’ll grill me on what I’ve been doing and tell me that I’ve lost a ton of weight. Something I do not blame her for since the better part of November and December, I spent looking like a blow fish.
I am one of those unfortunate people who gains weight in my middle. And then it slowly creeps north and south and then my boobs look awesome. But my face looks puffy. I feel puffy. And I’m also sure that if someone tossed me into the Hudson I would be buoyant. So let’s try that experiment later. It’s really hard to complain though when a) I still can buy all the frilly dresses I damn well please b) Gap has provided me with an ample supply of trapeze blazers for these occasions and c) My cleavage looks phenomenal. So I tend to go through these I look like a giant hot air balloon moments, knowing that it will pass and maybe McDonalds should stop making such tasty fries. Maybe they’re the problem. Not me.
During a particularly rough few weeks between November and December, weeks when I looked like I was hiding a beach ball under my shirt, I read about the Master Cleanse courtesy of Melissa. It wasn’t a ‘weight’ thing that led me to take notice as much as it was I could just feel vegetable oil coming out of my pores and several weeks of eating out at not the finest dining establishments was starting to make me feel generally icky. I’ll digress to be all After School Special-like, but it is rarely a weight issue and more about how I feel so blargh. It’s that I feel bloated and puffy and I’d really like for someone to stick me with a pin and then I’ll pop, type feeling. Anyway, I followed Melissa’s experiences and on December 26th after weeks of piling on the carbohydrates and Blue Moons I started because I really just wanted to get that shit out. I’ll spare you the gory details about a good salt water flush (It works!) and say that after 10 days, I escaped feeling refreshed, several pounds lighter, and with an aversion to sea salt. In fact, just yesterday I opened a cabinet to get out a spice, noticed the sea salt canister and gagged. But other than that minor setback, it was superb.
I felt better, like a feather (named Heather) and then several weeks later, my ever-sober, holistic, Kripalu loving roommate, mentioned something about a detox. And I being the ever-drunk, bloated, lemming that I am decided to follow. It was 21 days going gluten, egg, dairy, sugar and caffeine-free. It was surprisingly EASY. The caffeine part almost killed me dead and I thought of all the things I would rather be doing than having a constant pounding headache, like, say, watching clowns run around the room, but other than that, it’s amazing the amount of enlightenment that comes when you spend weeks staring at the back of food packages. Also, my survival is not determined by the number of burritos I can shove into my mouth. I did this for three weeks – and have continued to do so – which brings us to yesterday when my mother was staring at me slack jawed because I had the audacity to ask for brown rice in my paella for Easter and I would not be enjoying macaroni and cheese unless she was using soy cheese and gluten free pasta. And now friends and family are all how do you eat? And I’m all, do I really look like a person who would allow herself to starve?!? Uh. No. Let’s just say russet and sweet potatoes are my new best friends and I have a bit of a ‘thing’ for cabbage.
Speaking of my lemming status and the crazy shit I will do to make myself less circular: I was going to tell you about boot camp. Group exercise with a drill sergeant, three days a week at 5:15 AM. But it’s 7 AM and I’ve been up for three hours and I’m pretty sure that if I sit with my weight supported on my arm much longer, then it will fall off. Then you will have no more prose from me! Then what will you do? If this all sounds painful and torturous though it really isn’t and like I said I feel better which was half of my goal. The other half being that I look forward to the day when I can wear my white summer dress with pockets(!!) without looking like I’m smuggling a 32 week old fetus around in my uterus. The end.
In praise of breathing
“I really don’t think I need buns of steel. I’d be happy with buns of cinnamon.” ~Ellen DeGeneres
So the other evening I’m sitting around in some jeans – which isn’t anything out of the ordinary but it’s always a good time when I’m wearing pants – when I noticed that when I first bought the pants covering my ass they could barely do their job given that they were a tad too small. And by ‘too small’ I mean that I couldn’t breathe in them and sitting in them required an act of God. Getting up from a sitting position to a standing position required holding of the belt loops with one hand and the button with the other because I thought that maybe the button would fly off and permanently blind a five year old boy. Then I would be that girl with the wide ass whose button seriously harmed some child, BUT! I would be able to breathe. Lesson for all the children out there: Sometimes you must suffer for another person’s happiness or another person’s ability to move oxygen throughout their body.
I bring up the pants because I am spending several of the next few days cuddling with a person who last saw me when my pants were so tight that blood circulation was briefly halted. I think she’ll be excited to see me because a) I still have all of my appendages and b) The extreme tightness around my waist did not cause the top half of my body to spontaneously fall off and go rolling down some stairs.
Seriously people, I was sitting in these pants just yesterday and I was like Whoa! Breathing while wearing jeans. What will they think of next? And now that these jeans are a tad too big, my new party trick is too remove them without unbuttoning or unzipping them. And since I have apparently turned into a 13-year-old boy, I might have to get drunk off of half a Smirnoff Ice and then go around mooning people. Then I’ll leave a note in someone’s locker before homeroom that says “Will you go out with me? Circle YES or NO” and decide the rest of my future with a rousing game of MASH.