Healthy Body Images are For Happy People

Last year I went home for the summer and weighed in at just under two hundred pounds. Apparently, I don’t have a metabolism and eating five thousand calories worth of peanut M&M’s everyday meant I grew a fat gut.  For a couple of days I was internally conflicted and did things like go on a diet “starting tomorrow” every night.  In anticipation of a gruelling regime, I binged on cookies, chips, pop – anything that was in flashy packaging and made me feel alive.  Then one day, Dad gives me the heads up and very gently lets me know that I got fat. I decided to seriously change my life, get skinny and become a player for the upcoming school year.

On the first day of my new life, I admit to myself that walking to and from school – when I actually went – did not count as daily cardiovascular activity.  I decide to take up running.  My first run takes three hours to commence.  First, I announce to my friends and family that I am going running. Then I stretch and do “warm-ups” in the front yard, which consists of bouncing up and down, tilting my head from side to side, slapping my legs and looking around. Remembering to hydrate, I head back inside and find myself cleaning my room, doing the dishes and vacuuming the entire house.  When I run out of things I really hate doing, I start running.

One kilometre later, panting like a dog in heat, the only words to describe my locomotion on the uphills are pregnant and duck.  At three kilometres, too tired to put one foot infront of the other, I shift my weight back and forth, swing my arms for forward propulsion, and pray. The techno music on my ipod tricks me into thinking I’m at a nightclub, having fun and moving around quickly.  I try to think about the future rewards of this self-inflicted torture: beautiful, glorious hook-ups in the sand with smokin tourists who have strong core muscles and worship my streamlined quads. Afterwards, my face does not return to its natural colour for twelve hours. 

On the second day of my new life, I am still fat. Weird.

Still, I go running. It is less of a run and more of a waddle.  Despite four sports bras, the girls are still bouncing around enough to necessitate readjusting on fifteen minute intervals, in which time one boob has flung itself onto my shoulder and the other has wrapped itself around my waist. I give up, sit down on the side of the road and have a good whimper. This does not help. Hitting myself in the face and getting up too fast gives me a very serious head rush, and I decide that going home is in my best interest. A dramatic stumble-into-the-kitchen means that my mother applies cold compresses to my forehead and tries to make me feel better about myself by commending me on my dedication.  From the couch, I kindly ask her to shut it. Unless if by ‘dedicated’ you mean ‘forty-eight hours of sheer fucking agony,’ Mom, you don’t even know what Im going through here. After dinner I fiend snacks in a big way, but push through the craving and opt for a handful of dried fruit and nut medley.  Mom warns against them as they are “high calorie”.  I throw her out of the window and eat the whole bag.

Day Three wakes me to an ever-encouraging father yelling “hill reps, honey!” I descend, one stair at a time, groggy and discouraged, cranky and generally unimpressed with my family and life. My dad is the president of the local charity running club.  His friends call him the silver bullet.  Pops is wearing spandex shorts and an electric blue, quick-dry running shirt and is programming his running watch so that the two of us can go outside and act like we love each other for the neighbours. He is smiling and doing jumping jacks, my mother is patting me on the bum and there is no real option but to go run up and down giant hills.

Fuck Day Four. Fuck running. Fuck being a sweet-ass player. It’s way too hard.

Around Day Five, I fall off the get-fit train hard enough to give myself a concussion and forget that I was ever even on it. I go to the bar in a shirt that is too tight, drink heavily, talk about high school with people that I hoped I would never have to see again and try not to think about my stomache growling. Around midnight, I have had more than enough of “remember when”, hit McDonalds and eat chicken nuggets that are too delicious to be real, go home to bed, fart hard enough to make sleeping impossible, roll around in a nugget-induced agony, clutch my stomache and scold myself for being a piece of fat shit. I sit up in the morning with a train of salty drool from mouth to pillow and see my running shoes laughing at me.

I lie back down.  Fat gut: 1.  Katie: 0.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                      ~Katie Burrell