The Amazing Adventures of Dietgirl (9 page)

Now I see where I’ve been going wrong. I can’t expect the Fitness Chicks to have all the answers when they only see me for fifteen minutes every six weeks. They may be skinnier than me, but how can they know what’s best for my body? How can they know what I’m capable of? I’m the one who hangs out with this body all day long, seeing how it’s shrunk and adapted over the past eight months. It’s time I took my brain off ice and started thinking for myself. If I’m bored with my exercise routine, then it’s my responsibility to change things.

I’ve been reading about women’s weight training on the Internet. Far from making you a bulky freak, it turns out that lifting weights can help burn the blubber! According to the extremely popular “Krista’s Women’s Weightlifting Page,” pumping iron is actually ideal for us fatties. The moves are simple and, unlike with cardio, you often see results quickly. Building muscle can boost your metabolism and strengthen your bones. It could even help tone my hideous upper arms!

I was tempted to abandon my current regime and dive into Krista’s 12 Week Beginners Program, but I’ve got to break my habit of blindly following the advice of others. I’m going to take it slow, sift through all this new knowledge and make it work for me.

So first of all, my sporty friend Cassie has volunteered to come to the gym and show Rhiannon and me how to use the weights properly and help us design a program. Then, in the ongoing fight against cardio boredom, I’ve lined up some new activities—swimming and BodyCombat classes. I just hope they make swimsuits in a size 22.

I gained a pound and a half tonight.

I didn’t get upset. Instead I stood haughtily on the scale and made a brief statement of justification about how my “rigorous new weights regime” must be affecting my performance on the scale.

“I’ve heard that happens,” Donna said kindly. “But I’m sure it will help your weight loss in the long term!”

“Yeah.”

“You’ll get there eventually! Did I tell you about that guy who climbed Everest, and he said, ‘If I’d looked at the whole mountain, I’d never have climbed it. I just had to take it step by step.’”

“Exactly!” I sniffed, stepping down from the scale.

But I was thoroughly disgusted at myself for being such a whining twit. Why did I feel the need to justify that tiny gain? Especially when I lost three pounds last week.

Week after week I see the same faces at Weight Watchers, making the same excuses. “It’s that Time of the Month!” they’ll laugh. Or, “That cake was calling my name!” Or, “I just didn’t have time to exercise!”

But I’m not making excuses. After all these months, I’m still eating the healthy food. I’m lifting heavy objects and pounding the pavement. I’m dedicated! I’m pushing my lardy arse to new frontiers! I was overcome by the urge to scream at all those ladies in the queue, “I am not like you people!” but I was running late for the gym.

Spring has sprung here in the southern hemisphere, and I’ve not a stitch to wear. Last year’s clothes are either too big or the fabric in the crotch has worn through, thanks to my mighty thighs. So tonight Rhiannon and I hit the shops.

We went to the Big is Beautiful section at Myer. They’ve buried it on the basement floor, so Big is Bloody Inconvenient. You have to trek past the levels of perfumes, pretty shoes, and flimsy frocks before you finally descend into polyester hell. I bet the security guards are watching the CCTV and laughing, “Giddy-up, fatty! Down you go! Keep going!”

I just wanted to get it over as soon as possible, so I grabbed everything dark in a size 24 and trudged to changing rooms.

“What are you doing?” Rhiannon rapped on the door a moment later. “You’re not a 24 any more! Here, try this on!”

It was a V-neck top in a light lime green, size 20. And it fit!

I am still completely lumpy and could really do with a better fitting bra, but it was an improvement. I was amazed how the color lit up my face and made me look feminine and … alive. Perhaps the gigantic goth look doesn’t work for me after all?

Despite that small triumph, the overall shopping experience was no less traumatic than two sizes ago. All the clothes are still designed for the color-blind and/or those who don’t mind being highly flammable. Why are clothing designers so reluctant to cash in on the Fat Dollar? I earn a decent salary; I’d pay for some well-cut clothes in natural fibers. But instead I’m stuck with what look like the remnants of curtains and trampoline mats.

Furthermore, I should never go shopping with Rhiannon. I swear, every garment looks perfect on her.

“Does this look OK?” she asked with genuine concern as she tried on her fifteenth flawless outfit.

“Brilliant!” I had to sound cheery, since the poor girl had just endured two hours in the fat shops.

It’s so demoralizing, sitting outside the changing rooms in some poncey skinny boutique, surrounded by shopping bags from all the other poncey skinny boutiques that had clothes Rhiannon looked perfect in. I’ve lost ninety pounds but I’m still at least ninety light-years away from fitting into anything from a normal shop.

I looked around at all the skinny people plucking skinny clothes off the racks and the skinny salesladies trying to pretend I wasn’t sullying their line of vision. I snatched up all the bags, fled outside to the doughnut shop, and just stared at the doughnuts until Rhiannon was done.

Operation Swimming Pool is a go! After six dry years, today I got back in the water.

Swimming has always been the personification of suffering and humiliation to me. It’s all my fat girl fears and insecurities tied up in a neat little Lycra package.

It’s hard to avoid the water, growing up in Australia. Kids+scorching summers=pools. My problems really began in primary school, where it seemed we did nothing but swim. We had swimming lessons every Monday during February and March, then every day for the last two school weeks of December. So I’d start building up my anxiety around October each year.

I remember the feeling of dread as the school bus headed for the pool, the smell of zinc cream making me heave. It wasn’t that I was afraid of the water; I just had no confidence. Ever since that “She’s fat!” episode at Weight Watchers, I’d believed I was lardy and loathsome, so I hated putting my body into a swimsuit.

My heart would race every minute of our lessons as I wondered what they’d make us do next. I didn’t want to jump into the pool because I thought I’d make a bigger splash than my friends. I didn’t want to stand on the starting blocks because it felt like the eyes of everyone in the pool—even those fifty meters away in the shallow end, even those underwater—had zoomed in on my freakishness. I was pretty paranoid for a ten-year-old.

All that fear and self-consciousness made me a rubbish swimmer. I couldn’t dive for shit, for instance. Half a dozen different teachers tried to teach me but I couldn’t make my body relax; I belly-flopped every time. The most mortifying “method” was when I had to stand on the block and my teacher would wrap his hands around my ankles then sort of fling me in, forcing my body into the correct hands-first, feet-last position. Almost fifteen years later I still can’t stand by the edge of a pool without feeling there’s a big pair of hands clamped around my ankles.

And then there was that time when another teacher made me jump off the big diving board. I didn’t wanna jump off the big diving board! It wasn’t because I was scared of heights. I just didn’t want to elevate my body and make it even easier for people to stare at my fat legs.

But she made me climb that ladder, and I stood trembling at the end of the board as the whole class chanted, “Jump! Jump!” I stared down into the blue abyss for so long that the pool manager, watching the action from the kiosk, called out over the booming PA system, “C’mon, Shauna! If you jump off, your mum will buy you a packet of chips!”

Cue raucous laughter from the crowd.

I distinctly remember glaring down at them and thinking, Oh great. Now if I jump off everyone’s going to think I only did it FOR THE CHIPS because I’m such a fatty!

In the end I jumped. I don’t remember if I got the chips, but I’ve never trod the diving board since.

The worst part of that story is that my swimming teacher just happened to be the Mothership! She taught at my school at the time. Periodically, I remind her of this incident and the resulting emotional scars, but she insists she was only trying to be encouraging. I have to say that fifteen years later I am finally letting go and can almost see why everyone else thinks it was so bloody funny.

After that came puberty, which made me even more paranoid about my body. Ever since, I’ve zealously avoided swimming pools, beaches, rivers, and puddles.

So because of my traumatic swimming history, I was nauseous with fear when we arrived at the pool on Sunday evening. But we’d used the Vampire Method—who the hell goes swimming on a Sunday night? Only a few dedicated lap swimmers and old ladies in flowery bathing suits. The crowd was sufficiently small and unthreatening for me to dare unveil my dimpled flesh.

I slinked up to the pool edge in my dowdy new swimsuit, trying to ignore the fact that the octogenarians had better skin tone than me. I tossed away my towel and slipped into the blue.

I seemed to have forgotten how to swim. I made a thrashing attempt at the front crawl but ended up taking in mouthfuls of chlorine. How the hell do you breathe underwater? After all those years of lessons, I’ve held onto the trauma but forgotten all the instructions!

But I was happy enough to just paddle around. Oh, how I’d missed the water. I could have wept from the pure joy of its soothing coolness after so many years. I felt luxurious and serene. For years I’ve told myself that fat chicks have no place in the pool, but on Sunday night in the dark with the old ladies, I was happy. It didn’t matter that beneath the surface lurked a size 20 body, because the world could see only my chubby cheeks and a megawatt grin.

This morning I washed my hair and styled it to perfection. I put on a new pair of size 20 knickers straight from the plastic wrapping. I wore clothes that were actually ironed instead of plucked from the bedroom floor. I put on lipstick. I spritzed on perfume.

Hot date? Not quite. My mate Jenny has just arrived back in Australia after living in London for eighteen months. Last time she saw me, I was still 40 pounds shy of my ultimate heftiest, but a lardy sight nonetheless. So I’ve been anticipating her return not just because I’ve missed her like mad, but because I desperately want to find out if she’ll notice anything different.

As she pulled up outside my house, I arranged myself in the doorway like a game show hostess. I sucked in my stomach and pulled my shoulders back, trying to look as elongated as possible.

“Holy shit, Shaun!”

Jenny slammed her car door shut. We ran toward each other, arms open wide like in the movies. Except she ran at normal speed and I was in slow motion, as that is my natural pace.

“You’re back!”

“You’ve shrunk!”

“Really?”

“Well, duh! You’ve clearly lost a shitload of weight!”

I’d missed Jenny and her trademark bluntness.

“Not many people have noticed, you see,” I said coyly.

“How could they not notice?”

“Oh, you!”

It was so good to catch up with Jen. I’m in awe of how much her overseas adventures have changed her. She’s now so cheerful, confident and bubbling over with exciting tales of countries visited, weird food eaten, handbags lost, and romance found.

“She just glowed,” I told Rhiannon later. “She just seemed so happy within herself and enthusiastic about life!”

“We should do that too.”

“Do what?”

“Go live in Britain and have adventures.”

I snorted. “Maybe you could, but not me.”

Rhiannon raised an eyebrow. “Why the hell not?”

“Because… you’ve traveled before. That’s your caper. It’s not the sort of thing I’d do.”

“It used to be not the sort of thing you’d do,” she said. “You’re different now.”

I squirmed. “Not different enough yet.”

“C’mon… Paris, London, Rome! And what about all those places you studied in history class? You’ve always talked about seeing Red Square someday!”

“Yeah, but you know me—all talk, no action!”

“I’m serious, Shauna! We can get the Working Holiday visa like Jen. I’ll even let you pick which city we live in.”

“I’m still too f—”

“You’re not too fat, you goose! Look, why not just have a little think about it, for now.”

“Sure!” I said, without a trace of conviction.

Holy statistical milestone, Batman! I’ve passed the halfway mark in my epic adventure. I’ve now achieved precisely 52 percent of my goal!

That’s about the highlight of the week, since Operation Swimming Pool has turned into a complete disaster.

I was so excited after last time: I’d be able to cross something off my To Do When I’m Skinny list before I was remotely skinny! I even bought goggles and a swimming cap. But I guess the enthusiasm was purely circumstantial. Foolishly, I forgot the Vampire Method, put on my swimsuit and headed to the pool on Saturday afternoon.

My heart turned to shit the instant we got out of the car. The place was mobbed with taut teens in bikinis and screaming toddlers circling the car park like seagulls.

“I can’t do this!” I blurted.

Rhiannon instantly smelled a Fat Girl Freak-Out. “Don’t worry, mate. We’ll just get straight in the water like last time, it’ll be fun.”

“There’s too many people. I can’t do it. I can’t do it.”

I froze beside the car; 254 pounds of pure panic trussed in pink beach towel. My face burned and my breath came in short, painful bursts. I couldn’t go into that pool with all those gorgeous skinny people. Not with this body.