How to Get Started Getting Un-Fat

I take it back. You know when I wrote in the post about the Violent Femes show that I had never paid so much money to be so uncomfortable? Well I have set that record again. After my first personal training session it hurts to type. After my first work out I was forced to attend what my friend T referred to as a “get un-fat rally” Where they had little stands and lot of streamers and talked about commitment and improving your life and everyone there was way bigger than me and kept telling me how thin I was. You would think that would make me happy but it in fact does not. I can deal with packing on a few extra pounds and I can deal with having to work them off but I cannot deal with being told I am crazy for thinking that I could lose some weight. I used to be ok with being crazy when it was part of my “I’m hot and barely legal so you will put up with me even though I’m insufferable” routine. Since then I have grown a brain and some very large thighs. I have quit smashing beer bottles, threatening men with castration (at least in public places), and thinking that I look hot chugging Jose Cuervo out of ½ gallon bottles. I am not fat AND crazy.
So back to my “get un-fat rally” All the trainers were there and they each had their own little stand and they each got to torture you in their own special way. It started with the measurements. A woman who actually goes by the name Xena because of her striking resemblance to the TV show (I am not making this up I swear) character pulled my clothes around and shouted my measurements at a timid looking blonde guy who wrote them down and handed me the paper.
I was then shuffled off to the next station where a woman named Mallory who actually had the Air Jordan symbol tattooed on the one calf and the Nike swoosh on the other (still not making this up) put me on a scale and asked “how much do you weigh?” Um. . .let me think. . . Oh if only we had a scale. Hey what is this I am standing on? Look, a scale! Seriously, isn’t she supposed to tell me that? But I humor her and say “140 maybe a bit more” to which she replies “what did you just eat or something?” “no” I say and for the first time in an hour of standing in this echoing gym everyone seems quiet as Mallory the human billboard says “Do you weigh yourself naked or something” like that is strange or any of her business. I took my paper back from her and she had written my weight down as 141. Was that one pound really that big of a deal? No wonder the line was moving like molasses.
On to the fat pinching man. With a pair of calipers, this man found every roll of fat on my body and measured it. When he got to my hips I told him to do the left side because I have uneven hips and that results in uneven love handles. I always have the left side measured for accuracy but he had to sneer at me and ask “is that side bigger?” and jab my right hip with his claws of torture. “no” I said “the left side is the fat side” he stood back to stare at my love handles and then went on with his job, sufficiently satisfied that I was humiliated (and a little fatter on my lefts rather than right side.)
After that they give you a meal plan that says you can under no circumstances eat anything on the table of snacks that is your next stop. So as I walked past the table of food I could not have (but had totally been charged for) I drank some more water out of a Nalgine bottle that said “I’m so happy I could shit” on it. That sticker had never made so much sense to me before.
At the next stand sat Trainer. The same stupid smile was plastered on his face as he calmly explained to me that he was going to take my “before” picture. I do not remember this being part of the deal. Suddenly I did want to smash beer bottles and threaten him with castration right then and their in public and then I would probably need to drink heavily enough to chug Jose Curevo out of whatever container it was offered to me. But I refrained from doing any of those things (mainly because I had no beer bottles knives or Tequila on me at the time) and instead tried to smile for the camera.
After dogging the high pressure salesmen at the vitamin counter I turned in my stat sheet and Polaroid and went home where I loudly told my new meal plan to “go fuck itself” and had cheesy eggplant parmesan lasagna and a sparks for dinner. I’ll eat dry tuna and rice pilaf tonight.