Fat-Blast from the Past

February 10, 2005
I am naked.  And I don’t care.
Desert sand sticks to my sweat-slick skin.
The pounding drum shoots vibrations deep into the center of my chest.  First it falls in between heartbeats, but soon the vibration learns to mimic and keep time with my own beating heart.  I forget myself.  I become the drum.  Surely if the drum where to stop, my heart would as well.
ka-OHN…..ka-OHN…..ka-OHN…..ka-OHN  The chanting around the circle continues.  ka-OHN…..ka-OHN…..ka-OHN
Wait!  The chanting has stopped.  The drumming (or is it my own heart?) is so loud now, but now – - – it too falls quiet.  Silence fills the tent.  I am suspended, floating, neither alive nor dead. Listening.
The air is so thick with incense and body odor it oozes into my lungs like pudding.  Still, I say nothing.  Then I see him.  Richard Simmons.
Like something out of Star Trek (Voyager or Deep Space Nine, possibly Next Generation, but definitely not Original), he is transparent and hovering above us.  He is covered head to toe in glitter and wearing his signature short-shorts and tank top.  He is dancing.  Yes, dancing his ass off!
Richard stops dancing for a brief moment, turns his glitter-dusted shoulders to me and takes my face in his hands.  He is looking me dead straight in the eye; I try to reciprocate, but I can’t stop looking at his afro.
“Monica,” he says, “I don’t…”
“Actually, it’s Monique.” I am embarrassed to correct him.  Dammit!  I should’ve just let him call me Monica.
“Monique,”  he says, “I don’t sweat to the oldies cause I like the music.  Personally, I’m a Metallica kind of guy.  Man, I was so fuckin’ pissed when they cut their hair and went all ‘Hollywood’ on us!  That’s just bullshit!”  He is squeezing my cheeks into a grotesque fish-face now, but soon realizes and relaxes his grip.  He continues, “I sweat to the oldies because it’s good for my body.”
So in honor of Richard, I was good to my body this week and met my weekly weight loss goal.  Channeling my inner Richard Simmons worked out well this time, but I’m keeping a lookout for other inspirations that won’t require me to spend my weekends naked in a yurt on the outskirts of Vegas.
Rock on, Richard…

February 17, 2005
This week I lost 4 pounds, making my total loss 11 pounds in 3 weeks!  Okay, I’ll take it.  Eighty-nine more to go.
Just yesterday Jason and I signed up for memberships at the YMCA.  I also took that time and signed up for personal training sessions with a guy named David.  I haven’t met him yet, but I’m hoping he doesn’t make me do all those hi-fives and other miscellaneous crap people in gyms seem compelled to do.  I ain’t into all that.
I have been thinking a lot about this David character as he will see me in all my sweaty, fat-flapping glory – a pleasure that up until now only Jason has been lucky enough to experience.

I’m thinking Trainer Dave, as I have already decided to call him, will either be
super hot – - – which will make me feel self-conscious, but definitely motivate me to keep seeing his cute little self 3X a week
or, creepy-touchy-feely – - – which will freak me out a little, but definitely motivate me to keep seeing him since it is one of the few times I can legitimately let another man feel me up
or, want me to give hi-fives and be all smiley and positive – - – which I refuse to go along with forcing me to end all training with him, cancel my YMCA membership, and resign myself to the idea of being bed-bound with my only joy coming from the hope that Maury Povich may hear of my story and send his camera crew to convince my local fire department to tear down the sidewall of my house then use a crane to lift my 912 pound body onto a flatbed truck.  I can’t imagine them making me ride all the way to New York on the back of a flatbed truck and I clearly would never fit onto an airplane, so my appearance on the Maury show will have to come via satellite from my driveway.  However, the small microphone they clip to me will become lost in the rolls of fat surrounding my neck so that all the audience hears is a thick gurgling sound.  Maury cancels our interview and then refuses to pay for any cost associated with my extraction and crane rentals do not come cheap.
That’s it.  I’ve already made up my mind.

February 19, 2005
Hoi polloi contamination
Bad news guys…  Trainer Dave only has hours available in the evening and I only have hours available during the day.  In this cosmic exercising romance, destiny has guaranteed that our paths shall never meet.  Sadly poetic.
However, Trainer Dave passed my name onto Trainer Carrie (I know, I know, it just doesn’t have that nice umph! ‘Trainer Dave’ had.) who sounds stereotypically upbeat over the phone.  The earliest she can fit me in is February 28th.
Until then I guess (eyes-rolling) I could go to the gym on my own, but I can’t stand the bourgeois stench hanging in the gym’s air – I wanted to put off going there until absolutely necessary.  Gulp.  (That was me swallowing my humong-o pride.)  I guess being super fat makes going to the gym absolutely necessary.  Here’s to me joining the rest of the Titanic-loving, minivan-driving, Jennifer Aniston-haircutting flock, blah – er, baa.

February 25, 2005
I’m afraid Jason’s gone Grape Nuts.
Jason and I started losing weight together and so far we have both been successful.  Yippie for us!
However, Jason is not only losing weight, he is losing his mind.
Last week he asked me to cancel his debit card because he drove off and left it at the ATM.  Highly unusual for him, but okay – no biggie, taken care of.  Two days later we were at Home Depot and he realized that he had now lost his checkbook.  Okay…we chuckled at the coincidentiality of the situation and continued about our day.  Coincidentiality?  What the??  Did I just create a new word?  Hold up, I got Webster’s on speed dial – Merriam and I go way back to grade school.
+++++BACK TO JASON AND THE CASE OF THE LOST MIND: An Encyclopedia Brown Special Case+++++
After the lost checkbook incident in Home Depot, we simply replaced the checkbook with a new one and looked to a brighter future.  Days later his reissued debit card from the bank arrived.  He goes to put the new card in his wallet and finds the supposed “abandoned-at-the-ATM” debit card but not before mentioning that he has lost the new checkbook that had just days before replaced the originally lost checkbook.  Jason laughs (eerily like Jack Nicholson in The Shining) and walks out the room, I smile politely and giggle nervously until he is out of sight.  The man has lost his damn mind!  Any day now I expect to be jarred awake at 3 AM as Jason yells out the nutritional value of cereal while marching around the bedroom covered only in honey and Cheerios wearing a toolbelt fashioned from spoons.
The day after discovering the debit card in his wallet and confessing the loss of now 2 checkbooks, Jason loses the wallet itself.  However, all is not lost as Jason never actually put the newly issued debit card in his wallet, so he still has that card in hand.  Great.  In the meantime, I began making secret midnight runs to the dumpster to rid our house of cereal.  In the words of Heidi Klum:  Cream of Wheat, you are in.  Frosted Flakes, you are out.  Auf Wiedersehen.
Two days pass.  Oddly, I’ve now become lactose intolerant and a little squirt of pee shot out when passing the cereal aisle at Piggly Wiggly.  Thankfully, it was just a little squirt and not a pant-changing event.
Last night Jason readied himself for bed and, as our usual routine, I tucked him in for the night (sugary sweet and magically delicious, isn’t it?) when he says, “Oh, by the way, I lost my new debit card today.  Goodnight.”
1/2 cup per serving, Calories 120, Calories from Fat 15, Total Fat 1.5, Saturated Fat…

March 02, 2005
Well, I have more trainer drama…
My newest trainer, Trainer Carrie, is not able to work me into her schedule.  If you remember, I wasn’t that enthused about the sound of ‘Trainer Carrie’ so maybe it is all for the best.  However, Trainer Carrie has given me the name of yet another trainer.  The newest trainer is Noriko (I do like the sound of ‘Trainer Noriko’, possibly the best so far!) and according to Trainer Carrie this new trainer can definitely and most positively fit me in 3 times a week.  Who knew it would be so difficult to find someone to pay to watch you work out?

March 10, 2005
I gained 2 pounds this week.  Nope, not proud of it, as a matter of fact I’m kinda totally pissed off at myself right now, but slowly coming to grips with it.  I’ve worked really hard to screw it all up now.
But as they say – - – Someone please email me if you find out who ‘they’ is.  I would love to meet with them as their sagacity is overwhelming. I have a few questions I’d like to run by them.  What’s the proper way to address an envelope to an army colonel who happens to be married to a doctor knighted by the Queen?  Puppies or itty-bitty baby bunnies, which is cuter?  What’s the truth behind the highly debatable ‘every snowflake is different’ theory?  Which is a better long term investment: Beanie Babies or Pokemon cards?  Or should I simply hedge my bets and diversify? I heard that Happy Meal toys of Spongebob are supposed to be hot in 2032. Should I hang on to those or sell now while the gettin’ is good? – - – - well, as they say, “It’s not a setback – it’s feedback.”
Although I gained 2 pounds this week, I’m able to look back over my week and see exactly what did not work for me.  This feedback will prove priceless in the many months to come.
Quite frankly, I did a shitload of bad stuff this week.  I did not drink my water as I should, I ate out 3 times during the week, and many days I only ate one meal which is a major no-no when trying to shed some fat.

June 06, 2005
I haven’t posted about my weight for some time now.
It’s not because I received some sort of experimental wind chime therapy and I no longer obsess about it.  Nor have I taken some alternative measures (uh, like diet and exercise) to eliminate the excess pounds making the discussion of my weight utterly pointless.
I haven’t talked about it in awhile because, well, it’s boring to everyone except me.  Seriously, who wants to read on and on about someone not exercising and not losing pounds?
Total snooze-fest, man.
The people want to read about some lady in Wisconsin that loses 185 pounds when doctors tell her she’s about to die.  They want to read about some man in Utah, who after losing 115 pounds placed 14th in the Boston Marathon.  Or better yet, some woman in Cincinnati who recently lost 163 pounds and now teaches spin classes at her local YMCA when she’s not competing for the Miss Sun Tropicana title.
That’s the kind of crap people want to read about.  You gotta give the people some “sizzle”.