The Change: 32

MOO!
(This is an ongoing story. If you want to start at the beginning, click here.)

AE and I talk about a lot of things over and over, but the thing that seems to come up most often is my weight.

I’ve gained weight since I started seeing her and it’s no surprise. I used to walk all the time and now I never do. I spent a few ugly months feeling sorry for myself and mollifying that self-pity with nachos and chocolate chip cookies.  I don’t play tennis. I sit at a desk working more. No wonder my ass is fat.

But here’s the thing: in the beginning of my treatment, AE hooked me up with several clients so I could get real life testimonials. Women who called me on a Sunday afternoon and whom I spoke to from the wicker chair on my front porch. Women named Mary and Amy and Kathleen, who all told me that they had gotten THINNER during these treatments. Lost pants sizes. Were in the best shape they’d been in for years.

So, you know, I thought that might happen for moi. 

And these last few months, when I stand in front of the mirror in AE’s treatment room, she kvells about how my body has changed.  How I’m so much longer and leaner and how my legs have become so slim.  She’s very convincing, because I think she probably believes it’s true.

But it’s not.

I just took out a stack of shorts from last year and many can’t even be buttoned.  Others, shorts that used to hang loose on me, now fit me like sausage casings. It’s been many weeks since I’ve gotten a handle on my eating and found an exercise regimen to take the place of walking, but I still feel like a cow.

The hardest part of it all is to feel at odds with AE. To explain to her that every indicator – scale, perception, tautness of pants, reflection – demonstrates that I’ve become bigger, and for her to say that, in her eyes I look smaller.

I’m not smaller. And I’m not even the same. I’m bigger, and in all the worst places.

Nearly every chronic pain that I’ve suffered from over the past 15 years is completely gone, and a huge amount of my daily anxiety has disappeared. But I’m heavy. And it’s depressing. 

Utterly.

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