Excerpt from Moose: A Memoir of Fat Camp by Stephanie Klein.
I realized its effectiveness while filling out a personal progress journal, one of those fill-in-the-blanks self-help journals, Mad Libs for the manic. I purchased it the afternoon following his admission. Not as attracted, I kept repeating to myself. I hid away in the bookstore, sipping water in the upstairs café. I borrowed a pen and did some of the exercises within.
In a short paragraph, the journal instructed me to “identify one person in your everyday life who is taking positive steps to be healthy and control his or her weight.” Oprah was first on my list—not exactly in my everyday life, but certainly a person who’d broadcast her weight-loss successes. I paused, biting my inner lip in thought. Then I scrawled the name of a woman from work who was quite possibly anorexic. As far as I could tell, the only calories she consumed came from the milk in her coffee. And as fucked up as it is, there she was in blue ink on my role model list. I added a childhood friend I’d heard lost a lot of weight. Then Michelle, another coworker. And then the list changed.
I scribbled the name of an exboyfriend who once said, “You’re bigger than the girls I usually date.” Another who when we returned from winter break in college had said, “Well, someone’s mother fed her well.” I added the name of ex-friends, including the slurs I could remember. “Jordan,” I wrote, “and the case of the fat pants.” I added my motherfuckerinlaw, and then my husband.
I’d get thin and stylish and look better than ever, and my motivation was never “so he’ll love me more.” It was “so the ass-hat will regret ever uttering those words.” Healthy marriage, I know. That’s a different book.
It was just as it had been at camp all those years ago. I was still motivated by hate. Take that, judgmental windbag. I’m thin. I suppose it’s along the same lines as “the best revenge is being deliriously happy.” My best revenge was being thin. Because you can’t really see happy; people can fake that. You can’t fake thin.
So I would begin, as we all do, a diet. A crash and burn bitch of a diet. But how? What would work this time? Hadn’t anything I’d learned from Fran or fat camp prepared me for this? No, there had to be something easier.
I resolved to follow the advice in the journal and ask the thin people on my list how they did it. Oprah had personal trainers and private chefs and wasn’t, if you can believe it, returning my phone calls. I hadn’t actually seen the childhood friend on my list, so it would be quite awkward to phone her out of the blue. “Hey, it’s been forever, but I heard you’re no longer a tub. What’s your secret to staying motivated?” I decided to ask my waif coworker how she did it.
“Don’t do anything that makes you sweat,” she confided, quite eager to divulge her secrets. “It’ll make you too hungry. Do yoga if you have to, but not the hot kind. And don’t keep any food in the house. Just turkey. That’s it. And drink lots of coffee,” Waif Worker said, raising a fresh cup of it.
“But I’m hungry,” I’d whine over our cubicle divider.
“No, you’re not. You just think you are. Let’s go tanning.” Instead of using our lunch hour to eat, some afternoons we’d zip to her favorite tanning salon. “Seeing yourself naked should be enough motivation to keep your mouth shut,” she’d said. “Well, I don’t mean you,” she stumbled, “just in general. Besides, tan conceals cellulite.” Yuh-huh.
