Unbearable Lightness

by Portia de Rossi

  Before she could ask any questions or try to reason with me, I told her about my nutritionist.

  “She has you on one thousand calories a day?”

  “Yes. Well, no. I modified the diet a little. She told me to eat fourteen hundred for weight loss, but I wasn’t really losing weight so I got rid of some extra calories here and there.”

  “She thinks you need to lose weight?”

  “Yes. Oh. I don’t know. We haven’t really talked about that.”

  “What do you talk about, then?”

  “Eating healthily. You know. Not gaining and losing all the time like I’ve been doing.”

  The more I talked, the more concern I could hear in her voice. Which annoyed me. She didn’t understand the pressures of being an actress, of showing up to a photo shoot where the wardrobe was nothing but handcuffs and a strip of chainmail. She didn’t know what it was like to try to find a dress for the Golden Globes and having only one good option because it was the only sample size dress that fit your portly body. She didn’t know what it was like to hear that you have a normal-looking body after starving for weeks to get a thin-looking one, hoping that your friends would admire it. “Normal” isn’t an adjective you wish to hear after putting that much effort into making sure it was spectacular.

  “Ann. I gotta go.”

  “Go pour yourself a glass of wine and relax about it all. You’ve always looked great, PdR. There’s nothing to worry about.”

  Right. Like I was going to drink wine two days before the L’Oréal shoot.

  “Okay, AC. See you later.”

  “Oh! Before you go, can I stay with you in a couple of weeks? I’ll be in town for a few days. A friend from UCLA just got engaged, so I thought I’d come to LA for the party.”

  No. No, you can’t stay. Even if you come after I shoot L’Oréal, I need to keep going now this diet has started working for me. I need to eat at exactly six o’clock every night, and I can’t drink alcohol with you like we used to. I can’t go out to dinner anymore. I don’t get to take a night or two off where I can eat whatever I want. I’m about to look good for the first time in my life, and for the first time I know I’m never going to gain it back again. So I can’t take a few days off. If I eat and drink, I’ll gain again. Besides, I don’t even have the room anymore. I need to work out on my treadmill at 10:00 at night and 6:00 in the morning in the spare bedroom where you’re expecting to stay.

  “Yes. Of course you can. When?”

  “Around the fifteenth. I’ll email you.”

  I hung up the phone. The fifteenth was twelve days away. So I gave myself a new goal. Over the next twelve days, I would eat 800 calories a day. I needed to give myself a cushion so I could enjoy my time with Ann and not worry about gaining weight. If I lost a little more than I’d originally planned to lose, I would regulate my weight loss again after she left because I knew that weight lost too quickly was sure to return. Suzanne told me that. So I opened my journal and in the top right-hand corner of every dated page for the next twelve days I wrote 800. I would be ready for Ann’s visit. I even looked forward to it.

  I weighed myself first thing. I was 120 pounds. Actually I was probably a pound more, but my mother once showed me a trick to play on the scale where you set the dial a couple of pounds below the zero, but in a way that isn’t very obvious to the logical part of your brain—especially from standing height looking down. If the needle sidles up to the zero, sitting next to it but not quite touching it, your brain is tricked into thinking that the needle needs to start in that position or the reading will be inaccurate. In fact, if you tap your toe on the scale the needle often resets itself to zero anyway, so to me lining up the dial perfectly with the zero was like sitting on a fence. Like I should’ve picked a side. Shall I choose denial of truth on the side that reads heavier but with the comfort of knowing that in reality I’m lighter, or shall I choose the immediate thrill of weighing in under the real number, to help with incentive?

  I hated that zero. The zero is the worst part of the scale because the zero holds all the hope and excitement for what could be. It tells you that you can be anything you want if you work hard; that you make your own destiny. It tells you that every day is a new beginning. But that hadn’t been true for me until recently. Because no matter what I did, no matter how much weight I lost, I always seemed to end up in the same place; standing on a scale looking down past my naked protruding belly and round thighs at 130 pounds.

  But I was 120. It was the day of the L’Oréal commercial shoot. I should’ve been happy and yet I felt disturbed. My stomach was protruding very badly. It looked distended, almost. Or as my mother would put it, it looked like a poisoned pup. I hated it when stupid phrases like that popped into my mind. I hated that I had no control over my thoughts. But I especially hated that my stomach looked bloated and yet the rest of my body felt thinner. What was the point of dieting like I’d been doing, if on the most important day, my stomach was sticking out like a sore thumb?

  I walked to the shower and punched my stupid stomach as I went. What could have caused this? The night before I ate only 200 calories of tuna with butter spray and mustard. How could I still see so much fat on my stomach? I stood under the shower and watched the water run between my breasts and over my stomach, cascading onto the shower floor from just past my navel because of the shelf that the protrusion of bulging fat had made. I picked up inches of fat with my fingers. It wasn’t just bloat, it was fat. It was real fat; not something that I could take away by drinking water and sitting in a sauna. I’d ignorantly thought I wouldn’t have any fat at 120 pounds.

  I felt sick. I felt like I couldn’t face the L’Oréal executives and the stylist again after what had happened last time. My suits were at least bigger, but with my stomach puffed out like this, I didn’t know if that would even matter. What if I didn’t fit into anything again? I started to cry. Stupid weakling that I am, I had to cry and make my eyes puffy to match my puffy body. I had finished shampooing my head when I realized that I used the wrong shampoo. With all the crying and obsessing about my stomach, I accidentally used cheap shampoo instead of the L’Oréal shampoo I was supposed to use the morning of the commercial. Now I would have red puffy eyes, a fat stomach, and hair that felt like straw to bring to the set. A derisive laugh escaped my throat as I realized that I was the spokesperson for the new shampoo but didn’t use the shampoo that I’m selling because subconsciously I didn’t believe the famous L’Oréal slogan, “Because I’m worth it.”

  “Because I’m not worth it.” I said it out loud looking at a zit on my chin in the mirror using the same inflection the other L’Oréal girls use to tell the world that they are worth it: the same inflection that I’d use that day. It sounded funny so I kept saying it as I walked around the house.

  “Because I’m not worth it,” as I looked for pretty underwear that I didn’t have among the ugly, stretched-out panties in my drawer. That I didn’t think to buy some pretty, new underwear for the shoot was unbelievable to me.

  “Because I’m not worth it,” I said as I sipped my black coffee, wishing I were thin enough to have creamer in it because the strong black coffee tasted putrid and assaulted my taste buds. I skipped breakfast altogether because I wasn’t worth it.

  As I picked up my cell phone and walked to the door, I was aware of the time for the first time that morning. I was late. I should’ve been at the set already, and I didn’t even know where I was going. With a surge of adrenaline, I rushed out the door and down the stairs, trying to decipher directions from the map. I was the star of the commercial and I was going to be late. All those people would be waiting for me. The L’Oréal executives, the director, the hairstylist and makeup artist who were both so renowned they had published books and signature product lines—all of them were waiting for me. Maybe that was a good thing. Maybe that’s what stars were supposed to do. They’re supposed to display their power by making other people wait for them. As I caught one red light after
another, I had a choice to be in a frenzy of anxiety or relax into a character that keeps people waiting—like an R&B diva or a rock star. The lyrics of “Pennyroyal Tea” came to my mind. “I’m on my time with everyone.” It was easier to play that character than to care.

  17

  WHEN ANN arrived I was still not at my goal weight. Although I had worked hard and I was ready to eat and drink with her, I still had weight to lose. I was 115 pounds and my goal was 110. I still had big thighs. I still saw round bulging thighs when I looked in the mirror. I didn’t know if getting to 110 would take the bulges and the roundness away, but it was worth losing the extra pounds to try to make them straight. I just wanted them to look straight. Still, I needed to at least allow myself to have a drink with Ann Catrina, as it had been a while since I had seen any of my friends and I needed to have a little fun. Besides, I knew that depression caused weight gain because of some kind of chemical in your body that is released if you’re unhappy and that can slow down your metabolism. Cortisol? Something like that.

  Eating 800 calories a day was difficult. Not because it was too little food but because it was too much. One thousand calories divided perfectly into my daily meals, but no matter how I tried, I couldn’t quite get 800 to fit. I removed the egg whites from the breakfast menu, opting to eat a serving midmorning, which left me with just the oatmeal. I had gotten used to eating the reduced portion of the prepackaged single serving of oatmeal and now it weighed in at 60 calories a serving. I added some blueberries, Splenda, and the butter spray so with the teaspoon of Mocha Mix I got my 100-calorie breakfast. I ate 60 calories of egg whites at around ten o’clock. One hundred and fifty calories of tuna with 50 additional calories for tomatoes, pickles, and lettuce was ample for lunch. Three ounces of turkey with butternut squash was around 300 calories and then an additional 40 calories for miscellaneous things—like gum or Crystal Light and coffee throughout the day—brought my total in at around 700. Quite often, if I was working and didn’t have time to prepare the egg whites, then the daily total would be somewhere in the low six hundreds.

  I fine-tuned my workout regimen. On days when I didn’t have to go to the studio, I would begin my workout at exactly 6:00. On days I worked, I got out of bed at 4:15. I ran for forty-five minutes on the treadmill at 6.0 on a 1 incline. I didn’t like running uphill. It did something weird to my lower back, but I felt I had to run harder and with my stomach tight to make up for it as most people run on an incline. I did sit-ups after my run. I did exactly 105 sit-ups. I wanted to do 100, but the 5 extra sit-ups allowed for some sloppy ones during my ten sets of ten reps. If I had time, I would do leg lifts: 105 with each leg. In addition to my workouts at home, I went to Mari Windsor Pilates and got a Pilates trainer. A costar had gone there and I’d read about Pilates in magazines so I thought I’d try it. It seemed that most celebrities were doing it, and I felt it was a particularly appropriate body-sculpting workout for me because it was originally designed for dancers and I used to be a dancer. It was slightly intimidating, however, because the other clients there were so thin and toned. It was a new goal to be thinner and more muscular than the other women at the Pilates studio, which ultimately was a good thing, because I have always thrived on healthy competition. After I was confident that I had the best body of all the paying customers, I would set my sights on the trainers.

  Round Three: I was in my corner and Ann was in hers. Ann, a featherweight from New York City takes on Portia, the middleweight from sunny Southern California. Ann rang the bell by saying:

  “Okay, I understand that you want to lose weight, but you should have some perspective on how much you’re losing—like some way of measuring that isn’t necessarily a scale. I know for me, there are clothes that are tight when I’ve gained weight and a little loose when I’ve lost weight. Certainly you have that, too. Like if you can fit comfortably into your skinny jeans, or if they’re just a little loose, you’re done losing weight, right?” She took a sip of wine, stroked my dog sitting in her lap, and waited for my response. I could tell that this conversation wasn’t easy for her. And while I was quite chuffed that she’d care enough to have it with me, I wished she’d just shut up.

  According to her laws, I guess I had no perspective. But what’s perspective when you started out fat? Why would I ever want those jeans to be a little loose when they were a 28 waist? I couldn’t tell her this, of course, because then we’d have to talk about how now I was on TV and that the “normal” life I lived at my “normal” weight no longer applied. I couldn’t sit there and brag about how I was different now because I was on TV. I just wished she understood that without me having to explain it.

  I was losing weight, though. I ordered a pair of 26 waist pants that took four weeks to arrive, and they were too big, too big by at least a size, maybe even two. I was really disturbed by this because I thought I’d looked good four weeks ago. God, I did a photo shoot for Flair four weeks ago and the magazine hadn’t even come out yet. How disgusting that that was what people would think I looked like.

  I guess some time had slid by without a response and Ann didn’t like silence in a conversation, so she continued:

  “I have to tell you something.”

  Here it comes, I thought. Here comes the part where she tells me I drink too much and right now I’m too drunk to take it well.

  “You’re too thin.”

  It was all I could do not to laugh. Really. The laughter was in my torso somewhere waiting to escape, but I stuffed it down because her face was so serious, plus I was enjoying it so much—the thought of being too thin. That’s funny: too thin. Just this morning on the set I had to clench my buttocks as I walked through the law office on a full-length lens because if I walked normally the part where my hips meet my thighs bulged out rhythmically with each step: left fat bulge, right fat bulge, left fat bulge, and cue dialogue, “You wanted to see me?” Too thin. She continued talking about my arms being sinewy and veiny and how I looked like an eleven-year-old and that it wasn’t attractive, but I just wanted to laugh. Oh, why not just enjoy this surreal moment and laugh? My face was contorting to control it from escaping anyway. I knew my face well enough to know that it’s a traitor to my mind. It gives away all my secrets. And so I laughed. I laughed really hard.

  “I’m sorry. It’s not funny. I don’t know why I’m finding it funny. It’s not funny. It’s just . . . you’re so serious!”

  “This is serious! You didn’t have dinner tonight. And you don’t look good, P. I think you’ve lost perspective.”

  My laughter died away. Not because what she was saying made sense to me but because I knew it was just an illusion created by my clothes or the way I was sitting.

  It’s not real. I’m not really thin. Should I show her my stomach and the rolls of fat? Or do I sit here on the floor and keep the pose that’s making her think that I am thin so I can enjoy this moment longer?

  I never wanted it to go away. I knew the minute I stood, it would be over. Or when I changed out of these magical jeans and into my pajamas. I was jutting out my collarbone subtly and separating my arm from my body to make her not feel stupid or wrong. She was going to realize it tomorrow, but for right now I knew she needed to be right and I needed to hear that I was thin. So I kept posing as a poor, starved waif until she stopped talking.

  “Does any of what I’m saying make sense to you?”

  What could I do? Answer her honestly? Say, no, AC, none of this makes sense because none of it is true. Even if you think you are telling me the truth, that I’m too thin, it’s just your truth, your perspective. It’s not society’s perspective, the clothing designers’ perspective. If it was, then models would have curves and actresses would have round faces and designers would make sample dresses bigger. What did she know? She was at NYU getting her master’s in . . . something. Business? Besides, I’d never gotten so much attention for having a good body. I had just been featured in In Style for having the “Look of the Week.” US Weekly gave me th
e “Best Dressed” accolade for the Rick Owens dress I wore to the Fox party. And last week Vera told me that I was her favorite actress to dress. I’d never gotten so many compliments. Everyone told me I looked fantastic.

  “P, I’m just concerned, that’s all.”

  “And I appreciate it, but there’s nothing to worry about. I ate dinner.”

  “You didn’t have dinner.”

  I had dinner. I ate grilled vegetables. I did stop eating them, though, because I could tell that they had used a lot of olive oil to cook them. I didn’t wear any lip balm because I wanted to make sure I could detect if anything I ate was cooked with oil. I couldn’t tell how much oil was used unless I had nothing waxy or oily on my lips. Besides, who knew whether the shea butter in lip balm contained calories that you could accidentally ingest? I had to worry about all the incidental calories, the hidden calories. Oil has a lot of calories and is a hidden ingredient in so many foods.

  Oil is really my main problem right now.

  “Look.” I thrust my wineglass in her face. “I’m drinking alcohol! Plenty of calories in that.”

  God. I’ve drunk my weight in wine and she thinks I have a problem?

  Ann shifted Bean slightly on her lap and looked around the room. She looked intently into each of the living room’s corners as if searching for a way to change the subject. Her eyes settled on the open kitchen door. They remained there and I realized that my kitchen scale and a calorie counter were probably what she was looking at. While it occurred to me that there was a slim chance she actually thought I was too thin, I had decided moments ago that she was just jealous. Who wouldn’t be? While I knew I wasn’t skinny, it was obvious that I had gained control over my weight, which is a huge feat worthy of jealousy. Everyone wants to be in control of their weight.