I laughed, nodding. “Yeah, well, hey! I’ll do my best to eat the remainder.”
As we exchanged mundane pleasantries, my excited and champagne-addled brain made me think, Are we flirting? My insides clenched.
“Oh, and, um, do you think we could get a picture together?” And with that, I’d done it. Put myself out there. I’d become the fan.
He assessed my face, his look one part shy, one part flattered. “Sure.”
I scanned the people around us, looking for some unsuspecting individual to snap a picture with my phone. “Jeremy, can you take a picture of us?”
He took the phone from my hand and moved a good five feet away from us as we posed. Leo’s hand slid behind my back, wrapping securely around my waist and resting on my hip. Every muscle in my core tightened. I silently screamed before my breathing ceased. I moved my arm around his back, my hand landing high on his shoulder blade, and I leaned into him. If I could have frozen the moment in time, just stayed right there forever, I’d have done it without hesitation.
We smiled. I heard the faux-snap sound of my phone’s camera, and I tensed, knowing the moment was over. He released my hip and moved his hand across my back, stepping away. Before we could fully part, I heard, “Ooh, wait a sec! Let me snap a photo of you two!” I turned and saw the script supervisor, Martha. I grinned.
We reconnected, positioning ourselves the same way as before. I couldn’t contain a huge, toothy smile. Martha held up her camera, then lowered it slightly to look at us over the lens. “This’ll be on all the entertainment shows tomorrow—just wait. ‘Hollywood’s new beautiful couple.’ ”
I died.
Can we make this happen?! I begged internally. Part of me felt nervous that Leo would be uncomfortable with such a suggestion. Us? A couple? Who? Before I got to the end of my thought, he laughingly sang, “Duh na na na na na!”
I died again.
Still unbreathing, I asked myself, Did Leo just sing the Entertainment Tonight jingle?
Martha offered a laugh. “I can call these things.” She raised the camera again and snapped the photo.
I couldn’t die again, but if I could have, I would have.
I had a hot flash. Three of them, unrelenting and burning, in a row. We pulled apart and smiled at each other. I’d just opened my mouth to continue our conversation, when I heard her Italian tongue trilling around my name. “Andrrrrrrea!”
I turned to see Francesca, now standing beside us. “Andrea, there you are! Come. We go.” She smiled sweetly, nodding to the car. Her hand rose to caress Leo’s face.
He smiled at her. They’d worked on movies together before. Marty, Dante, Francesca, Bob Guerra—they worked as a team as often as they could manage.
“We are tired. We go. Good night!” She tilted her head to the side as she gazed fondly at Leo.
He let out a sigh. “Good night, ladies,” he said quietly. Francesca had already begun walking toward the parking lot.
I gave in and smiled. “Have a good night.” I turned and followed her, hating every last step.
I barely remembered dropping Francesca at her apartment; my body and mind were still zinging in euphoria. I pulled my cell phone from my pocket and looked at the clock, noting that it was one a.m. I called her anyway.
“Andrea?” She sounded half asleep, her breathing like a gentle snore.
“Mumma, I talked to him.”
Her breath hitched. Instantly she perked up. She squealed. “Leo! Imagine that.”
“Yeah.” My lips spread so far in either direction, I wasn’t sure they’d stay contained on my face. I loved her for knowing how much it meant to me.
To her.
To us.
FROM THE WAY I APPEARED, people might have assumed I was doing exceptionally well. I worked twelve-hour days five and sometimes six days per week on the movie set without complaint; I multitasked with dazzling proficiency; I was perky, upbeat, and presentable at all times, with hair and makeup perfectly done. The only person who could have known how truly exhausted I felt was me. And I could only blame myself for feeling so ragged. Although I’d worked hard to mend my disordered eating, now I had to face another truth: I was addicted to exercise.
One year earlier, at the end of senior year of college, after reaching my goal weight, I developed sciatica—a pinched nerve—on my left side. Moving my left leg in any direction, I felt a stabbing and burning sensation in my left buttock. It developed because I’d never properly rested once I started a strict workout routine. I’d run four miles, seven days a week, without ever letting myself take a day off. I felt tethered to the treadmill, terrified of gaining any weight back. I had no frame of reference for the amount of rest a person needed when she’d just lost half of her starting body weight. The food—well, I was working on it. But the running, each of the miles I cursed jogging daily—I wasn’t so sure I could stop. It seemed such a crucial part of my success in losing weight. I’d always heard that of all the solo exercises one could do, running is the biggest calorie torcher. I was convinced that no other method of movement would provide such a burn. But the strain, the overuse of my poor, tired legs, triggered the sciatica, and I was forced to stop running for a month. One terrifying month. I struggled through sessions on the elliptical and the arc trainer; I tried to walk; I could barely sleep without aching nerve pain in my left side. I was an anxious wreck, thinking I would pack on any pounds lost.
When my body healed from the nerve pain, I returned to running. I kept it up for a full year, still motivated by the fear that quitting meant gaining weight.
I hated running. It was no longer fun. I no longer felt accomplished or rejuvenated or energized after I stepped off the treadmill. By then, I’d even begun to resent The View, my favorite TV program to pound out the miles to. I was drained. I thought for sure that the only way I would be thin, stay thin, was by keeping on keeping on. I started to fear my future. How could I keep this up? How do I continue running so many miles, so consistently, each and every day, when I hate it so? Running felt compulsive, dreadful, punishing, like an abusive relationship. I’d fall asleep at night dreading, dreading, dreading the next morning, when I’d have to run again.
Now, coupled with the growing hours on set, the running felt even more brutal. My body, my mind—both were exhausted. I sat in my car one night, after a particularly long day, and I let my head fall to hit the steering wheel. The parking lot was empty. I was supposed to be heading to the gym; I hadn’t run yet that day.
“I can’t,” I whispered, with no one to talk to but the odometer.
My shoulders began to bounce up and down in the makings of a sob. The rumbling felt deep and guttural, a cry I wouldn’t be able to tame. Soon the tears came.
“I can’t,” I repeated.
I pulled the keys from the ignition.
“I can’t. I can’t.” I said it over and over until I actually believed it.
While talking myself into and out of the run, I suddenly had a startling thought: I’d almost rather be fat.
Surely I wouldn’t rather that. I didn’t prefer discomfort, a body less capable of moving me, and the way the world looked down at me when I was big. But perhaps I preferred the ease. The way I was punishing myself now, was it all worthwhile? Does looking good cost feeling good?
Am I even happy?
I did not lose 135 pounds only to find myself in an unhappy marriage to running. And if I did, I wanted a divorce.
I did not lose 135 pounds because my sanity mattered less than vanity.
I decided in that moment that I would try my best to let myself find the weight I was supposed to be. If not running every day, or not running ever again, meant that I would gain 5 pounds, then I would accept each one of them. If 10 pounds were in store for me, then so be it. Truly, I would let myself be.
I would live the way I wanted to live, without feeling a tremendous sense of dread each morning when I opened my eyes and knew the treadmill was there, without feeling as if my being at
a healthy weight for the first time in my whole life hinged on desperate exercise.
Those first three minutes after I’d made my decision felt intensely free. Because when I had made my mind up that I would lose the weight forever, I had also made my mind up that I would be happy first.
I thought that in losing, I was finally cutting ties with what I perceived to be a fatal, lifelong hindrance. My personal handicap. I wanted to be free of worrying about my size. I wanted to forget that I was uncomfortable in front of people and just let myself be, without feeling painfully aware of how big I was. In trying to find this freedom, I created another prison. I ran from weight, and then I ran from weight some more. I felt shackled by exercise just as I’d felt shackled by my weight. And when I realized what I’d done—when depression settled in as my default state—I said, I’d rather be what I was than what I am now.
And that shocked my eyes open.
When I felt the tears had been wrung out of my eyes like a thoroughly squeezed sponge, I started the car, reversed, and drove home.
The following day after work, I pondered what my future with exercise would be. Running or not, I wouldn’t give up on moving; I understood the importance of exercise as part of a healthy life. What I wanted was to find an activity that was gentler on my body and less daunting to my mind.
At the gym where I had a yearlong membership, I considered the elliptical machine, knowing that the smooth, gliding motion would be easy on my joints. The problem was that the few times I’d used it in the past, my toes had gone numb for some odd reason. I decided to try the StairMaster, since all four of the machines were unoccupied. It took a brief four minutes for me to hop off winded, red faced, cursing, and never to return again. So that’s why all the stair climbers had been available, I thought to myself, panting. I turned to see the familiar treadmill, and a long walk crossed my mind. At the magazine rack, I grabbed the most recent issue of O and hopped onto an available machine. The belt slid backward, jostling me as I set the machine to four miles per hour and the incline at a moderate 2 percent. The fifteen-minute-mile pace was comfortable, considering it was the speed at which I’d warmed up my legs for all my runs. With the magazine placed over the display panel, it covered all mentions of time, calories burned, and distance. I didn’t want to concern myself with the numbers; I only wanted to gauge how much I liked what I was doing. With earbuds in place, I pressed Play on my iPod. I walked until I finished reading, cover to cover, and only then did I lift the magazine to see how far I’d traveled. Fifty minutes. Three and a quarter miles. I blinked a few times at the screen, incredulous. For two years, I’d run nearly that same mileage on the treadmill and hated every second of it, but now, while walking and reading, I’d enjoyed it. I was shocked at how easy it had felt, how quickly the time had passed without my agonizing over the clock. Content, I stepped off the machine to leave. I hadn’t even reached the end of the row of treadmills when the worry set in. I stopped, tuning in to the obsessive part of me—the one that urged me to question the calories I’d just burned. Maybe I should walk a bit more. I had barely broken a sweat.
But no. No.
Before I could even think a moment longer, I stuffed the magazine back into its slot on the rack and left the gym, determined to not undermine the progress I’d made.
The next day after work, I returned to the gym and read while walking on the treadmill. Again, it was pleasurable. Again, I had to convince myself it was enough.
Slowly, over the course of two months, I stopped questioning its validity as a calorie burner and instead started recognizing that movement, in any form, was beneficial. I even came to look forward to the time I spent on long walks. It was restorative, meditative, and not at all punishing and dreadful like the days when my joints ached on impact. I could do it anywhere, at any time, with anyone. Heading to the gym after work wasn’t a chore but a way to unwind. I had found a comfortable pace, podcasts to listen to that interested me, friends who wanted to walk with me on the weekends, beautiful trails by my house to explore, new magazines to subscribe to, and music that made me want to move.
Each week when I weighed myself, I prepared for a gain. With all of the peace I’d gained from walking, I could accept five pounds. It was worth that much. So when the scale never changed, week after week, I was surprised. Logically, I knew that the miles I covered—whether jogged or strolled—were roughly the same, but it took the proof of my stable weight for me to really believe it. The only explanation that seemed to make sense to me was that by lightening up on movement—no longer engaging in excessive cardio—I wasn’t constantly ravenous, which meant that I didn’t feel as if I were always fighting against hunger. With a less intense form of exercise, it was easier to eat three healthy meals a day and two snacks and feel satisfied. I also wasn’t drained all the time, which gave me the energy to actually want to move my body. I recognized the positive cycle I’d begun: move moderately, eat moderately, repeat.
After Shutter Island wrapped, I spent the next six months living like a Generation Y cliché. My new contacts in the film industry didn’t have any work immediately available, so I lived at home with Mom and Paul. Kate was also unemployed, so we spent our time aimlessly hanging out in the same way we did during summers home from college, trying to avoid the plunge into the real world. I halfheartedly looked for work in local television production once again.
During that period of professional limbo, I began to slowly reconcile my relationship with Daniel. I called him often. We met for dinners. I was awestruck by the life he’d made while we were apart. He had moved to Cambridge, where he made a living as a professional poker player. Hearing him describe it, I thought back to the day he began playing poker, during our first week of freshman year at UMass. He sat in a circle in the lounge, Justin to his right, a few of our friends occupying the seats to his left, chips and cards littered about the wooden table. They all began playing nonstop. It was the year that Texas Hold’em blew up. It was everywhere—on TV, on every floor of my dorm. Soon the live games moved online to sites like PokerStars, and one by one, our friends started making serious money. Daniel was always good at the game. And while I had been working on Shutter Island, he’d won a handful of tournaments that led him to play in major events all around the world.
I loved that he’d gained such independence and found success while pursuing an alternative career. It excited and inspired me. Spending time with him—watching movies, strolling the narrow streets of his Cambridge neighborhood, laughing the way we used to—was fulfilling. I was quickly reminded of that familiar, deeply contented feeling Daniel gave me.
“I love you,” I blurted out, as we stood at the door to his apartment after dinner one night in July. Nearly dropping his keys, he turned to face me, revealing eyes that were at once stunned and happy. He grabbed my waist with both hands and drew me in for a kiss.
“I love you, too,” he said, his lips barely parting with mine.
“Daniel, I—I’m so sorry. For everything.”
He tensed, pulling back slightly, and looked down, pausing a moment before nodding. “I know.” Suddenly, he was more timid, and I knew that my apology had reminded him of when I’d shattered his heart. He entwined his fingers with mine. “I just missed you.”
After a week of talking things through, we’d decided to get back together. Our reunion left me feeling restored. It was as if a part of me had been missing and was suddenly returned, and all I wanted to do was to ensure that I’d never lose it again.
At the start of August, Daniel traveled to Europe with his two best friends. The Saturday he left, I’d just returned from a long walk and was moments from stepping into a cool shower when I caught sight of my naked body in the bathroom mirror. I stopped and stared at my reflection. My frame was lithe, thin. Until my waist, the reflection I saw of me was one I liked. But as my eyes moved lower to my belly and beyond, I winced. Circling my belly was an inner tube of sagging flesh. Twenty years with an overbearing middle, a belly so p
rotruding and bossy, my skin hadn’t taken kindly to the dramatic loss. The fat that once filled the two cascading rolls was gone, and what stayed behind was a double sash of deflated skin. It had no more elasticity. Loose and wrinkled, the skin sagged in the way it would on the body of someone nearing ninety. I could pinch the hanging flaps and find my fingers almost touching between the thin sheets of skin.
My gaze moved farther downward in the mirror, and I saw the same sagging sacks between my legs. My inner thighs looked as deflated, as dimpled with wear and age, as my midsection. I shook my body and watched as the pounds of sagging skin flapped up, down, up, down. Each bounce of empty flesh weighed heavy on the downswing.
I cursed it. Why has the fat left, but you—you won’t go away? It embarrassed me in a way my full belly never could have. This was the new body I’d worked so hard to have. This was the body I was working so hard to love. The skin that hung behind after I’d lost all the weight felt mocking, humiliating. I feared anyone ever touching it, couldn’t bear the thought of them noticing it as they grabbed me in a hug. Even being naked in front of Daniel made me feel unnervingly vulnerable. “I know it’s ugly!” I wanted to shout apologetically at him as I squeezed my eyes shut when we began kissing, so wishing the lights were out.
With clothes on, the skin masked itself well. Shirts hung loosely at my middle. Jeans with some measure of stretch could snugly hold the skin on my thighs taut. But when I moved, I felt the excess bounce. It would slap against my body in a punishing way.
You did this to yourself, you know. I chastised myself silently. Part of me felt I deserved it, but mostly I wondered of its finality. Must I walk around with this, my cross to bear, for the rest of my life? It felt odd to have worked so diligently to carve this body out of the mass it once was for it now to look so unattractive to me. Different, yes, but distressing all the same. Stretch marks swam up my front, my back, like silvery white fish. I was sympathetic toward the skin that bore them, having stretched so far beyond its limits that red veins emerged where it simply could not bear to stretch farther. The markings, now faded, I could live with. But the excess skin plagued me. During the first year the weight was off, I felt a nagging sense that I had more weight to lose whenever I’d see the sagging. It drove me mad that it never tightened, never rebounded, no matter how much I exercised. No amount of squats, lunges, crunches, or planks helped it to recoil. I learned, perhaps much too late to prevent the excessive exercise, that this excess that hung low on my belly and thighs was not the same as flab. There wasn’t any fat left inside the pockets to blast away. I’d done all of that.
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