I'm Lindsay Ferrier, a Nashville writer with a passion for family travel, exploring Tennessee, and raising kids without losing my mind in the process. This is where I share my discoveries, along with occasional deep thoughts, pop culture tangents and a sprinkling of snark. Want to get in touch? Use the CONTACT form at the top of the page.
October 20, 2005
I’ve been looking for some motivation to go on a diet. And I find that the best weight-loss catalyst for me generally is provided, unintentionally, by others. In the past, an offhand remark has been known to send me from pushing chubby to pushing anorexic. And while I will never go that far again, I continue to seek divine inspiration from other carriers of a disease with which I’m on intimate terms: foot-in-the-mouthitis.
Yesterday, I finally received the vision I’ve been seeking, albeit in an unexpected form… It was an e-mail containing a picture of me (with Baby) at our Tuesday play group outing to the zoo.
The first person I noticed in the picture was actually my friend Margeret.
“Oh my God,” I snickered. “She looks horrible! She would die if she saw this picture!” Slumped on a bench, Margeret seemed to sag in all the wrong places. In real life, Margeret’s actually quite pretty, but you wouldn’t know it from seeing her hangdog expression and bag lady posture on the computer screen.
Then, I glanced at the woman sitting next to her.
Wait a damn minute.
No, no, no, no, oh hell NO.
Was that…. me?
Hunched over like Margeret (was there a freaking gravitational pull coming from the toddler play mat?), I was first struck by the two sausages jutting from the legs of my capri pants. I quickly averted my eyes to my profile, where I saw the beginnings of a… a… a… double chin.
But the ultimate horror was centered dead in the middle of the picture. Plainly visible to anyone who happened to be visiting the zoo’s new fat moms exhibit was a roll of frigging belly fat.
At first, I sat in disbelief. I had thought I looked good that day. My supposed friend who took the picture clearly had invested in some sort of circus-grade wide angle lens. The bitch! What the hell kind of stunt was this? She should’ve known better than to mess with me, the mastermind behind each and every family prank from rolling yards to setting off firecrackers in mailboxes!
I angrily looked at another friend in the picture for confirmation. She was going through a divorce and had lost a good bit of weight in the process. And on camera, she looked skinnier than ever. Damnation!
There was only one other possibility. I needed to lose some weight. I needed to lose ten pounds, pronto. And I needed to erase this photo from my e-mail before my husband saw it.
I did save the picture to my laptop, though, under the title “Why I Need to Lose Weight”. Because I like to torture myself. You could call it a sort of hobby.
So join me (virtually, of course) in my weight loss journey, readers, as I struggle to lose ten pounds, even though I’m quickly approaching the Dieter’s Bermuda Triangle more commonly known as Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas. Many a dieter has disappeared when entering this realm, never to be seen again.
But I am determined to Overcome– and to banish my belly fat… forever.
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