Hot to Not to Hot Again

Once upon a time many moons ago, I was hot. 

It was a glorious time. Pencil skirts, sky-high stilettos, high self-esteem, and free drinks abounded. I ate all the Oreos and drank all the wine I wanted, the minimal weight gain only making me more curvaceous and delicious. 

At the age of thirty-two however, all the Oreos and 6 (to 8 (to 10)) glasses of wine a night curiously started catching up with me. Within six months I had gained fifty pounds. 

INCONCEIVABLE. 

At the time I had a sweet puppy dog of a boyfriend who thought I was beautiful no matter what (sucker), so I simply relished in the fact that I had an excuse to buy a whole new wardrobe at Ann Taylor. How's that for finding a silver 40" lining? Besides, at five-foot eight and with a naturally meaty build, my frame could take the hit--or so I told myself. 

For eight years. 

You'd think I would have lost a lot of the weight when I got sober and stopped drinking those oversized big-ass 1.5 liter bottles of wine every night, but nooooooo. Recovering alcoholics commonly cross-addict to some other vice such as food, and by all the glory of saturated fats, that is what I did. 

Cheese! Salami! Gouda cheese! Bacon cheeseburgers! Sharp white cheddar cheese! ChikFilA even though I was against their homophobic ways! Smoked gouda cheese! Pizza (strangely enough, NOT with extra cheese)! Brie! 3-entree servings of Panda Express with only two pieces of vegetable in sight! Goat cheese! Oreos! Queso with questionable cheese purity but queso all the same!

At my heaviest, I weighed more than my beer-bellied six foot five college boyfriend did at HIS heaviest. A few strangers congratulated me on my pregnancy, and depending on my mood I either hissed at them or smiled and said 'thanks' sweetly so as to avoid publicly outing myself as a fatass.

Don't get me wrong, it has been a very merry eight years full of the aforementioned menu items and not giving a shit, which I cherish almost as fondly as the previous years of hotness. Almost. 

So what prompts a lazy fatass to finally put down the towering bowl of ice cream and dig out the running shoes? I'll let you pick your favorite reason from the list below:

1. An impressive amount of underboob sweat while undergoing absolutely minimal physical activity, especially impressive considering they aren't that big compared to the rest of me
2. Sweating from places that didn't exist ten years ago
3. I do one day after covid want to start dating again, and sadly a lot of people refuse to go out with chubsters in spite of how lovely their personalities may be (and I used to be one of these assholes, so I should know)
4. Being the one overweight person under seventy in my family (and they make their opinions about "the fatties" well known)
5. I'm not cute enough to attract attention based on the upper 40% my face alone due to facemasks, although I didn't do so great with the other 60% being on display before the pandemic. I wouldn't say I was ever a butterface, but I would say it was my body that attracted attention more so than any prettiness I ever deluded myself into believing I had
6. I only own six shirts, three pairs of pants, and two pairs of shorts that actually fit and I wear regularly because I refuse to buy clothes for a size that is "not my true size." 
7. Seeing that the hail damage aka cellulite that used to only be on my ass now goes all the way down to my knees
8. My self-esteem has tanked so badly that I am actively looking for ways to improve it, which has included things like shaving every day, reading a new self-help book every three days, and giving myself a pedicure for the first time in four years. Which went very badly, by the way. Apparently my artistic thinking has made it impossible for me to stay in the lines in any context whatsoever. 
9. It was fun back in the day to post sexy pics for you on Twitter (shut up, yes, I finally joined Instagram so I'll be crossing over), not to mention immensely validating since I was once the nerd girl no one in prep school paid attention to. 
10. I miss feeling like all the rap songs were written about my luscious peach of an ass.
11. Exercise is known to be excellent for mental health, but I honestly I'm only mentioning this because it's what my mother kept spouting out at me. And wouldn't you know it, after a month of exercising for forty-five plus minutes a day I do feel a spring in my step and a slightly more focused mind when I write, but that is strictly coincidence. Mom can't know she was right. Why does she always get to be right about everything? So infuriating. 

Okay so "for my health" is not listed as a reason. I know it should have been, but let's be honest: I miss being hot. 

The lower blood pressure and decreased risk of type II diabetes are just a bonus.