Skinny as a Spice Girl

You know I'm gay-gay-GAAAY, because I obsess about my weight, constantly. I'm not a get-on-the-scale-five-times-a-day obsessive (in fact, I can't remember when exactly I weighed myself last), but I do think about trying to gain back more muscle tone and a smaller waist line, on a daily basis.

I just want the dress slacks that I bought last year, for my First Real Job Ever, to stop feeling so annoyingly snug. Less than a month ago, I finally quit cold turkey the five-days-a-week-snacking of granola bars and mixed cocktail nuts at my desk.

And it's not even about good health, for me, mostly. People used to say to me, "Oh, you're so good about going to the gym and working out all of the time!" No, I'm not.
I'm vain. I'm narcissistic. I just want to look good, or at least, better than you.

I don't just want to be trim, I want to be 1%-body-fat-sickly-thin. Not that I am in any danger of actually becoming that, but I find myself constantly admiring women with the impossible size-zero figures, like a couple of the women on "Friends," the 'B' and 'C' members of Destiny's Child, and of course, the Spice Girls, even before Mrs. Beckham morphed into a popsicle stick with two inflatables attached.

As comedienne Paula Poundstone once said, it may be that I'm half-bulimic--I do plenty of binging, I just forget to purge.

I want to emulate these unrealistically thin celebrity women, anti-feminist as that may be. Sure, I have a handful of age-appropriate male role models: Benjamin Bratt, Dermot Mulroney, and Johnny Depp (yum, yum, and YUM--check-check-check!). But more frequently, it is celebrity women's waist lines that I envy, such as Gwen-frickin'-Stefani--YOU JUST HAD A BABY, GAIN SOME WEIGHT ALREADY!

I swear: These women who have borne progeny and then bounced back with nary a stretch mark on their publicly-bared midriffs must have sold their souls to the Dark Side!

But I can't lay off the white powdery stuff--I must have sugar on a daily basis, preferably in chocolate or cookie form. No, not 'or,' I meant 'and.' There is no happiness without a Daily Fix. Without it, no point to life.

So, I'm swimming, now, three days a week, for a half hour at a time. It's a good time of the year for me to start, too. The six month period from October to April has become the Danger Zone for me in recent years. There is no safe haven in sight from trick-or-treat candy to Easter chocolate. In between, you've got Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Valentine's day. Holiday chocolate is on clearance, non-stop, in the supermarkets, and at Target, and everywhere else that I shop!

It's a good thing that I don't drink at all, because I would only be compounding my holiday/winter padding with New Year's Eve toasts and St. Patrick's Day beer.

I will never voluntarily sell my soul to the Dark Side, so I suppose I will never become Posh Spice thin. But I can still touch my toes.

Good enough.