An Extra Few Pounds

My girlfriend told me she thought I was “looking PLUMP” the other day. I was already on my way to the grocery store to buy the ingredients for the famous Cabbage Soup diet and needed to call to ask her opinion before purchasing the ingredients.  I did not ask her opinion on my weight, however, which incidentally is only up about 3 pounds. I do not have a problem maintaining my weight at home. It is press trips, where they wine and dine us to excess that it is easy to add a few pounds by the week’s end.

Does anyone have to tell us that we feel some extra flesh around our middle when we zip up fitted pants or sit at our desk and some belly pooches over? Or, how about when we look in the mirror? Any doubts there? I’m not even talking climbing onto the scale. But I did that day and I was horrified, enough to go on the cabbage soup diet, a real winner when it comes to shedding 5 pounds.

Besides the fact that I am leaving on another press trip and I still have the 3 pounds from the last press trip on made me buy the ingredients for the diet.  That, and I allowed the artists at the Berks County Art Council Thursday workshop to talk me into modeling again. (It was supposed to be once and done as research for my new book). So if anyone of you thinks you can kid yourself  about what you really look like or that you haven’t gained a few extra pounds, try taking your clothing off in front of over a dozen clothed people who will be staring at you for 3 hours and then RECORDING what they see. Good incentive. And by the way, they usually add 5-10 pounds naturally, like a camera.

So I had not a single problem sticking to the diet. When I walked into the studio at the art institute on Thursday, I saw that there was a huge floor to ceiling mirror on the opposite side of the modeling stand. It was never revealed in the 25 years I previously modeled.

“That is not acceptable,” I announce loudly to all.

One man said, “What if someone wants to draw the back side of you?”

“I don’t care,” I said. “Which of you in here would like to look at themselves in a 10’ X 10’ wide mirror for three hours, two feet from your face. It’s not happening. I will get dressed and go home right now.”

And so two old geezers stepped up onto a stool and rolled down the fabric backdrop.

One woman said to me, “You are brave. I don’t like the way I look WITH clothing on.”

So I am leaving tomorrow for my press trip to Lithuania & Estonia. I will climb onto the scale tomorrow and I feel certain I will not be disappointed. Once again, we KNOW when we lose weight, just like we KNOW when we gain weight. No one has to tell us.

My husband got married young- 23, but somehow, he figured out that the right answers to these questions…

“Do you think I look like I gained weight?”

“NO”
But then, “Do you think I look skinnier?”

“YES.”

These are the correct answers. He figured it out with something simple called kindness.  We can do the rest ourselves.