I washed my hair and walked into a cupcake shop I had passed a bunch of times on my way to walk around Target while I talked on the phone. I filled out an application and they hired me! The bakery was owned by a pageant mom and a guy that looked like Anthony Weiner who also winked a lot so I figured I’d like it. All was well in the world of my employment except for one enormous detail that I seemed to have overlooked in all the bliss I was feeling of becoming a respectable young adult with a career. Cupcakes make you super fat when you look at them for eight hours a day with no breaks. Basically all I did for the eight months I worked there was eat cupcakes. Even when I wasn’t at the shop I was eating them. I would hide in the bathroom at social get togethers and eat cupcakes and look at myself in the mirror and scream “LOOK AT YOUR THIGHS!! YOU ARE AN ANIMAL!!” but I couldn’t stop. I became that girl everyone hates. The one that would talk about how fat she was while smashing 1,000-calorie cupcakes into her mouth. Even the bakery manager would poke her head around the corner and passive aggressively whisper “umm just remember you’re only allowed to have ONE free cupcake a day and you’ve far exceeded that” before disappearing into the office to Google her boyfriend. One time a lady came into the shop and said “these are delicious! How are you girls so cute and tiny!” and I think I just deadpanned, “Look at me. I look like Rosanne. I probably have type 2 diabetes but I’m going to go ahead and eat another Mississippi Mud because I have no self worth anymore.” It was really bad. I was like two bites away from pajama jeans. Something had to give.
I went home that weekend and told my mom that I needed gastric bypass surgery and she said she didn’t think our insurance covered that but encouraged me to weigh. I had gained 25 pounds. She suggested I go to a Weight Watchers meeting with her the next day. I didn’t want to. It sounded like a lot of work but I did it anyway because my body was so full of cupcakes there was really nothing behind my eyes anymore. Also, I wouldn’t hate looking like a white girl version of Jennifer Hudson. When we walked in the door we were greeted by an older woman with kind eyes sitting behind a desk. She looked like what Betty Crocker would look like if she too had a blog about different ways to substitute Greek yogurt for sour cream. She made me weigh and wrote my weight down in a tiny book that I was supposed to bring every week. I thought that seemed abrasive. I followed my mother into a large room with rows and rows of bright green, plastic chairs facing a large dry erase board. I was the youngest person there by about 40 years so that made me happy. I’m better received by the elderly. I’m an old soul but I look like I’m 13 and they like that. Before I could make any friends, an energetic (but likeably skinny) man bounced into the room. “GOOD MORNING WATCHERS!” he basically screamed. He was so excited about weight loss. I was so into that. He went around the room and let everyone share something skinny and good that they did that week. After they spoke, he instructed the rest of the group to say “ooooohhh ahhhh” in approval. The couple in front of me was amped about this. They were wearing matching M&M t-shirts and she had M&M earrings and had just taken up daily bike riding. “I don’t know...” she whispered to her husband, “is it notable enough, Honey?” He looked shocked “Sweetie yes!” he said, resting a supportive hand on her knee “any step you take toward your weight loss, is a step in the right direction.” Doris had recently gone on a cruise with her husband and not gained any weight. She got to put a gold star sticker in her book. Marge had had a bad weight loss week and was so down on herself you would have thought she was liquefying Oreo’s and shooting them up behind a Mardel. She didn’t get a star, obviously, but we all let her know that if she stuck to the system she would make it around this dark corner. It was basically AA for chubbies except no one was fat at all, just old. So it was basically Bridge Club.
After everyone was done sharing, we all learned a recipe that was supposed to taste exactly like Red Lobster’s coconut shrimp. Just talking about Red Lobster made me feel safe. I loved it here. After the meeting was over the leader came up and shook my hand and said something like “it works if you work it.” I felt alive. I hated cupcakes in that moment. As I walked out of the brightly colored building and out to my car, I caught a glimpse of myself in the window of a fellow addict’s Lincoln Town Car I still looked pretty bloated, but there was a shimmer of hope in my eyes. I knew that soon, I too, would have my gold star.
