Weight Loss
Photo Credit: Mike Baird (Flickr.com)
George let out a heavy sigh as he stared as his naked body in the mirror. From the front, it looked find. But when he started to turn even slightly to the side, it became clear that his figure wasn’t as flat as he wanted to believe.
“When did this happen?” he asked his wife, Elli, who was busy showering behind him. “I was thin when we got married, wasn’t I?”
“That was ten years ago, George,” Elli said, her voice raised slightly to cut through the noise of the falling water. “You were a lot more active then.”
“I don’t think I was,” said George. “The kids and the dogs wear me out. I think I’m probably more active now than I was then.”
“Well, it’s your metabolism, then,” Elli called. “I don’t know. Maybe if you’d quit eating hamburgers and hot dogs for lunch every day, you’d be better off. Or lay off the beer when you get home.”
“I don’t know,” said George. “I’m skeptical that it has much to do with my diet.”
It took Elli a moment to respond — it sounded like she was in the midst of washing her hair – and George turned to the other side, and clutched his gut. It wasn’t huge, and it didn’t even really feel like fat. He could feel his ribcage underneath his slightly sagging breasts.
“Well, I don’t know what to tell you,” Elli said. “Either eat less or exercise more. It’s up to you.”
“I don’t know,” said George. He released his gut, and watched it jiggle. “I guess I could start eating more salad.”
“That’s probably a good start,” said his wife.
George started to dress. “It’s just… I don’t know,” he said. “You cover salad in meat and dressing and cheese, and you might as well just be eating a pizza, you know?”
“Then why don’t you use our gym membership?” Elli asked. “We’re paying for you to go, and you never use it.”
“I hate the gym,” George said. “It just doesn’t seem natural to me.”
Elli turned off the shower and pulled a towel behind the curtain. “You look fine, George,” she said. “I wouldn’t mind if you lost a little weight, but really, when you’re dressed, you look fine. Don’t be so self-conscious about it.”
George didn’t believe a word of it, of course. Elli cared. She had to. She just didn’t want to get into an argument and was trying to end the conversation. George knew full well that she’d complained about his weight to one of her friends.
“There’s got to be a better way,” he mused. “But what is it? Why is it so hard for us, with everything we can do with technology today, to lose weight?”
Elli didn’t have an answer. And George realized, as he buttoned up his shirt, that he didn’t either.
Fiction, Writing Scraps | SeanJJordan | 
April 26, 2010 11:57 am
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