Getting Waisted (15 page)

14

Retreat

Diet #18
A week at the spa

Cost
$1,450.00 (not including the flight)

Weight lost
5 pounds

Weight gained
1.5 pounds, and it’s only midweek

True love remained elusive.
With every pound I lost or gained, I seemed to lose me even more, especially after I bumped into Ben. You may remember him, he was the boy who wouldn’t have sex with me in the backseat of that ill-fated car when I had the loopy idea that I needed to lose my virginity in order to lose my baby fat. My feelings got hurt when he rejected me; our friendship fizzled and we never really got it back on track. Neither of us was mature enough to make that necessary first move.

When we accidently met again, we spent an awkward couple of minutes making stilted small talk until we sat down in a coffee shop and fifteen minutes later we were solidly back in the groove of sharing gossip and secrets. A long time had passed since high school and there was much to catch up on. Ben was unhappily working for his dad, managing the family sportswear logo factory, something he swore he would never do. He was divorced after a two-year marriage and he felt his life had crashed and burned. He was depressed. He was lonely. He was surprised to hear that I, too, was depressed, and that I felt I had one foot nailed to the floor while I spun in the same circles as I had always done. He told me he was impressed that I was doing so well and how much he enjoyed my antics on the exercise show.

After sharing a pizza, too much wine, and an anxiety attack, we fell into bed. WOW! Ben was shocked. I was shocked. Ben and I began spending all our time together. It was easy and familiar. I began to think Ben was the one. . . . We spent nearly every night together for a couple of months, but it gradually occurred to me that we never went anywhere. We never left my bedroom. There were no ball games, no movies, and next to no restaurants. I pointed this out to him. “You’re crazy; of course we go out,” he replied.

I smiled, “Great, let’s go out now!” I could see in his face, something was up. Of course, that made me insist even more. Ben defended his position by telling me he was just happy to be ensconced in our own world, but I wasn’t buying it.

He leapt up, “Fine. Let’s go to a movie.”

I didn’t even know what the movie was, other than it sucked, but that turned out to be the best part of the evening. We were just leaving the theater when a group of Ben’s college pals swarmed him with joy. He was equally thrilled to see them. I stood to the side waiting for him to introduce me but the introduction never came. It seemed like ten minutes of high-fiving, back-slapping, and catching up. It was like I wasn’t even there. I realized he was embarrassed—that I wasn’t the person he thought he was supposed to be with. All the tension and feelings of discrimination bubbled up to the surface like boiling lava desperate to blow. “Take your shame and shove it!” I kissed him full on his lips. “Explain that to your buddies.” Bye-bye Ben.

I was almost out the front door of the theater when Ben caught up to me. He was blazing mad. He grabbed me by my arm and confronted me. “You want to believe the worst. Is it possible that you got that picture wrong?” He said those guys were on an opposing college team and he didn’t remember their names. He continued lambasting me saying that I had self-esteem issues and I wanted to blame the universe for what he never thought was my problem: my weight. He went on to say that I embraced being a victim because it made me right and everyone else wrong. I was dumbfounded into total silence by this last remark. I was filled with righteous indignation, hellbent on getting far enough away from Ben to think about what he had said and to lick my wounds.

I chose to plug my ears and my mind and go about my life, just as I always had, not wanting to believe that what he said might be true. Once again, Ben and I were on the outs.

I needed some TLC fast; I had no idea what that meant but I knew I needed it. I was talking to one of my closest friends, Karen, who suggested we go away to a spa. It sounded very fancy, but I was in desperate need of a break from being me so I didn’t care what it cost and, in little more than the time it took to toss some workout wear plus a couple of bathing suits and half a dozen head-to-toe cover-ups into a suitcase, I was airport bound. Karen was sweet, kind, pretty, and petite, so why on earth was I going away with her? We boarded the plane and I took my seat. I reached for the seatbelt with a slight beat of trepidation, but breathed a sigh of relief and a moment of pleasure when I realized whoever had been in that chair before me was quite a bit larger than I was. I couldn’t have asked for a better start to our trip.

The spa, “El Rancho Del Porko,” as I liked to call it, was set in a beautiful but arid part of Mexico and a world away from Toronto. A gentle and caring guide wearing a sarong and more than a hint of patchouli took us on a tour of the grounds and the facilities. It was a beautiful setting with pools, meditation gardens, and yoga studios—indoors and outdoors—and pretty wooden huts in the woods where they held the exercise classes. She then invited us into the dining room where all the newbies gathered to have tea and be given a rundown of the week’s offerings. Soft, hypnotic chimes played as we sipped our apricot infused green tea and ate delicious fruit and waferlike cookies. This was going to be good.

Karen and I shared a room, which was simply decorated and beautifully tiled and outfitted with the softest towels and organic shampoos. We were excited to wake up and dive into a week of wellness.

Those huts in the woods that I had admired were really boot camps designed to kill. I tried to keep pace with the bellowed instructions, blasted over the blaring hip-hop music, but to do so, I was in need of an iron lung. These were militaristic exercises run by an ex-Navy Seal (I was sure of it) posing as a braided, sweet flower child, and she had riled up the spandex-wearing women into an aggressive frenzy. So much for the gentle chimes; these broads just needed some spears and hunting rifles and us slower-moving endomorphs would have been roasted on a spit for that night’s dinner. I was pretty sure if those loud tunes were played backward and in slow motion, one would be able to hear threatening commands: “Right leg up—NOW! Left leg—NOW! March faster! DIE! DIE! DIE!”

A daily siesta was what I had planned on doing with my afternoons. Not bloody likely . . . There were endless hills that had to be climbed and I was rousted from my slumber by some gung-ho, trailblazing maniac who wanted me to understand this was part of my journey to well-being. She assured me that I would love the fresh,
dry
air, and I would love the endorphin release I would feel when we got back from our two-hour butt-burning hike.

Seven minutes in, I determined that dragging my fat ass up those desert hills was sure to result in my death if I even attempted to keep up. My whining began, “I hate climbing; I am always last. I
hate
this. I
really
hate this!” Caterpillars must have heard all my wheezing, bitching, and lumbering eighty miles away. And I was horribly and desperately thirsty from sucking back all that sand. But like Dumbo, I believed I could somehow do this. Oh crap, Dumbo was a really bad metaphor. I was at one with the program, rising at dawn to begin the healing, the shedding, and the rebirthing. Seriously? I prayed the squadron of trainers could help me get a grip.

Three days later, I was no happier about climbing those damn hills, and our insanely chipper leader was grating on my nerves; she even whistled while she walked. Karen was complaining about not being able to lose the five pounds that seemed to stick to her like glue. I snappishly told her that it was called skin and she needed it to keep her organs in place. Gung-ho Gal overheard me threaten Karen that I would “shove her skinny ass into a sharp cactus if she didn’t shut up.”
The condescending, holier-than-thou leader stopped the entire yoga-pants-wearing parade of speed-walking, tanned, and seriously toned overachievers to lecture me that Karen’s five pounds were her cross to bear. Still huffing and puffing, I pointed out that I was carrying the entire weight of the world, which was a wee bit heavier than a cross. Apparently, I touched a nerve as the whole lot of them ganged up on me, believing that I had not just attacked their religion but their bogus chubby-assed issues as well. It was not a good start to my day.

It went rapidly uphill from there when one of the spa Gurus or Goddesses, I’m not sure which they preferred, began dinner with an incantation: “Do what you have always done and you will get what you always got.” My internal voice belched to the surface, “Okay, don’t eat so much, can’t you just say that? What’s this costing me?” It was decided I had an attitude problem. “Yes, it’s true. I’m hungry!”
The yummy, organic locally grown lettuce wraps weren’t doing it for me.

I tried harder and I hiked the blistering hills, muttering sailor-like filth to myself. I swam endless laps, did stretches at sunset, and ate only whole grains and holy blessed leaves. I visualized me as I was intended but somehow the picture of the long-limbed, sun-bronzed me wouldn’t hold. It kept sliding back into sun-blotched, potato-woman. But the massages, the good-for-you food, and even the hard-core workouts had absolutely had a positive effect on my psyche and on my body, and being with someone as supportive and good-natured as Karen had all helped me to better my attitude—or so I thought.

One night, a talking stick was passed around and we were to share our body issues. “I hate mine. Next.” We each tied a ribbon onto the stick with our special wish written on it; of course I was given a stern look when I wished for “lasagna.” As the evening progressed, everyone used the opportunity to pour their hearts out about what emotional hot buttons triggered them to eat, to drink, or to inflict bad behavior on themselves or toward people they loved. There were tears and laughter, too. There was a sense that release could be had just by being honest. But I sat with my arms folded tightly around me, not sure why I couldn’t or wouldn’t share my pain or grief or whatever the hell it was that was keeping me stuck. It was so deeply buried that it scared me, so I made jokes, believing that entertaining the troops was my contribution. I was surprised to see that was not what was wanted from me. But it was all I had to offer.