chapter 4

Well, a wise man once said something about the best laid plans going off track, or words to that effect. Such was the fate of Joanna's diet and exercise program. Oh she started out with the best of intentions. She was bound and determined that she would regain that once ravishing figure of hers. That determination lasted right up to the moment she stepped on her bathroom scale.

Ever since that stern lecture on obesity from kindly old Doctor Bernstein, Joanna was a bit reluctant to step on the scale. Her hamstring tear was depressing enough. But the fact was, Joanna knew that she had lost a good deal of her self-control when it came to food and eating. It wasn't that she stuffed herself like a Thanksgiving Day turkey, no, she was eating more like a big, fat cow let out to pasture. She didn't stuff herself until her eyes glazed over, but she WAS grazing pretty much throughout the day. Stepping on a scale would only confirm just how far she had let herself go. But, she figured the only way she could lose successfully was to know just how much she had to lose. And so, on that fateful day, Joanna stepped on the bath room scale and found out how REALLY fat she had become. The news was worse than she had imagined.

She was laboring under the delusion that she'd only gained something like fifteen or twenty pounds. Silly girl!!! The scale told her the sad, discouraging truth. She now weighed one hundred and seventy-eight pounds, a gain of thirty-eight pounds in just two months.

Of course, if Joanna had bothered to take a good look at herself in her bath room mirror at any time during her convalescence, she'd have realized that hers was something more than just a moderate gain. But every time she walked past a mirror she turned her head. She didn't want her eyes to confirm what her mind had always suspected, that she was turning into a genuine fat girl. Oh, she could feel her belly jiggle now, whereas before it sort of swayed from side to side. None of her bras could contain what had become her MUCH larger boobs. And even her stretch pants couldn't stretch enough to contain her billowing belly. But she just put all this accumulating evidence into the back of her mind as she continued to eat unconsciously, shoveling in more and more food with each passing day!

When she finally DID look at her fattened body in the mirror, she was shocked. Her belly made her look six months pregnant. Her once tiny and perky breasts had started to look like a pair of over-stuffed fat sacs. Her butt and thighs were riddled with cellulite and her belly now sported several VERY red stretch marks, confirmation of just how FAR she had let herself go.

With that look in the mirror, all of Joanna's determination to get thin again disappeared. She'd have to lose nearly seventy pounds and the thought of all the time, effort and energy required to do that just seemed too daunting a task. By now she was getting almost ravenously hungry just an hour after breakfast, and she HATED it. How could she be hungry for the next year while she tried to exercise and diet her way to a lean and lithe figure once again? Nope, it was impossible.

It was at THAT moment that Joanna decided that, for better or worse, she was going to give in to her by now prodigious appetite and remain a fat girl. Chances are she'd become an even fatter girl, but the dream of being "in shape" was now entirely out of the picture.

The only thing that kept her from going into a state of deep depression was the good news she got on the employment front. DynaCom Communications hired her as an IT consultant. They wanted her so much that they offered to nearly double her old salary. Better still, she could work from home, so she didn't have to deal with the staring and whispering that she knew she inspired with her overly indulgent weight gain. Better yet, she wouldn't need an expensive wardrobe. All she needed to do was to go out and buy some MUCH larger sweats, as her old sport clothes had become too hideously small and tight on her.

It may not have been the BEST day in the world, but, in the end, it turned out to be a darned good one!!