Chapter 3 - part two (continued)

-- 2.2 --

Once inside her apartment, Sarah momentarily had second thoughts about this decidedly unhealthy purchase. She felt a stinging sense of embarrassment that she had succumbed so easily to the temptations of sugar, grease, and dough. She sat down on her futon, clutching the box of still-warm doughnuts.

"Hiya, Fatso!" said a voice to her left. She turned to see who was talking to her. She was startled to see a gang of squat, blobbish humanoids in her apartment, but the creatures looked oddly familiar. Of course, Sarah couldn't remember her previous encounters with the Munchies, albeit they had visited her many times. It was always as though she were meeting them anew. The Munchies had the power to erase Sarah's memory of their visits; they left added pounds as their calling card.

"Those doughnuts smell delicious!" said one of the Munchies. "A perfect fat-fest! Dig in!"

Sarah opened the box on her lap. Her hands were trembling. "Oh god, what am I doing," she said, as she reached for a powdered jelly doughnut. "I'm supposed to be on a diet."

"One little doughnut couldn't hurt," the Munchie assured Sarah.

Sarah held the doughnut in her hand ambivalently. "No," she said. "I won't eat this."

"C'mon," said the Munchie, jiggling Sarah's paunch. "A growing girl like you needs a good breakfast to start her day."

"No!" protested Sarah. "I know what you're doing. You're trying to make me bigger. Well, it's not going to work." She put the doughnut back in the box and closed the lid.

The Munchies frowned. They began to chant in unison, "Munch! Munch! MUNCH! MUNCH!"

Sarah felt her willpower melting like butter. She reopened the box. The Munchies were egging her on. Sarah tried to resist, but her hand moved almost magnetically toward the doughnuts, as though she weren't even in control of it. "I'm not going to!" she cried. But she couldn't hold out any longer. At last, she grabbed the jelly doughnut again, and shoved it into her mouth, biting it in half. After a few chews, she popped the other half into her mouth.

The Munchies laughed and applauded. "Bravo! Eaten like a true fat girl!"

Sarah tried to say something, but the Munchies shushed her. "Don't talk...EAT!" they said. "Have another doughnut!" No sooner had Sarah swallowed the last bite of the jelly than she accepted a double-chocolate doughnut from an attendant Munchie. She devoured this doughnut almost as quickly as she had the last.

Sarah licked the powdered sugar and melted chocolate from her fingertips and took a deep breath. "That's it. That's all I'm having. I can't eat the rest."

"Oh no!" said the Munchies. "You've just started!"

"No...I'm finished...that's all...no more...I'll get GIGANTIC if I keep eating like this!"

"That's the idea!" said the Munchies.

Sarah struggled to get up but found that she couldn't. One of the Munchies shoved another doughnut under her nose. It was apple-cinnamon. Sarah swiped the doughnut from the Munchie and began chomping.

"Here munch this, and pretty soon...you'll blow up like a balloon!" sang the Munchies.

"No! Stop!" said Sarah with her mouth full, her cheeks bulging with doughnut.

The Munchies took turns handing out the doughnuts. Sarah tried helplessly to refuse; her flabby arms jiggled as she tried to shoo the Munchies away. They just laughed and continued to tease her.

"There munch that! It's no surprise, you're getting huge thick thunder thighs!" they sang.

"Please," pleaded Sarah. "Why are you doing this to me? Leave me alone!"

"It's our job!" said the Munchies.

"But I'm already fat! Look at me!" yelled Sarah.

"Not quite fat enough," said the Munchies. "You could still stand to gain a few more pounds!"

"No! No! I'm too fat as it is! I don't wanna be any fatter!" sobbed Sarah. "I don't wanna..."

The Munchies shut her up by popping another doughnut into her mouth. "Here munch this! Now guess what? You've got a great big blubber butt!"

Sarah winced as she looked down at herself and noticed her billowing haunches bulging out beneath her, stretching her sweat-shorts. Yet she felt powerless to do anything except munch away. Her pace was slowing, however, and as she worked her way through the box, she ate more and more slowly, breathing heavily after swallowing each bite. At last, a single doughnut remained: shredded-coconut-covered.

"Please don't make me finish the whole box," Sarah pleaded. "Please...aren't I fat enough?"

"Awwww, what kind of attitude is that?" said the next Munchie. "You already ate eleven...what's one more? Look at that poor little doughnut sitting there all by itself...doesn't it look lonely?"

The whole gang of Munchies gathered around Sarah. "Open wide!" they said.

"I can't! I can't!" said Sarah, shaking her head.

But Sarah's mouth opened reflexively as the Munchies held up the last doughnut.They goaded her until she forced it down, bite by bite. She moaned her disapproval but kept on chewing in spite of herself. "I don't feel so well," Sarah groaned, after she had swallowed the last piece of doughnut. She felt dizzy and enormously bloated.

"Watch a little TV and relax a bit, take it easy. You need to rest up. That'll give all those calories time to turn to pure fat!" suggested a Munchie, handing her the remote control. Sarah happened to flip to a daytime talk show. She stretched out on the futon, resting her hands on her distended stomach. She tried to concentrate on the program...it was all she could do to distract herself from the aching fullness of her belly.

The featured guest on the TV talk show was the author of a new diet book. The hostess was talking with some women who had lost many pounds and had successfully kept off weight with the diet, which they lauded as "revolutionary" and "incredibly easy." Sarah made a mental note of the author's name.

"You don't wanna watch THAT," said the Munchies. "Watch something else instead."

They switched the channel for her.

"Hey! Put that back on! I was watching that!" said Sarah.

The Munchies played keep-away with the remote control. "If you want it, come get it!"

Sarah didn't have the energy to grab the remote control back. Besides, it hurt to move. She tried to recall the title of the diet book or the name of its author, intending to add the book to her list of things to get, but she found that it had slipped her mind already. Sarah zoned out to music videos instead. After the post-sugar-buzz crash, she dozed off, and the Munchies sneaked away.

Sarah's doughnut-induced torpor gave way to a series of bizarre dreams, most of which involved eating. She woke up wondering what she was going to have for lunch. "Ugh...why can't I stop thinking about food?" Sarah wondered aloud as she looked at the clock. It was already after 2:00 P.M.

Sarah was furious at herself for wasting the entire morning and a good portion of the afternoon. She wished she had adhered to her bright-and-early start. It seemed too late to start doing anything now. She decided that she might as well take it easy for the rest of the day, since she had accomplished nothing and no longer had the incentive to do much.

Sarah grabbed a small stack of magazines and paged through them. As she read, she came across an article about self-motivation in one of her women's magazines. She was struck by several of the guidelines suggested by the author: "Don't punish yourself" and "Don't try to get rid of your bad habits overnight---start by making small changes in your lifestyle."

Sarah had an epiphany. She realized why her weight-loss strategy was not working: She had been trying to make the transition too quickly from overeating to restricted eating. Her body was rebelling against a newly imposed calorie limit. She figured that must have been why she had polished off an entire box of doughnuts this morning. The feeling of being deprived had led to the binge.

So, she decided to try the opposite. Tomorrow she would give herself a guiltless "free day," to eat whatever she wanted. In fact, she would deliberately overindulge. She would have a final food jag, one last spree before she began her diet in earnest. She reasoned that she could eat so much junk food that it would become distasteful to her, so she wouldn't crave it again. Sarah was aware of this paradoxical effect. She had heard stories of kids who were caught smoking and whose parents made them smoke an entire pack of cigarettes in one sitting, so they'd never smoke again. She figured it would be worth a try with food.

Sarah felt a burst of enthusiasm. The prospect of an entire day in which to eat anything without worrying relieved her, and she was sure that it would give her a newfound determination to carry through with her plan to lose weight. She got her notebook again and began to compile a list of all the treats that she would buy from the store....