Chapter 3

“Well, here goes nothing,” Chelsea said as she stepped up onto the scale. Gabby stood next to her, holding her hand and trying to give her friend as much support as she needed to get through this dilemma.

“No matter what the scale says, you’re still gonna be a cutie,” Gabby said, which made Chelsea giggle nervously. She was terrified of seeing how big she had really become, even if she knew it had to be done. She stared up at the ceiling, not able to look at the scale.

“What’s it say?” she asked Gabby, whose hand she was gripping tightly.

“You’re 178 pounds, babe.”

Chelsea nervously exhaled long and loudly. “Okay,” she said, her voice quivering from nerves.

“See? Not as bad as you thought,” said Gabby, trying to be supportive.

Chelsea giggled nervously. There were a million thoughts running through her head at the moment.

“You okay, honey?” Gabby asked.

“Yeah,” Chelsea said with fake confidence. “Wow… 178 pounds.”

“Feels good at least knowing though, right?”

“Yeah, I guess so. I mean, I had to face it sometime.”

“Well, I’m glad you feel better,” Gabby said, pulling her friend in for a big hug. As they rocked back and forth in their embrace, Chelsea felt her big belly pressing into Gabby’s own portly middle.

Chelsea laid in her bed that night, unable to sleep. She had weighed herself countless more times since Gabby left. 178 stared back at her each time. That number flashed in her head endlessly as she adjusted her pillow for the thousandth time.

She thought back to her college years, when she had been on the cross country team. She was no Olympian, but she was good enough to finish the long races in a respectable time. She couldn’t have been more than 125 pounds back then. She had a very flat stomach and maybe a little extra padding in her butt, but nothing out of the ordinary. The only reason she knew that she looked that way is because of the pictures she had from those days. She couldn’t for the life of her remember what it felt like to have no stomach sticking out in front of her. It was like that little runner was some other person instead of just a past version of her.

She thought about her junior year, when she messed up her knee and had to get surgery. And then another surgery when the first didn’t work. Then another. She still had pain in her knee years later. The pills she took to keep the pain manageable of course had the pleasant side effect of weight gain. They didn’t necessarily put pounds on her, but they slowed her metabolism down significantly. She’d stopped taking them a few different times over the years in an effort to curb the weight gain, but the pain in her knee would get too intense and she had to take the pills again.

With her days as a runner behind her, she let depression and laziness take over. She could tell she was gaining a little weight, but she couldn’t exercise because of her knee. She would start and stop diets constantly. Gabby would tease her about that. Then again, Gabby was only like 140 or so back then, so she turned out to be just as guilty of skipping diets as Chelsea.

After graduating, Chelsea got a job in an office, and sitting on her butt in front of a computer all day didn’t help with the weight issues. It was around this time that she began to start ignoring what was happening to her body and trying to hide it from people, herself included. That was a few years ago. Now she was 26 years old and weighed 178 pounds. She still couldn’t believe it in a way, even though she had been there as each pound was packed on.

She finally gave up trying to sleep for the time being and got on her computer. After idly surfing around the internet for a bit, she came across an ad for some weight-loss miracle drug. It was clearly a scam - they all are - but a bit about Body Mass Index grabbed her attention. She wondered what her BMI was, now that she knew her weight. She found a site that calculated BMI and typed in her height (5’4”) and weight (178 lbs.). The calculator gave her an answer of 30.6. She looked at the conversion chart and turned chalk white as she read “Obesity = BMI of 30 or greater.” She felt the tears welling up in her eyes. Obese? God, how did she let it get so bad? She hated the way this made her feel; hated worrying about her weight all the time. It was sucking the life out of her. At that moment, she needed a friend.