Chapter 4 - help from a friend

Cassidy slept for the rest of the day, and awoke on the floor at around four in the morning with a pounding headache, a big tear right down the back of her leggings, and an inexplicably ravenous appetite. It took her a while to remember where she was, what she was doing on the floor, where all the garbage came from- but when she realized what had happened, all the memories of the previous day came flooding back vividly. God, how could she possibly still be hungry after doing that to herself? Even worse, how could she be hungrier than she’d ever felt before? Her stomach rumbled and wracked her softened form with hunger pangs as she tried to hoist herself off the ground and begin cleaning up the mess she’d made. How could she do this to herself? How many calories even was that? Had she already gotten even fatter? How had she become such a gluttonous pig? All these questions and more swirled around her mind as she disposed of empty food containers and swept up crumbs. She couldn’t ignore her appetite forever, though, supercharged as it was from her blood sugar crash and surge of self hatred, and decided that, fat or not, she would have to do something to seize control of the situation. She tugged off her crop top, with slightly more difficulty than anticipated, and then tried to remove her ripped leggings. The leggings put up a serious fight, and wouldn’t budge past all the fat they were encasing. Her ankle cast didn’t help, either, forming yet another obstacle to pulling off the garment that was too small several sizes ago. Eventually, in her vigorous attempt to pull them off, she managed to rip them further. Her strength, though nowhere near as formidable as it had been a mere month ago, was still a force to be reckoned with, and she resigned herself to saying goodbye to this pair of leggings before tearing them off of her fattened body. Once they finally came loose, the jiggly fat encasing her legs and butt billowed out even further, freed of its restraints and seemingly determined to make her feel even worse about herself. Were those stretch marks on her thighs? There seemed to be no end to the indignities she was forced to suffer, a prisoner to her own growing appetite. She took a shower before putting on her baggy sweats, the only comfortable thing left in her wardrobe, only to discover that the sweatpants, once so loose she had to tie the drawstring many inches tighter than the intended amount to get them to stay up, were now perfectly fitted sweatpants that hugged all her curves and allowed her burgeoning potbelly to protrude over the waistband. She’d just have to deal with it, at least they didn’t feel shrink wrapped to her flesh.

Dressed and ready for the day, Cassidy had a brilliant idea. If she couldn’t muster up any willpower herself without her exercise routine to motivate her, she could always enlist help! She called up her friend Adalyn, an old friend and fellow bodybuilder, and explained everything: the injury, the weight gain, the depression, the uncontrollable binging, and she begged for help, requesting that either Adalyn stay at her house for a while or else that she be allowed to stay at Adalyn’s until she could get back on track. To her surprise, Adalyn responded right away.

“Of course you can stay at my house! Get over here, you don’t even have to shop. I’ve got plenty of healthy fare in my pantry! You want to be in top shape for the competition three months from now, don’t you? I need a worthy competitor!”