Read Online Slim to None by Jenny Gardiner - Free Book Online Page B

enormous disincentive to have God’s chosen few, the beautiful people, working at health clubs. It’s merely rubbing salt in the wound to the rest of us. To go to a gym and have to hold yourself up to the standards of physical perfection that work these places—especially in Manhattan, where every other woman is a super model—is really beyond the pale.
    Only reason I’m even here is because, well, I went on the internet last night and there just seemed to be an overwhelming amount of evidence pointing at exercise being an important component of weight loss. I’m thinking if I combine exercise and dieting I’ll double my poundage down. Maybe then I can write my own weight loss journal: Six Months to Thin—Diet and Exercise Your Way into a New Body.
    Actually, I’m just joking. I know this is what you’re supposed to do. But up until this very moment in time, me going to the gym would have be like Arnold Schwarzenegger tasting things in the kitchen at Jean Georges. Highly improbable at best.
    For motivation, I downloaded Arnold’s exercise tape from iTunes last night, and it was so bad it motivated me to go straight to the gym today instead of having to listen to him again. Only now that I’m here, I wish I were back home, just me, Arnold and the kitchen, where I could escape his drill sergeant commands and whip up something yummy and un-Schwarzeneggerish.
    Right now, before me, is a man with biceps carved as ruggedly as the Grand Canyon, and bands of massive thigh muscles that course like rivulets down his legs. With a powerful barrel of a chest that I can assure you contains a healthily-beating heart void of blood pressure issues or fat-clogged arteries. And an instrument in his hand for which I could probably find about ten far better uses in the kitchen than its original intent. Its pincer-like tips look like they’d be great for grabbing something. Just not me . This man is actually trying to calibrate my percentage of body fat with the things. I’d so rather be grabbing a steamed lobster from the pot with them. A bowl of melted butter awaiting me, fresh corn on the cob, grilled to perfection. Maybe a simple baked potato on the side.
    "If you’ll just raise your shirt, I can fasten the calipers on here," he’s saying, pointing at my waist. I’ve got news for this dude. I don’t raise my shirt for just anybody. In fact, I don’t raise my shirt for anybody , period. What’s beneath my skillfully camouflaging outerwear is something no one should ever see. Hell, I don’t even look at it.
    "Mrs. Jennings?" Thor, the personal trainer (I think his real name is Mark, but he looks more Thor-ish to me) asks again. "Can you lift your shirt? Don’t worry, it won’t hurt at all."
    Ha! It won’t hurt, my ass! Of course it’s going to hurt: my morale, my psyche, my appetite, my pride. Pain extends far beyond the physical, young man, I want to tell him. But of course I don’t because I’m too ashamed to express my shame, quite frankly.
    "Can’t we just bypass this little step altogether? You can make a rough guesstimate, just jot it down on there and no one will be the wiser? Just between friends?"
    I’m hoping that friends comment will tip the scales, so to speak, in my favor. But instead Thor calls over Jana, she of the quarter-bouncing abs, to do the honors. Jana grabs my shirt, lifts it up, clamps that puppy down on the largest layer of overlapping flesh, then on another and another, and jots down numbers on her chart.
    "There, quick and painless," she says, slapping the calipers back into Thor’s hand, who then gets to work on the rest of me: my biceps, triceps (which I didn’t even know I had), thighs, calves. Even my back fat. Jesus Christ in a handbasket, must they see my back fat?
    After a brief five-minute consultation between Thor and Jana in which eyebrows are knit enough to produce a sweater, I am beckoned forth by Thor, who has a plan of action. The man of action with the plan of