Build a Body Like Mine
It doesn’t have to look like mine; I mean a body that works like mine. You can look however you want. Is your perfect body, hard? Is it soft in the right places? Is it hollow? Picture it. Picture your perfect self. Touch your stomach. Imagine it free of excess – imagine you at your tightest; your body constrained and efficient.
All while eating whatever you want.
That’s right. Whatever you want. No fine print, no asterisk, no vomiting. Whether your vice is carbs, sweets or fast food, I can get you there.
How much? you ask. You’d be surprised.
Follow a few simple steps and you can eat whatever you want (as much and as often as you like) and you’ll actually lose weight. I even offer a convenient subscription service – for the woman on the go.
Find me in darker corners of the clearnet (that’s right! You don’t even need Tor). I’m not difficult to locate for those with determination. And what I have to offer really works. Find me deliciously thin at a Michelin star restaurant, devouring a tasting menu with a wasp waist, never loosening my belt. Join me at the table. Ditch your dry, miserable salads. Leave your fad diets in the dust. Restrict no more and thrive, my love.
I USED TO BE LIKE YOU.
I used to fantasise about fries from McDonald’s. Salty and hot; crunchy on the outside, soft on the inside. Hard not to snap. I used to feel so guilty – but I no longer consider self-control a virtue.
What would snapping look like? Two cartons of fries sliding down my throat, followed by the burger. The salty beef, processed till it’s pillow soft like the buns it’s sandwiched in between. Bite it, feel the rubbery pickle squeak against my teeth, taste the onions marinated in American mustard and globs of ketchup. When I was a child, I would dismantle the burger with my tiny fingers – rip up the patty and the buns into nugget-sized pieces and dip each precious piece into a little pot of ketchup. As an adult, I’d jam my fingers down my throat, still tasting of oil and salt, those once treasured chunks of food splashing into the toilet.
And God, there’s just no need to live your life like that in pursuit of a beautiful body. Not any more – not with my methods.
And I’ve tried a lot of methods. When I was a teenager I went to Slimming World, where they tell you food is sinful. Heavy women in their sixties told me I was right to start watching my weight now. They gave me a pink certificate when I lost half a stone.
When I went to university I abandoned the doctrine of Slimming World and lived in monastic starvation. I spent three years living on instant ramen, satsumas and cereal bars – with the occasional binge and purge to break the monotony. With that cocktail of restriction and my nineteen-year-old metabolism the weight fell off me and stayed off, for a time.
I looked in the mirror a lot during this time. The body I once recognised as my own had melted away. Who was this creature beneath the fat? At the time, I failed to recognise her as my best self. I thought she was nothing like a real girl. I thought she looked like something a pervert imagined; something a twelve-year-old boy doodled in the back of a notebook. A cartoon with torpedo breasts glued on to her weird, bony frame. Not a person’s body, but a wasp’s. A thorax, not a torso. I was wrong not to see the perfection in this form. I was wrong to treat this body as if it were not my own.
I had to buy new clothes. All of my old things were baggy. I had to drop two dress sizes to find a comfortable fit, and I felt overly optimistic buying them. I took my tiny skirts and dresses and jeans to the till and the cashier did not raise an eyebrow. I had almost
expected her to laugh at me.
I threw most of my clothes from this era away; I could no longer stand the sight of them when I began to eat again.
Because I did begin to eat again.
WITH MY METHOD, YOU WILL NOT REQUIRE WILLPOWER.
Because willpower only lasts so long, I broke. I blame my partner. I think if I’d ended up with a man, I might’ve gotten away with it for a bit longer. Might’ve even gotten him to go along with it for a bit. I’m intermittent fasting, I’d say, or some other shit – and he probably wouldn’t bat an eyelid.
But Shadi had overcome her own issues with food – something that did make me roll my eyes a little when she talked about it. She was willowy. Nothing stuck to her the way it stuck to me. It was hard not to resent her when she was so difficult to fool.
At first, I ate because we went on dates together. Because she cooked for me. Because I was happy. A happy brain resists deprivation. I denied myself when she was not there. But then she was always there. All-knowing, all-watching, a great big pair of black eyes, damp with concern.
When we moved in together, I ate even more. I went through phases of bingeing and purging. I tried to keep it secret, but I couldn’t. She’d work it out. Vomit residue in the toilet, the smell in the bathroom or toothpaste on my breath. I didn’t have the stamina for bulimia or the will for anorexia. Though she was always kind and patient; I could not take the shame when Shadi caught me. I was content with everything but my body. No depression to stave off my anxious eating. Someone to feed me. Someone to care. Someone to nag.
And my waist dissolved over the course of two years, gradual but sudden. I woke up one day and found that even the biggest of my little clothes no longer contained my completely average body. Stretch-marked, but not yet sagging, I was spackled with cellulite, and I jiggled and bounced with every step.
I began to miss the insect inside of me I had once found so alien to behold. I looked at happy fat women with nothing but envy. I thought about how wonderful life must be when one embraces oneself. I still think they are beautiful. Contrary to your expectations, my methods are not for them. Not for anyone who looks in the mirror and feels pleased or even neutral. I deal in sickness. My methods are a balm for the diseased, the unsatisfied, the covetous.
If you try to eat mindfully, to think positively, to covet a healthy, happy body the way you covet a thin one – you are the type of person who needs me.
HERE’S HOW I DISCOVERED MY WINNING WEIGHTLOSS TECHNIQUE.
Entirely by accident, if you can believe it!
It was Shadi who noticed it first. She put her hands upon my waist and said: Have you lost weight? She was trying her best to sound neutral, not to let concern prick her voice.
No, I told her.
Are you sure? she asked. And at the time, I genuinely had not noticed. I was terrified of the scale – I wore loose clothing that could not police a waistline.
But when I stepped onto the scale that night (dusty – covered in hair and splashes of dry toothpaste), lo and behold my weight had dropped about thirteen pounds. Not drastic on my frame but a lot.
I had been secretly restricting. Just a little. Celery for lunch. Boiled egg. Complaining of being full after eating half of one of Shadi’s generous portions.
I was delighted. Shadi peered over my shoulder with her brows furrowed. She asked me if I’d been skipping lunch at work. I told her no and she didn’t believe me. She told me she loved me.
That number kept tipping down. I thought my cucumber slices and dry, baked aubergines were having miraculous effects. I had fantastical, borderline erotic visions of KFC and burritos and bacon sandwiches. I smelt salt and grease, my mouth filled at the thought of special blends of spices and crispy skins; of secret sauces and baby-soft pork. I would zone out in meetings thinking of gooey, spongy Pizza Hut pizza, of dipping the crusts in hot sauce and garlic dip and straight mayonnaise (like an animal).
I watched these disgusting videos on my phone of people making ‘lasagne cakes’ and ‘lasagne in a mug’ and ‘lasagne burritos’ and ‘lasagne nuggets’. Lasagne being twisted and reshaped into vile shadows of its former self became a form of pornography for me.
I broke four weeks into that miserable little diet. I got a McDonald’s on my lunch break. I ate it furtively in a corner of the restaurant. I did not stick my fingers down my throat, but I stood over the toilet and thought about it. I cried into my pillow, and made a salad for dinner. When Shadi tried to question the salad, I barked at her. Asked her if she, from her privileged position of unearned thinness, enjoyed policing my diet.
I’m not policing, she said. I’m worried about you.
You’re putting me on edge, I told her. You monitoring my meals is triggering for me. And she made a face like she didn’t quite believe me.
The next day I had a burrito for lunch. The next day I ate unfranchised fried chicken, and stood in the office bathroom and beat my fists into my growling, grumbling stomach. I called myself a failure for my lack of willpower. Little did I know, I had surpassed the need for willpower. I thought I had collapsed into shameful bingeing – little did I know, I had simply ascended to a new state of being.
I got on the scale. My weight was down again. Another big chunk. And at that time I worried. I came to Shadi crying. I told her that I did not know what was causing the weight loss. I showed her my bank statements as proof – I had been eating lunch. I’d been eating
a lot of lunch. This frightened her. She did not understand. At the time, neither did I. We booked me a doctor’s appointment.
By the time I went, I had lost even more weight.
I worried it was a chronic health issue – something with my thyroid or my gut. Maybe cancer. A girl I went to sixth form with had cancer. She was so tiny when she came back to school and she hated being complimented for it. She would scold people who remarked, impressed, on how petite she was, how lovely she was. I nearly died, she’d hiss. I was so jealous of her. I was jealous of her cancer in the way only a teenager can be.
I am too old for that now. Almost dying at a young, tragic age loses its seductive qualities the moment you turn twenty-five.
THE GP WAS STUMPED . . . THEY SENT ME FOR TESTS AT THE HOSPITAL . . .
In the weeks building up to my hospital appointment, I became so thin that none of my clothes fit me properly. I rotated a few loose dresses that would not fall off my bony shoulders, hoping my friends and colleagues would not notice my dramatic weight loss. But they did. So much volume gone around my face. What’s your secret? they cooed. At the time I had no idea; terror-stricken I said: I don’t know, I’m going to the hospital. And they cooed, sympathetic, unable to cover their jealousy.
They were right to be jealous.
A hospital specialist found the secret in my belly.
For months, I had been incubating a parasite. There had been a worm eating my dinners. Nesting inside me, snaking its way through my guts and huge; monstrously huge.
The specialist was horrified. What did you eat? Where in the world have you been?
Celery. Nowhere. I went to Sheffield for work three months ago.
He fed me a pill. I aborted my fat, flat baby. And though I had fed her and sheltered her like my own child, Shadi would not let me keep her in a jar.
MY SECRET REVEALED!
Shadi told me I looked unwell. Gaunt. Older, she said.
I looked great. (I STILL LOOK GREAT. My cheekbones, my jawline, my waist. I am a perfect pointy hourglass. Torpedo tits and xylophone ribs, I am a mother of worms; I am a cartoon girl wrought in human skin and bone.) I sighed, and told her I’d put the weight back on. Anxiety about my weight had melted away. Perhaps
the worm had eaten it.
When Shadi took me for lunch, I happily ate three-fourths of a cheeseboard. I deepthroated breadsticks and bit a mozzarella ball like an apple. Manchego and honey, blue cheese and soft bread; I sucked cheese crumbs from underneath my nails. I ordered a lasagne and ate the whole thing, while Shadi looked on, pleased but concerned. Was this a binge? Or had the worm made me hungry?
I bought a slice of pizza on the way home.
AFTER WEEKS OF EATING GLORIOUSLY . . . I PUT ONLY A LITTLE WEIGHT BACK ON . . .
I had to go back to the doctor and back to the hospital again. Another worm. ANOTHER WORM! It had spontaneously appeared in my stomach – no raw meat or trips to countries with poor water sanitation. A fluke or an immaculate conception. Another worm.
Shadi googled around and came to the conclusion I had bought the second tapeworm from the dark web or something. She was angry (Not angry! I’m frustrated and disappointed and worried! she said.) enough with me, that I decided not to tell her if it happened again. I’d convince her my weight had merely stabilised at a point much lower than it had been.
Your long-term health . . . she lamented. Weren’t we talking about a baby some day? she asked, as if I were not already a mother.
I did not go back to the doctor when I felt the third one growing inside me. I bought the stuff to evacuate it online. You can DIY most things, nowadays.
In those days, I would always evacuate the worm after a couple of months. I was worried, back then, that they would kill me. I continued to eat like a queen. Shadi was wild with concern. She lectured and cried and begged me to stop whatever it was I was doing. All because I was EATING WHAT I WANTED, AND NEVER PUTTING ON WEIGHT.
I think she was jealous. Of my body. Of my worms. She wouldn’t let me go to the bathroom alone; she obsessively checked the rim of the toilet bowl for evidence of vomit. Even my toilet time was monitored. I could not take a shit in peace.
She did not believe in my new metabolism. She did not accept that my body was simply reacting and adapting to its infestation. And I swore neither my fingers nor my toothbrush had been near the back of my throat.
I find the way you’re monitoring me really upsetting, I told her through tears. You’re being really controlling, Shadi. It’s scary.
She let up her close surveillance after that, but we were never the same. Didn’t last much longer after that.
WHERE DO THE WORMS COME FROM? CAN I GET MY OWN?
Good question! You catch them from eating shit and raw meat, neither of which have passed my lips. I sought answers on a pro-ana forum, ...
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