TheBanyanTree: Obsessed

[Margaret R. Kramer]

I started to notice this young woman last spring because we kind were of
sparring over the same locker.  If I got to the club before her, I got
locker 175.  If she got there before me, she got locker 175.  I finally got
tired of the game and now I use locker 287.  At 4:15 am, it’s kind of silly
to get hung up over ownership of one locker in a sea of empty lockers.

But I also noticed her because she’s young, I would say she looks to be in
her early 20s up to about 25 years old.  There aren’t a lot of really young
people who work out so early in the morning.  Most of us have graying hair
and wrinkles are beginning to be etched on our faces.  We’re a small band of
very early morning workout people, we’re easily recognizable to each other,
and even if we don’t “know” each other, we’re certainly aware of who is a
regular and who isn’t.

I don’t think she’s much older than 25.  Her body was in great shape with no
hint of cellulite.  She’s small, I would say around 5’, and I think she
probably wears a size 3-4.  She’s a chatty Cathy.  If someone says hi to
her, it’s like pushing a button, and a lot of words spew out, mostly about
herself.  I’ve never talked to her, other than a quick hello,  but I listen
to people around me as I’m getting dressed, and from what I hear, she seems
like a nice person.

I know she teaches aerobics besides her regular full-time job.  She ran in
the Twin Cities Marathon last fall.  She has roommates, so she doesn’t live
with her parents.  She works out twice a day.

She was erratic about early morning workouts at first.  Sometimes she came,
sometimes she didn’t.  But somewhere in the summer, she started being very
regular.  She was always at locker 175 by 4:15 am.  She does a cardio
routine first, usually the cross trainer, but she’ll ride the bike or use
the stair climber, too.  Then she does a quick lifting workout.  I noticed
we were usually stretching out and heading for the showers around the same
time.

At first, her conversation centered around her weight lifting workouts.  She
came back in the evening and did those.  She was proud of how strong she was
becoming.

And then lately, within the last couple months or so, she started talking
about food.  It was South Beach, Adkins, energy bars, and then I heard her
say she didn’t eat anything with powder in it, which meant she wasn’t eating
any carbs or very little carbs at all.  She told her friend she was becoming
totally lean.

And around the time she began to talk about food and diet, she stopped
wearing shorts and a sports bra, and began wearing baggy pajamas and a huge
and bulky sweatshirt to work out in.

On Christmas Eve, I did the cardio kickboxing class for my workout, and this
young woman was in the class, too.  After warm-ups, she took off her pajama
bottoms and sweatshirt, and I almost gasped out loud.  There was nothing
left of her.  Her legs and arms and torso made her look like a muscled
skeleton.  Yes, there are thin people in the world and they’re healthy, but
there’s a healthy look and a starving kind of look, and this woman’s body
was starving.

The kickboxing instructors are definitely under 30 years old and bounce
around like someone has injected them with sugar, and they decided that the
class would go an hour and a half, because they were going to eat a ton of
food that night.  It was the never ending kickboxing class!  So we kicked
and punched and jumped our future calories off for an hour and a half.

After we were done with class, the young woman went and did another cardio
workout on the machines!  She must have worked out for an additional half
hour, because she was just coming into the locker room as I was leaving (my
favorite thing is to sweat in the sauna after working out).

This time I got a good look at her face.  The chubby cheeks were gone and
now look sunken.  Her eyes were dark hollow spots in face.  Her hair looked
like dried blonde straw.  She looked icky, like someone who was embalmed.

I come from the opposite end of the eating disorder spectrum.  I LOVE to
shove food in my mouth.  I can’t imagine denying myself the pleasure of
eating, but I eat too much.  I know my body and I are always going to battle
with weight.  Because I’ve been heavy, my body will want to go back to that
large size, and I have to fight to keep from eating too much and allowing it
to do so.  I can’t ever stop being vigilant about my weight or else I’ll
soon be over 250 pounds again.

So I understand how anyone can become obsessed with food and exercise and
what looks good and what doesn’t.  But this poor young lady wasn’t even
heavy to begin with!  Now she gets masochistic pleasure out of depriving
herself of proper nutrition and exercising herself into exhaustion.

I want to go up to her and say, “What the hell are you doing to yourself!”
Would that do any good?  I don’t even know her.  Have her friends said
anything to her?  She knows all the aerobics instructors and personal
trainers at the club – have any of them said anything?  Does it even matter?
Will she listen if a stranger tells her she’s out of control?  I talk to one
of her friends in the morning, perhaps I’ll ask this friend about her this
week and see if I can do anything.  At least, I have to try.

Margaret R. Kramer
margaretkramer at earthlink.net

http://www.polarispublications.com
Be a star!

http://www.bpwmn.org
Business and Professional Women of Minnesota

Sit in reverie and watch the changing color of the waves that break upon the
idle seashore of the mind.

~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow