Exhibit A: Eat an apple and a wedge of cheese. Only an apple and a wedge of cheese. Cut them into razor thin slices so that you take one hour to eat, two if you are truly in control. Pretend-savor each bite because everything, now, tastes like the thin communion wafers that dissolved on your tongue as a child. That is, like flour paste. Soon after your furtive, spartan meal, you will have to throw up what you have eaten. You are aiming for negative calorie tally. SO:
Run, obsessively, five miles a day, every day, even when your knees and hips hurt, even when your heart becomes a battering ram inside your chest, even when the doctor insists on a heart monitor because he’s worried about arrhythmia. And sit-ups. One thousand at night. Though each day you add twenty-five more. More means less. Less of you taking up space, less of you filling clothes, less of you to hug and love.
