ON THE FAT TRACK : Nothing Like a Little Exercise to Jog Memories of Previous Battles of the Bulge
In goes the good shape, out goes the bad.
Yesterday’s aerobics craze may have cooled, but today’s budding market for smart-drink cabarets is evidence that physical fitness is still actively pursued by flesh-conscious Westerners. Joining the current generation of body-building Angelenos, I like to think I’m finally on the right track to conquering stress, high blood pressure and that old nemesis, fat.
Wrapped in contemplation as tight as my stretch-alls, wrists gripped by one-kilogram weights, I do the gym, surrounded by health-seeking walkers, trotters, runners. We’re all moving forward in 20-minute to one-hour spates on the treadmills, bicycles and stair-steppers of life. Each keeps to an individual regimen, yet together we strive for mind-body perfection. As I go about my timid pumpings of iron, anticipating the renewed me, I lapse into reverie. Worries suspended, eyes focused on digital calibrations of calories burned, I drift across time to relive my mother’s traumas as she waged her tireless War on Obesity, makeover spas and European hormone treatments being far beyond her reach.
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Lovingly, I return to that South-Central living room of the ‘60s. The cobalt-blue mirror-topped coffee table is pushed back against the sofa, and the gray shag rug is rolled up by the mantelpiece. Mom is exercising with determined vigor in front of our black-and-white TV and high-fidelity console, the one Pop bought at Sears over on Olympic and Soto last Christmas. On-screen, Jack LaLanne, in bodysuit and headband, guides her through hamstring stretches and jumping jacks.
A Lane Bryant teen, I was frequently drafted into Mom’s low-calorie causes, like the one, the fanzine swore, that kept Hollywood starlets amazingly celluloid-thin. For an entire summer, enormous green heads of iceberg lettuce, severed into wedges, dominated our plates. They were accompanied by revolting piles of small-curd cottage cheese, alfalfa sprouts and wheat germ, all consumed without dressing.
Once, having violated the forbidden candy box Mom kept hidden under her bed, I stealthily liberated a golden nugget from its clear cellophane wrapper and plopped it into my mouth. Ugghhh!! Diet candy bitter as horehound and about as tasty as a tin can.
I will forever be nauseated by the memory of before-meal chug-a-lugs of gelatin blended into giant highball glasses brimming with salty red vegetable juice. When the gelatin didn’t dissolve properly, I was forced to swallow the slimy lumps rising from the bottom. Ours were the days of hushed rumors about bee pollen, royal jelly and something called ginseng that the Chinese kept secret. Not to mention endless bouts with waist-cinchers and corsets in J.C. Penney dressing rooms. Or mail-order deluders like those steam-it-off-in-the-shower coveralls of garish blue plastic. And a weighted Hula Hoop, spun diligently, promised inches off the most recalcitrant middle.
Mom’s battle was valiant, but, ditching gimmicks and fads, she eventually lost the war to a blitz of late-night candy-bar binges, half-pints of pistachio-nut ice cream and an endless stream of holiday gift boxes of See’s chocolates.
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Predictably, my sampling of today’s diet fads proved them as ineffective as those of the past. Weight loss is disappointingly nominal even with at-home exercise. But the regular gym workout has me taking in my slacks at the waistline and, overall, my clothes hang better. Lately, I’ve noticed I’m “startin’ to get some leg on my leg,” no longer winded after climbing stairs or running across parking lots. But squeezing quality fitness time from my caffeine-ridden schedule remains problematic. Battling the clock and a sleep deficit, admonished by my conscience to give up junk food, I scurry gymward for a workout whenever possible--30 minutes here, 40 there. Feeling like the slightly-below-average L.A. health hamster, I push myself to the guilt-inspired limit.
Off comes the bad fat, redistributed is the good.