Chapter 4 from ¿Who Will Help Sonia?
Rhaya began her mission to eliminate the potbelly. A new impulse drove her away from daydreaming about her next-door neighbour, the beautiful boy with honey coloured hair and large hands. A fresh drive towards research had emerged. She’d find a strategy to loose the pot belly nuisance. Her parents library was sure to have a book that could provide a sure shot solution. Of not so, ¿why did they keep so many different books?
There were two heavy book cases, almost full, from floor to ceiling. She found three blue hard covers on Executive Fitness. She pulled out the first of the trilogy, and flipped the pages informally, just to see what jumped out. She glanced at the subject index for a while, and then decided to get comfortable. It was summer anyway, ¿what better time to take the time?
Rhaya settled down on her Dads revolving executive chair, just by the large windowpanes, looking to the fresh cut lawn. She began with the first f the Executive Fitness series. The reader was presented with all kinds of tables, so many it soon got overwhelming. Calories vs. portions, ounces vs. pieces, age vs. inches, minutes vs. miles run, activity vs. calories burned, it was all in there, no doubt about it. Rhaya was perplexed. ¿How could scientists get so precise with those things, so many numbers, so many quantities. “I guess they have ways to find all that out” she thought.
The teenager skimmed through all three volumes during the rest of the week. She made sure to fold the top corner of various pages, where the tables she was sure to need were located, like the one on snacks under 100 calories, or the one with allowed portions for carbs, like bread and pasta. The fats section depressed her a bit, she loved butter and bacon so, so very much.
In truth, Rhaya had never thought about calories before. She had heard them mentioned plenty though. T.V. ads seemed obsessed with them, but the reason had been unclear. Like most all of life’s peculiar details, calories seemed to repeat themselves again and again, as if wanting to be noticed, one way or the other. Now a day, all foods had the low calorie version. ¿Was it then to be inferred these things in excess could cause problems, such as potbellies, or worse? Also, people in the ads jumped around in shiny leotards, drinking sparkling soda under the Sun, zipping up fashion jeans easily, free of worry, so calories probably were a thing.
She then turned to a heavier book, an edition by a lanky exercise lady in shiny tights, big hair, and a colorful headband. The author stood proud on the glistening cover-paper. She read the blurb on the back. The lanky lady had been on some kind of important journey, that later turned out to be her life’s mission, or so she stated. Rhaya was intrigued, the book referred to the author as an Exercise Guru. Glancing through the pages it soon became clear the Guru was telling a story, a very familiar one. She too became aware of her unacceptable potbelly, and plenty of other body parts too, like her roundish face, and her heavy thighs.
Each part had been clinically scrutinized, each a separate entity. There were even pictures to prove the points. There she was, in black and white, a plump teenager in awkward shorts that fit too tight. A close up of her acne prone baby face. As she read, Rhaya touched her cheeks.
“I may be on the plump side, my jaw is not so defined” —she thought to herself.
—At that time in my life I was nothing but a fat klutz, and nobody was giving me the tools I needed to transform myself —read Rhaya.
“Harsh!” —she said out loud
“Truth” —replied Loud Thought.
It felt like too much, but agreement forced its way in her head. Then more pictures of the lady Guru exercising, lifting weights, and eating huge bowls of cooked pasta with no fat added and bowls of tossed salads.
“Seems dumb, its nerdy” —she mumbled to herself.
Never had she imagined finding stuff like that in a book. Lady Guru had pictures of herself weighing food portions, as if a major life event. In one particular image, she was eating a bowl full of steamed rice inside a bathtub.
“She does correct” said the Loud Thought.
“Well, I guess” —Rhaya agreed, but not in earnest. Yet a part of her needed to please the thought’s voice. It had an omnipresent authority about it.
Later in the book, after establishing her faulty condition, the Guru went on to condemn excessive eating of fats and sugary drinks as the culprits. She emphasised the low calorie approach, the trimming of fat from almost anything, including milk, and doing lots of aerobicize. She further proved the point in the after pictures. Long, lean, arms and legs, and the very evident protuberances on both sides of her pelvis. She wore dancer’s leg warmers over shimmery tights, and cute belts around her minute waist. No bra apparently, as she didn’t have much of a chest left. Rhaya was taken aback by the degree of transformation.
“She looks like a whole different person” —the girl thought to herself.
Lady Guru smiled a lot in the after pictures, she gave off intense, sexy gazes, at different angles, like a movie star.
“She really did it, she turned into somebody else, a different girl” —Rhaya observed in her head.
“So, ¿what you wait for?” —posed the Loud Thought.