I just finished my third 32 ounce bottle of water. That’s 96 ounces and it’s not even 2 p.m. You’re probably wondering what I hope to achieve by doing this. I hope it either A. causes me to pee a few pounds so I can get skinny or B. results in a water overdose, which seems like the most pure way to leave this earth.

“You two skip meals like it’s nobody’s business.”

Extra Large Man congratulating me and Skinny Lady on a job well done last week.

My older sister was always the skinny one in my family, the one who would scold me for eating one too many Little Debbie’s. Now an almost 40 mother of two, she’s not got the figure you used to have but she is by no means fat. Today she was complaining about having a pot belly, which she never had and which is obviously a product of bearing two healthy children.

So to make her feel better, I acknowledged my own pot belly, which I wish I could blame on motherhood but instead have to chalk up to poor genetics (and the occasional french fry/pastry/fill-in-the-bad-for-you-food binge). She looked at me like a crazy woman and said my stomach looked like “that” – and she gestured to my fabulously fit 17 year old niece who was sporting a sexy zebra print string bikini. Obviously I have a gift for hiding my defects, so I looked to my husband to confirm my fat. I asked, “Don’t I have a pot belly?” And he confirmed, “It’s true, she’s got a belly.” At this point both my niece and sister broke out into a shocked laughter, one that wondered what kind of stupid husband would say such a thing. And in my mind I thought “mine.”

“Fat people just need to accept that they’re fat and try to get skinny.”

-Skinny Lady, on the fat acceptance movement 

I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but there is such a thing as legs that are too skinny. I know because I have them and they’re the reason I don’t wear shorts. Except when it’s 90 degrees and 99 percent humidity on moving day. Then I’m forced to cave. I guess I should be proud of my disproportionately skinny legs since they serve as a distraction from fat in other areas, but they  make me feel like a fraud.

Case in point: On moving day, my husband told our friend that I was on a “french fry tear” last week. Though true, this is an embarrassing fact that I felt forced to acknowledge. When I did, my friend replied with, “…But as some part of you knows, you could use all the fries you can find as you are the skinniest of sticks.” As sweet a compliment as that is to a girl like me, my impulse is to object with, ”No, dear friend, you were just too distracted by the long, skinny stems to notice the muffin top just a few inches higher.”

Toothpick skinny. When you’re skinny as a toothpick, every day is a sunny day.

A piece of red string I cut for a baby shower game. Two of my cousins wagered on how many times this string would wrap around my waist. One bet seven times and the other bet ten. Actual number of times the string wrapped around my waist: two. I wasn’t sure whether to feel fat or skinny afterward.

My mom points to a stack of tabloid magazines circa 2007 on an end table in her living room and asks me if I want to take them home to read. I tell her that’s old news, so no thanks. She says it’s not old news to her, and did I know that Oprah’s name should’ve been Orpah, after a character in the Bible. No, I didn’t know that, which proves her point that old news can be new news.

But this is all irrelevant to what happens next. She tells me to bring her the magazine on top. It happens to be an In Touch Weekly from June 2007 with Angelina Jolie gracing the cover. She indicates for me to sit down next to her, flips through until she finds the page she’s looking for, and then directs me to read a blurb beneath a picture of the actress, who happens to be looking rather skeletal.

The gist of the blurb is that skinny women: 1) have more difficulty getting pregnant, and 2) are more likely to miscarry. I turn to my mom after reading the blurb and the first thing I notice is the satisfied look on her face, as if she just discovered the cause of all my problems. So I say to her, ”Mom, she looks like a skeleton. I don’t.”  To which she replied, “Almost.” I love it when she compliments me!