40 for 40, Chapter 6: Lean In

Chapter 6 of 15 of my new weight gain/stuck story, 40 for 40.

CHAPTER 6: LEAN IN

Marion felt her face turn red again. Her colleagues were talking about their new years resolutions, various challenges they were participating in to drink less, diet, exercise, be thinner, be fitter. January was a very awkward month to decide to get fat.

She took an extra chocolate pastry from the cafe. She had one already, but she was thinking about Roger’s advice to simply eat more. Instead of one pastry, why not two? She had to admit, cream in her coffee tasted so much better than skim milk. She blushed again, it felt like she was an exhibitionist, all she was doing was taking a second pastry back to her office and she felt like everyone was watching her have sex. Roger’s weirdness was rubbing off on her. 

Marion worried what all this eating and blushing was going to do to the occasional office rumors that she was pregnant again. A year ago her boss had asked her into her office to talk about her maternity plan and Marion almost broke down crying when she had to tell her she was simply fat. Probably fatter than when she was last pregnant. She never told Roger about it because she resented that he might find it sexy. But with the start of her new plan, the memory was changing for her. It used to upset her, but she was anticipating a lot more of these awkward encounters as her belly got fatter. She considered buying a t-shirt that said “not pregnant, just fat,” something the old Marion never would have considered but the Overton window of what she found acceptable was already shifting. 

She was leaning in to fatness. 

Marion sat behind her desk, everything she did was tinted by the idea of getting fat. She wondered about her desk chair, the armrests already dug into her hips. Would she still fit in the chair 40 pounds later? It squeaked when she swiveled now, would it still hold her 40 pounds later? She’d broken a lawn chair at a party the previous summer. Everyone said it was an old chair but she knew it was her fat that finally did it in. She and Roger didn’t talk about it but she knew he found it exhilarating. He couldn’t hide the spark in his eye.

She thought about her upcoming work trips between now and Roger’s birthday. Plane seats would be tighter, and they were already tight.

Then a thought hit her that hadn’t before now. Marion got up from her chair, put on her coat and grabbed her pastries on her way out the door.

Outside the office she found a park bench, she started stuffing the pastry into her mouth in a panic.

After Roger’s birthday… she’d still be fat.

This wasn’t a sexy lingerie that she could surprise him with and then take off after sex. 

She was 40 years old. 

Her entire life, she’d done nothing but gain weight. She can’t remember ever losing weight beyond fleeting treasured moments in her twenties. 

She was older now, losing weight was hard in her 20s, now it would be impossible. If anything, gaining weight might be too easy, dangerously so! What if she was turning on a faucet she wouldn’t be able to turn off? What if 40 became 80? Became 100? What if she couldn’t stop?

Both pastries were gone. The panic was subsiding but the hunger still there. No answers, just a full belly asking for more. 

She cursed herself for not doing this when Roger was 30, when he first came out to her about his fat fantasies. Maybe then, before three pregnancies, before middle age, maybe then she would have had a chance to lose the weight after.

She couldn’t believe it hadn’t occurred to her before now that the weight wouldn’t just melt off after she wished Roger a happy birthday. 

What was she doing?

She sat with the thought and came back to the determination she’d been coming back to over and over as she made her plan.

She was getting fat “for Roger, for fun.” It was an experiment. She wanted to see the experiment through. Even if it scared her.

So what if she wouldn’t be able to lose the weight after. She’d still be herself, she’d still be the same Marion, just… fatter.

And she couldn’t be 100% certain the weight wouldn’t come off. She was going to be purposely overeating. Once she stopped overeating, there wasn’t going to be anything to sustain her newfound fatness beyond her usual holiday indulgences. She got fatter with every pregnancy, but she did lose a few pounds from each pregnancy peak. She might be fatter now than she was at her most pregnant, but there was a time, in the few months after giving birth that she remembered the baby weight coming off, before new fatness took its place.

She’d successfully talked herself back from the cliff. 

She watched as two fellow workmates ran laps around the park during their break, part of their January fitness challenge. In past years she might have joined them.

Marion got up from the bench and went back to work, by way of the cafe where she bought another pastry.