Food and Fitness

Annie is 15. She has always felt OK about her body, but during this past year, she has started to feel uncomfortable in her own skin.

I really need to avoid looking in the mirror. It just depresses the hell out of me.

What does it take to get a body like Jennifer Aniston? I mean really. Because maybe I could do it. You never know. Like do you have to eat only fruit and vegetables, and drink only water? Because I might be able to do that. Except for weekends I guess. I don't think I could do without pizza and stuff like that on the weekends.

Would you have to have a personal trainer? I don't think my parents would fork out for that but there are lots of stairs at school so I could run up and down them maybe a hundred times a day. But would it work? Because I really, really couldn't be bothered going to all that effort if it wouldn't work.

I hate weighing myself, but somehow the scales always seem to beckon me and pull me to them with some weird kind of magnetic force. Still, I absolutely never get on the scales unless it's in the morning before I've eaten anything, and only after my shower because I'm sure the heat must make me sweat off a half a pound or so. Also, seeing the proof of how fat I am in irrefutable digits often works as a great disincentive to eat breakfast.

Gina wears size 6 jeans and we ALWAYS shop together. There's no way I can go shopping for jeans with her unless I'm a size 6 too, at the absolute max! It would be just too totally embarrassing otherwise.

And I've got to stop going shopping for bras with her as well. She's still on an A cup and I've already exploded (the shop-lady calls it "blossomed") into a B. The rate I'm going - I'll be heading for a C cup by the time I'm a senior. Then I'll be needing underwire bras and I'll never agree to change for gym class unless I can padlock my cubicle.

Your Reflections

At night, I hate lying on my side because I can actually pinch a whole roll of tummy fat between my fingers. It's much better to lie on my back. Then my stomach's even better than flat - it's concave.

Mom says everyone comes in different sizes and shapes and you have to make peace with your own unique body. What a load of crap. She really doesn't understand. She's always saying that in her day, the hourglass figure was in. That is so OUT now. Now everything has to be small - bust waist hips.

You've got to be able to shop in the Petite section or forget it - you may as well hang out in Maternity.

Dad says boys like girls "with a bit of meat on them". As if Dad would know what boys like. And anyway, as if I care what boys like.

You know, apparently TV makes you look fatter than you are. Which means Jennifer Aniston has a super, super, super amazing figure. Oh jeez... I'm never gonna get that new pair of jeans.