Epilogue: If a gal binges in the forest does anybody see?

Eek, it is Tuesday, three days after the competition. And I have not stopped eating since Saturday night. This phase of training may be the hardest one yet: turning the dial past "I'm done" and back to moderation.

By Saturday I had: starved myself down to 121 pounds, painted my body to look like an orange Oompaloompa, then oiled it; sat in a dressing room behind stage and listened to women discuss how to keep their tiny posing suits from slipping off their ample breasts (with a perfectly sober tone, one gal recommended a type of tile adhesive sold at Home Depot); taken first place in the masters class only because I was the sole participant in my age group. The day was, in a nutshell, surreal.

But now that it is over, I seem to be in locked in an eating frenzy that is beginning to unnerve me. I allowed it to take its course on Sunday. It was the day after and I had no intention of holding back on anything. My shrunken stomach did its best to process the pizza, chocolate, cereal, peanut butter, and pretzels I tossed down my gullet all day, and by the evening, my belly looked about 5 months pregnant.

I thought of the I Love Lucy episode, when Lucy cannot keep up with the candy wrapping at her new job and begins stuffing her cheeks with balls of chocolate to hide her ineptness. My stomach looked like Lucy's cheeks. I had to sit up and read a book until well after midnight waiting to digest enough food to finally get horizontal.

Yesterday I started the day off with oatmeal, and ate clean right up until 3 PM when a bag of brightly colored Easter candies, saved for post-competition started it all again. This morning, I didn't even try to pretend the day would go well. I ate the last Poptart with my morning coffee, and have plowed through anything savory or sweet that gets in my path.

This post-event state is an interesting place. My pumpkin-dyed skin is fading in streaks that makes my skin look plagued with scales and stretch marks, and my belly is bloated and drum tight.

Attractive.

And working out? Are you kidding? I would have scheduled a pap smear and a root canal this week just to get a break from the iron.

The only goal I have for the week is to crawl my way back into some balance.

I gave the welcome tour to a couple new gym members today, and I could see thier wheels turning: wow, must be hard, having a baby at her age... wonder if it was a planned pregnancy...

Apparently, I am not on this crash course alone though. This morning at the bus stop I pulled up next to the van containing my fellow bodybuilding buddy. We hadn't seen one another since Saturday night, when we parted ways at the end of the competition. She sat behind the wheel of her car and we both rolled down our windows and sported a cat-that-ate-the canary grin at one another. We didn't need to even recount the endless list of comestibles that we'd repectively consumed since our last meeting.

"Have you weighed yourself yet?" She asked.

"No way. You?"

"Yep."

"And?"

"Twelve pounds."

Bodybuilding: it is a world of extremes.