A recent (minor) bit of weight loss had me feeling fine. So what if it was the byproduct of a semiserious health condition? I wasn't looking this gift horse in the mouth. Though I had been completely furious when I was diagnosed with an underactive thyroid a few months back, the meds my doctor put me on stoked my metabolism. And since I'm Olsen Twin–tiny, the few pounds I dropped made a big difference.
So for a fleeting moment, all was well in my little beauty bubble. To celebrate, I sprang for some skinny jeans. While they didn't look amazing, they didn't look hideous, either.
Life was good.
Until... I spied a few pictures of myself snapped at a friend's birthday party. My newfound vanity had gone to my head: Clad in a spandex-y puffy-sleeve top and the aforementioned skinny jeans, I was all gut. Ugh! It's the ultimate new-mom cliché, but I knew I had to blast that residual belly flab.
To look really good, I posited, I'd have to lose the baby blubber and then some. Thankfully, the thyroid meds had done some of the heavy lifting. (It's that "then some" that I was struggling with.) I decided on a three-pronged approach—two prongs totally superficial and passive, one prong actual hard work.
The prongs:
- Diet pills
- Shock therapy
- Exercise
Before anyone gets her panties in a bunch about that first item, let me explain. First, the pills (CM3 Alginate Natural Appetite Suppressant) are imported from Germany by wellness god Oz Garcia. Plus—and this is crucial—they're stimulant-free, so they don't get you so hopped-up that you're color-coding your sock drawer at 2 a.m. Instead, these little seaweed-concocted numbers just sort of explode in your stomach—but in a really good way. To learn how CM3 might figure into my self-devised "overcorrection" slimming plan, I gave Oz a jingle.
"CM3 could definitely help with that," he told me. "It can help control the volume of food you're consuming, as well as help you reset your visual cues. If you're sitting in front of a big plate of food and you've taken CM3, you'll find you can't plow through it. It gives you additional support." As it turns out, the wizardly Oz was right: During a crazy week at the office during which we fêted god-knows-what with cupcakes three separate times, my exploded-seaweed-filled belly and I held our own.
Next, I headed to G-Spa at Manhattan's Hotel Gansevoort to experience a bizarro spot-toning contraption called Arasys III. After changing into a robe and surprisingly cute shoes (black kitten-heel Havaiana flip-flops), I met Mary Mallozzi, an executive with Arasys Perfector, the U.K.-based company that markets the machine.
"Yup, that's it—mommy belly," she said, poking my kangaroo pouch while sizing me up with a measuring tape. "But that's to be expected—you're over 40 and you just had a baby." Um, thanks...
I stretched out on a table, and Mary started applying patches to my trouble zone. As she drifted south, from my stomach to my thighs, I tried not to take offense. It's not as if Lloyd's of London is tossing any million-dollar leg contracts my way.
After attaching all the electrodes, she flicked a switch. Oh. My. God. I was only on level 2 (out of 10), and I was ready to be scraped off the spa's industrial-chic ceiling.
The Fisher-Price explanation of what was going on here: The Arasys III uses electrical microcurrents that bypass the brain and directly signal the muscles to contract. Eliminating the middleman allows you to reach the fat-burning stage much more quickly—one 17-minute session allegedly builds more muscle than a dozen three-hour gym workouts. Since I've never exercised for anywhere near three hours straight, I have no idea if this is true. But I do know I need all the help I can get.
"It's not just the belly outside you have to think about," added Mary. "It's the belly inside, too. After your baby has shoved everything around, it's like your organs are saying, 'okay, where do we go now that we have all this room? There's no baby in here.'"
At $100 a pop, the shock-therapy treatments ain't cheap. But I'm considering tossing 'em into the mix, alongside the pills and the crunches. And speaking of exercise, next time I'll unveil prong three: my multifaceted fitness regime. Pinkie swear.
