Telling herself that she deserved a sweet treat after every single exercise “session” was, she knew, not the best way to “stay fit.” It was, however, the best way to stay motivated. Mira knew this about herself. Knew this Pavlovian curse would be her body’s undoing even as she continued to buy piece after piece of “active wear” in order to further convince herself that she was “taking exercise seriously.” And, as such, she had every right to reward herself for her hard work. Her commitment to “the cause.” That cause being, of course, trying to be seen as thin. Or at least thin enough to be “fuckable.” At the same time, most of the men she went for didn’t want a woman that was too thin. They still liked “a bit of skin to grab.” Or so that’s what Mira felt she had often noticed when gathering her “bedroom intelligence.” Intelligence that had waned of late. And she was convinced it was because “a bit of skin to grab” had turned into too much to handle.

Mira was aware that, even in this climate of “acceptance,” men were never really that. Not when you got right down to it. There was still the same primal instinct they always had: to pursue the “hot” girl. Mira had been feeling anything but that lately. So she started to engage with an exercise routine that she knew she would stick to: biking to work in the morning and then on the way back home in the early evening. Her workplace was a two-mile bike ride each way (she probably wouldn’t have conceded to doing it if it was anything more than that). The problems with this routine, however, became evident fairly quickly. For a start, Mira was irritated by having to wear “bike-friendly” garb for the ride, and then change in the bathroom at work once she got there. This meant not only carrying around a heavier bag (or, more specifically, a backpack), but also having to leave home earlier and leave work later in order to accommodate her wardrobe change. And so, to somehow make all of this effort “worth her while,” Mira found it required too much willpower to resist the café on a certain part of her route. A café that happened to have the best beignets she had ever tasted. And, in her lifetime, Mira had tasted plenty of beignets by which to compare these to. Including the two-year stint she lived in New Orleans. But when she encountered Powderface off of Fruitvale, which offered “New Orleans-style” beignets, she became obsessed.

Obsessed to the point that her “workout routine” was more closely starting to become her weight gain journey. And to the point where the entire staff actually started recognizing her—a rare feat in most Oakland milieus. Then again, Mira had the kind of aura that radiated “outsider.” Besides that, she was probably the only customer who came in most days with a bright red face, huffing and puffing from the exertion. The beignets, she was well-aware, weren’t helping with the original intent she had to “get in shape.” But to “get in shape,” this is what she needed to quote unquote stay motivated, therefore creating a vicious cycle (because of her bicycle).

As she rode her bike to Powderface that morning, she tried, once again, to justify her out-of-control behavior by thinking about that saying (or at least she thought it was a saying)…the one that assured you should just do what makes you feel good, whatever brings you pleasure in this joyless, bleak world. To take whatever you could find that might give you a modicum of gratification because, otherwise, you were probably going to spend most of your days feeling utterly miserable. Or rather, more miserable than you would had you not seized on that small pleasure. But then the question arose, what if the pleasure became a source of pain—in this case, taking away from the pleasure of being thin? And, in turn, the ability to ride her bike at all without wheezing/practically having a heart attack.

She knew she was starting to get “up there,” especially by Gen Alpha standards, and that exercising was important to shaping how her body would function in the future, once it became more difficult to “work out” if she didn’t start conditioning herself now. But the conditioning was all wrong, had gone totally astray. And now she was incurring the opposite effect she had intended because of her unexpected beignet addiction. An addiction that was starting to make her feel an incredible sense of self-loathing as she continued to have the audacity to plod along on her creaking bike (creaking, she felt, because it couldn’t handle her fat ass anymore), sometimes twice a day, to get her fix.

At a certain point, one of the employees behind the counter finally felt inclined to suggest to her that she ought to just start buying the box of twelve they sold for $17.50 and save herself a bit of money. It was that suggestion—that recognition of her addiction by the employee—that put her off of biking. She had finally experienced the very thing she needed to in order to stop “working out”: a sense of shame about someone actually calling her out for how many beignets she was consuming on a daily basis. And though she was hardly “repulsed” by them (quite the contrary, she would have continued eating them like Ms. Pac-Man if she hadn’t gotten that wake-up call “suggestion”) after essentially intravenously injecting them for three months straight, she somehow found the strength of will to quit “cold turkey” (though “cold beignet” was more like it). This was done, of course, by ceasing to ride her bike altogether, instead going back to taking BART. Which, on the plus side, meant no more waking up as early or having to cart along a separate wardrobe in her bag. The more she thought about it, in fact, the more she realized the benefits of not exercising (or rather, not doing her kind of exercising) far, er, outweighed engaging in it.

About two months later, co-workers began to shower her with compliments about how much weight she had lost. Apparently, they couldn’t remember that she had merely been “restored to her original form,” for she was now exactly the same weight she was before she started to try her hand at “a bit of physical movement.” It wasn’t exactly the ideal way for people to start noticing your “efforts” to look your best, but Mira figured it was better than the awkward and pitying glances she kept getting during her “biking and beignets” period.

As for her enduring but now suppressed love of beignets, the trick, she supposed, was to never pass by Powderface again. Which, in truth, wouldn’t be too difficult, considering the only way she ever did in the first place was by biking. Tragically, the only form of exercise she could be bothered with, yet, ironically, the form of exercise that had caused her to gain the most weight.