“Let’s go!” Mel cheered.

I lifted. It hurt, and it was a difficult position to hold. But change wouldn’t come without sacrifice.

I held the position as long as I could, but my face began turning red and my stomach felt like it was going to submit to gravity, so I tried to stealthily lift my butt, and when I did I could feel Mel’s foot press against it, sending it back down.

“Not so fast.” She grinned as she lowered my butt back into position. “You try to look at mine and I’ll put yours back in its place.”

Well played, I thought. I was in too much pain to say it out loud. I lasted for about five more seconds and fell to the ground.

“That all you got?” She kneeled down beside me.

“That’s all the love I got for planking.” I tried to catch my breath.

“Then we’ll move on to something else,” she said as she patted my head with her hand.

We moved on to a lot of things. We did sit-ups, push-ups, and three awful sets of leg lifts.

As I was finishing up the lifts, Mel was counting them with me.

“Come on, Adrian! You’re at twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight.”

I let out a cry and stayed down. It hurt too much, my body couldn’t do it, everything burned beneath my skin, and I didn’t want to keep going.

“Come on, Adrian. You got this.”

“I can’t,” I whined. I didn’t want to let Mel down, but my body wouldn’t go any further. It was way too hard, so I bit my lip and gave up.

I leaned back into the grass, putting my hands on my head. Working your core hurts. I had been letting myself down for too long. My body was like a punching bag, but instead of years of physically hitting it, I just binge ate. From fast food to always asking for seconds and thirds, I ate a lot, and I ate too much, so navigating through simple tasks was hard enough. Every time I overate, I weighed down a part of myself.

“That’s all right, Adrian. You tried.” She kneeled down and gave me a gentle “good job” punch on my arm.

“Let’s get you some water,” she said.

She helped me get to my feet, and when we stood up, I could hear giggling from a distance. I turned to see, and there were two boys in the grass, pointing at me while laughing. One of them was wearing a sleeveless tank top and had a mohawk, the other was shirtless and had hard abs. They weren’t too much older than us.

“What’s so funny?” Mel asked.

“Don’t.” I tried to stop her.

“What is it?” she asked again, ignoring me.

“You’re helping a lost cause. He’s just going to get diabetes anyways,” one of them yelled and then laughed.

I looked away. I didn’t have the energy to hide my hurt.

“Yeah, and you’ll end up getting my fist in your face,” she yelled back.