I’ve spent the last five years rewiring my brain, ending toxic relationships, combating insomnia, experimenting with antidepressants, struggling with love (or what I thought was love), talking to an imaginary child, and freezing my eggs.
As a result, most of the time I spend with my friends is consumed by them asking me how I worked my ass off to change my brain and worked my ass on to get the body I want. Friends and even strangers ask me how I got good skin, kicked my eating disorder, stopped dating narcissists, quit letting my ego run the show, and generally ceased being cray cray. It would make my life way easier to be able to just say “How about you just read this book?” so I don’t have to spend every social event rambling on about neurology when I’d much rather be spending the evening flirting with a guy who is terrible for me.
I’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars accruing information from a smorgasbord of doctors, psychiatrists, healers, teachers, and people who jammed things up my butt while making unflinching eye contact with me. Look, if you get anything out of this read, it’s that you do not ever need to put anything up your bottom hole unless you really want to. Even then, you certainly don’t have to pay for it.
So if I may be so bold, I straight-up want this book to change your life. I personally was sick of being a mess and I’m also sick of your being a mess, so let’s get our shit together. Together.
THE SELF-HELP CHAPTER
I have some good news for you. I love you. And because I love you, you’re about to get like a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of psychological therapy for the measly price of this book. I’m not proud of this, but I’ve spent an embarrassing amount of money I never really had in the first place on mental health professionals, some of which I should probably put in quotes. Mental health “professionals.” Traipsing along this yellow brick road of healers, I didn’t get to Oz, although I did see pink horses a couple times due to low blood sugar from stupid cleanses.
The Butthead
I went to a “nutritionist” once who I should have known was trouble because he went only by his first name. Let’s call him Dr. Bob, even though the real name he went by is even more ridiculous and sounds like a corny DJ who plays cheesy music you would have heard at your uncle’s third wedding in the early nineties. Let me be clear: A doctor going by Dr. followed by his first name is a red flag, unless it’s Dr. Dre, in which case it’s at least worth going to for the story. The fact that I paid money to go to a nutritionist who went by his first name meant the kind of doctor I actually needed to go to was a psychiatrist.
Dr. Bob was the skinniest person I had ever met, and that’s saying a lot, given how much time I spend around Hollywood actresses. He bragged that he slept on a treadmill, which he kept at a high angle so blood would flow to his head. Honestly, since I hate running, this actually seems like the best use of a treadmill I can think of, but to sleep on it upside down puts the bat in batshit crazy. I realize now that when I heard this, I should have swiftly exited the building, but I’m a sucker for men who have prevaricated for so long that they’ve not only started to believe their lies but also have the audacity to charge people to listen to them.
Dr. Bob’s philosophy was that you should eat only food indigenous to where your ancestors are from, and since I’m a Western European mutt, I couldn’t eat bananas, coconuts, cantaloupe, or basically anything delicious. Being from Europe, my ancestors pretty much consumed only potatoes, alcohol, and their own teeth. I asked Dr. Bob what would happen if I was in an airport and desperate for something healthy and happened to sneak a banana. His face went paler than it already was. With not one molecule of irony in his tone, he said, “You might as well put a gun in your mouth.”
Dr. Bob’s main obsession was colonics. Giving them, getting them, showing you pictures of them, telling me about other celebrities who got them. If you don’t know what a colonic is, I’ll save you the Internet search, because frankly I’m worried some very disturbing images will come up that will give you eternal nightmares. This is as elegant a description as I can give of a colonic: Dr. Bob puts a tube up your tushy and releases some water to scare out all your hidden poopies.
Nothing can prepare you for the feeling of a skeletal man without a last name slipping a hose into your anus, whilst whispering “You’re doing great.” Lying there with a tube inside my butt with a man who slept on exercise equipment was so uncomfortable and invasive that after every session I was tempted to call the police. I eventually stopped going to Dr. Bob because I realized that literally all the money I spent on him was being flushed down the toilet.
When he wasn’t penetrating my reluctant crevice with Tupperware tubes, he did give me some helpful advice: Don’t cook your veggies to the point of depleting them of all their vitamins. Veggies should be crunchy, not flaccid suggestions of their former selves. Apparently, if you’re not farting, you’re not eating your veggies right. And yes, I realize that even though this advice is great for your body, it’s terrible for your personal life.
Other honorable mentions include: chew your water, drink apple cider vinegar, and you should be bent over when you use the toilet because as it turns out, toilets were designed by misogynists who want everyone to get colon cancer, so we’re all using the bathroom the wrong way. Apparently when we use the bathroom, we should be in the posture we’d be in if we were hiding from zombies in our basements: squatting but crouched over instead of straight up. Our bodies are designed to “release” at a certain angle, and traditional toilets are not conducive to that angle, which also explains why a lot of women constantly have to pee . . . because we’re not emptying our bladders completely. Sometimes we pee because we need an excuse to get out of a boring conversation with a weirdo, but that’s a whole other thing that’s less about physiology and more about people being annoying.
There is actually a contraption you can and should buy that raises your feet up so you’re in a squat. Look, I didn’t say it was sexy, I said it was healthy. I’ve found having a stool around my toilet is incredibly awkward when I have company over, but it’s a total game changer for my peeing habits. If you don’t have a stool to put your feet up on, you can just bend over like you’re giving birth in a ditch in the 1200s. You might not be able to text as much while you’re on the can, but at least you’ll have to spend less time on it.
Lady Finger