I wrote the following for submission to a humor magazine. The only guidelines were to be "dark and absurd." 

Strangers often ask me how I became a fitness expert/ weight-loss expert/ reality television star/ best-selling author/ A-list blogger/ self-help guru/ regular religious-type guru/ millionaire/ billionaire. “Hey Erin Judge!” shouts almost anybody who evades the armed guards deftly enough to maneuver within earshot of my person. “How did you do it all? How did you become a guru-slash-blogger-slash-advisor to the stars?” Usually people forget several of the things that I’m famous for when they ask me how I got to where I am. And who can blame them? I myself left “advisor to the stars” off the above list of my credits. (To clarify, I did not forget the fact of my glamorous and remunerative vocation as advisor to the stars; rather, I forgot that you regulars see my advisees as special famouses: heads of state and pop stars, the subjects of the blind items in the gossip publications. To me, they’re just Matt and Ben, Barry and Michelle, Mads and little Lola. Guess which weight-loss-guru-blogger-billionaire just hit “ignore” on a call from a two-time Best Actress Academy Award winner?)

Anyway, if you ask me how I got to where I am today, the easy answer is that I lost a thousand pounds. But you knew that already. “Erin Judge! I saw her on a talk show a few years ago. She’s the one who lost a thousand pounds.” And indeed, that is me, or was me, a side bar on your Us Weekly cover, a fourth guest on every B-list daytime talk show. The real question is, how did I turn that thousand-pound weight loss into my current manifestation as a focal point for wealth and fame, a serious contender for Acting Vice-Chair of the fictive but intoxicatingly powerful High Council of the Illuminati?

Well, you see, losing a thousand pounds was a bit of a personal boot-camp in miracle-making for me. Everything I struggled through in order to reach that jaw-droppingly impressive goal aligned my chakras and focused my energy and enabled me to, once thin(ner), redirect my weight-loss energy toward my quest for fame and fortune and others’ quests for flawless advice and substantive online content.

Every individual must find his or her own soul-focusing struggle, of course, and not everybody is equipped with the grit and genetics to lose one thousand pounds. For me, it was the first step that proved the hardest: gaining one thousand and twenty-five pounds. A lot of people simply can’t stomach that much white pasta with fois gras sauce. Like, can’t can’t. Their organs shut down and shit. In my case, I’m proud to say I managed to bulk up to my full half-ton glory without a single liver transplant or dialysis session. Those early victories helped me to keep the faith throughout my ordeal, as well as all of my limbs. And I had to trust those who came before me. I knew from my diligent research that the last 25 pounds would be the most stubborn, so I went ahead and planned for that instead of risking a lifetime with the less-than-catchy moniker of “woman who lost nine hundred and seventy-five pounds.” Clunky. Ineffective. Unbrandable.

My point is, that initial step is always the hardest, but I cannot overstate how crucial it will prove to be. Take it from me, the most successful 25-pounds overweight white woman on Earth, possibly ever: You first gotta fuck up your life, mind, body, soul, family, and/or credit score pretty Christing brutally if you expect to get anywhere in this guru game. Just like that bicycle guy with the ball cancer, or my devotee Oprah Winfrey and her shitshow of a freshman year of high school (Google it), we all have to start by plunging down to someplace, and the lower (or fatter) you manage to go, the higher you will ultimately fly.