Not to dwell on my recent double-whammy illness, or perhaps my overall exercise addiction, but I’ve got to tell you: There’s nothing like a five-day stomach flu to help you drop the weight.

I’ve been feeling self-consciously pudgy since the New Year, despite being generally observed as near-skeletal. I have my own personal criteria for personal fitness: I pay attention to how my clothes fit me; when I hit bumps on the road in my car, I become outraged if I feel anything — anywhere on my body — jiggle; I watch very carefully whether I can run even one hundred meters more or less than I could the day before. I know this is maniacal, but this should come as no suprise to you by this point.

I’m crazy. It adds character, though, it’s cool. I always wanted to be lean and fit, rather then squidgy and huggable, so I don’t mind being a little nuts about maintaining that. We all have our vices, you know? At least I’m not snorting cocaine off of the backs of child workers while they hand-polish diamonds from Sierra Leone, right? And so what if I was?

Ahem.

Even I do have my holy shit moments, though. When I was traveling through Italy last summer, I spent most of a week doing nothing but walking through both Rome and Florence. One afternoon, I stopped on my way up a steep hill to take off my tee shirt, and continue on in just a sleeveless dri-fit shirt that was pretty clingy. On the other side of the street were a couple of German tourists, poring over a map spread out on the hood of their car. As I bent over to jam my shirt into my shoulder bag, I heard them muttering to each other.

“Eeeesh, did you see that guy? He must be ill.”

“No, no,” the other one answered, “I think he’s just gay.”

The open-minded German people, ladies and gentlemen: Let’s give them a hand.

Still, it had been a while since I’d seen myself in a mirror, so when I arrived in Pisa that night I thought I’d better take a look. I was staying in a very cool converted monastery there, and while my room didn’t boast a shower, it did have a full-length mirror on the outside of the wardrobe. After I snuck down the hall and abused the shared bathroom priveleges far longer than European courtesy permits, I came back to survey myself.

“Jesus,” I said. I’m glad I didn’t say anything worse, given my surroundings. I know everyone has an image of themselves in their minds, and I suspect that no matter how emotionally healthy you are, it never matches up perfectly with what the rest of the world sees. Most of the time, what you see in your reflection is a compromise with what you see, and what your mind permits.

And then there are the moments that are like stubbing your toe, or whacking your nose: Clear, impossible to ignore and shockingly painful. No matter what my usual body dysmorphia might say, what I saw in the mirror was unmistakable: Maybe 150 lbs., every rib and ripple of my sternum clearly visible, my hips sticking out far too much. A diet of gelato and streetside panini was clearly not enough to sustain eight walking hours a day, and I looked as though I did not retain a single ounce of water anywhere.

In other words, I don’t know what Germans think “gay” looks like, but there was no way argue with “sick.”

Looking in the mirror on Sunday morning, I was reminded of that moment. The combination of a chest cold and whatever Norwalk-Montezuma-gastro-horror lived in my guts had knocked my last healthy weight off of me, and looking down at the scale I could see I’d fallen from the happy-Christmas-170s down to the diseased-European-150s again. With all of that rolling around in my head, I had to double-take when, later that afternoon, I saw the cover of people magazine with a picture of Tyra Banks on it and the caption, “YOU CALL THIS FAT?”

Because, see, she outweighs me. Tyra Banks, the supermodel and television host, outweighs me at this very moment:

Banks, who hosts the syndicated “The Tyra Banks Show” and the CW network’s “America’s Next Top Model,” tells the magazine she weighs 161 pounds and has fluctuated from 148 pounds to 162 pounds, depending on how well she’s taking care of herself, since retiring from modeling in 2005.

She’s an inch shorter than me, and she’s probably about four pounds heavier. And she looks better. Plus, she’s rich and she’s on television. You know what that means, right?

Tyra Banks can totally kick my ass.

If you had told me that a month ago, I might have suggested that she could kiss my ass. I am not a fan of second-tier talk television, America’s Next Top Model, or retired supermodels in general — none of those compel me particularly, and I do not hold contemplation of them as any part of my day. But, I have to tell you, that’s before I realized that if I were to come into a physical confrontation with a B-grade-TV-hosting, top-model-searching, former-super-modeling woman like Tyra Banks, she would be able to take me to the ground by sheer merit of her physical bulk.

I’m not sure I can handle that.

I should be clear: I have no problem with Tyra Banks putting on weight. The woman can eat as much as she wants, as far as I’m concerned. She’s worth a gazillion million dollars, she’s paid her dues as a supermodel, and she could buy and sell me in a heartbeat (note to Tyra Banks: Please feel free to buy and sell me at any time, I am highly affordable). If she wants to start a diet consisting exclusively of turkey legs, butter tarts and Crispy Crunch milkshakes, who am I to tell her otherwise? She’s in a position now where she can counter my criticism by throwing wads of hundred dollar bills at me until I go away (additional note to Tyra Banks: Please feel free to adopt this approach to critics, particularly me), so whatever my thoughts on her appearance, they are hardly relevant.

No, what is alarming and disturbing is that the potential now exists — indeed, the certainty has emerged — that I can be physically conquered by a woman who I previously imagined as being an under-fed prima donna.

  • Alarming: A supermodel equals me in weight and possibly even muscle mass. Combined with the wallet in her purse, she could crush me.
  • Disturbing: I am oddly compelled by that thought. I should probably stop mulling over the various ways Tyra Banks can smack me around.

The moral of the story is that I have never been more motivated to get back on the health wagon. No matter how filthily high-five worthy the thought of being borne to the earth by Tyra Banks may be, I doubt I can take lasting pride in being outweighed by an American top model.