I am a month away from having abs. At the moment I have a flat stomach, etched with shadows that imply musculature. But only when I stand. Which I do frequently at a three-quarter angle in front of mirrors, with my shirt hoisted.

Elsewhere in the world bombs explode, villages flood, mothers and children are tortured to death, their bodies abandoned to rot in the sun.

But here in the mirror before me there remains over the muscle a resilient layer of blubber. Probably five pounds. And they are stubborn, these last five. These inner five. They are like the secret service, tightly cloistering the president.

But I will reach that prize muscle. If I have to give up every four-carbohydrate almond I currently enjoy (two a day), I will. If I have to choke down my dry salad without the grilled chicken, I shall. If I have to throw up after consuming one of my hateful meager meals, then throw up I will. In fact, I have asked every woman I know, "How do you make yourself vomit after eating?"

At first they feign horror and cover their mouths. I have not only been politically incorrect, it's as if I have entered their private space - the women's restroom - and am banging on closed stall doors, "What's going on in there?" The women also feel the question itself implicates them. Well, how on earth would I know, their awkward laugh says.

But they do know. So an instant later, when we have turned a corner and are walking down a hallway; when we have exited the elevator; when the person who was walking behind us has ducked into a store, they whisper something like, "The trick is to drink a lot of water." Or, "You have to eat a lot. You can't just have some little salad and barf it up. Volume, bloating is the key."

There are many keys, I learn.

But none of them will unlock the contents of my stomach. I was both bemused and appalled a few weeks later to find myself with most of my hand spidering down my throat, my fingers slick. I was spitting up and gagging into a two-hundred year-old-toilet after breaking my Perverse Madman's Diet by eating one of the bread sticks that arrived, unasked for, with my austere dinner. And no matter how far down my throat I plunged my fingers, I could not vomit. It infuriated me.

I hadn't intended to eat the stick of bread. I only wanted to examine it: a specimen. People actually eat these? Yes, weaker people. The old me would have eaten it, I thought, smug, superior. And instantly, shockingly, the stick was in my mouth and I was chewing with the kind of fierce male determination that builds bridges and skyscrapers. The bread vanished in an instant and I ran to the bathroom. If I don't get this thing out now, I was thinking, I will never get the abs.

If a doctor had appeared before me, miraculously, and said, "You have cancer," I would have said, "Do I have one more month to live?" Because my only thought would have been: I can get them in four weeks.

Two months before this madness began I was thirty pounds overweight. I found a decade-old photograph of myself, and noted with horror that my face had actual planes back then. Bevels. Angles. I had become used to my doughy, swollen, carbohydrate-infected face. The rest of the thirty pounds had gathered around my middle. I had belly fat, flank fat and, most appalling of all, back fat.

How long had it been, exactly, since I'd seen the inside of a gym? Since I'd been in handsome shape and had, very nearly - but not as near as now - abs? Four years. Had it been that long? Yes. It had.

Seeing my reflection that afternoon, I decided: this is the day. Today. Right now.

At first, I could do exactly four minutes on the elliptical trainer at my gym. And my heart was hysterical inside my chest. It was spasming and screaming, "Oh my God, what have you done with the sofa?"

Like a ruthless executioner atop a Mayan pyramid I beheaded from my diet anything and everything that makes one happy: Lusty brownies; earthy and chocolaty and with the tiniest crackle when you bite, shattering the glossy shellacked surface. Cookies. Candy bars. French fries, bread, butter, meat, cheese, pears. All that was left were a few greens, drizzled with air.

The next day, I was able to do four minutes and twenty seconds.

Each day, following the elliptical trainer, I would do crunches, gently, the way my chiropractor taught me. Raise your torso just ten degrees, Adam's apple pointed at the ceiling. I never counted. I continued until I couldn't.

Weeks passed. Facial bones began to break the surface. I ordered new jeans online and by the time they were delivered I needed a smaller size. I inspected my stomach constantly. I inhaled to see the convex lines. I exhaled and saw the softness that remained above the muscle and felt my face flush with rage. I knew something was distorted, I sensed that I had lost all perspective. But I did not care. When I looked down? I needed to see only ripples.

Friends gasped when they saw me in person. "My God, you look wonderful." Followed by, "Are you ok?" I noted the blurry line between beauty and sickness - how beauty came first.

It has almost been two months. When I lift up my shirt I see that the abs are coming. If I continue to starve, if I continue to channel my rage into kinetic energy, the abs will come. The laws of physics promise this. We are, if we do the math right, owed abs, each of us.

And yet? I do not require abs for any rational reason. I'm not single. I'm not twenty-two. I'm not a model. I don't go to the beach. Never will somebody eat whipped cream from my stomach.

But, one doesn't chase after abs or thinness or plump lips because one has thought it through. One chases because one needs. The need is vigorous and all-consuming. It is blind and it is mindless, too: Ask, "But why?" And the Need will reply, "You disgust me."

Funny, but I would never be with somebody who had abs. I like a little extra padding on a person. I like a man with a bit of a belly -a football player's build. On a woman, I would like something a little more nineteenth-century -curves and bulges; voluptuous mounds and promising, elegant hills.

Admitting this lifts the veil and I get it. It has been almost ten years since I stopped drinking. The Need knows it won't get a martini. So it seduces me through my stomach. "Psst, feeling empty? Abs, dude, abs." Like a dog on a chase, oblivious to the reasonable call of my master or the swiftly approaching car.

And, with the full knowledge that I am, again, addicted to something and that all addiction is toxic, is circular, erodes and controls - I stop eating for four days, unleash my resentment on my stomach through crunches and raise the intensity on the elliptical trainer. And one evening very soon, possibly even tomorrow night, there they will be: abs. I will stare at my reflection, at my achieved goal. Abs. I am now that guy. With the stomach. I am him.

And I know exactly how I will feel. I will feel: oh.

Because in the pursuit of beauty, there is no finish line. Nothing about us will ever be perfect. The Need will always, always be there. There will always be just one more thing we could do. Or get. Or lose.

It is a fool's marathon. But I don't care. I will run it anyway.