"God! You look...enormous!" Jake said, grabbing either side of Evan's round gut and giving it a shake. The nearly spherical ball of fur, dense and firm, swayed as the fit lion wobbled it around.
Evan said nothing. His cheeks burned with embarrassment.
Jake stepped back to take in the bellied lion in his apartment. Evan looked pregnant, overdue with triplets. The globe that was his cream-colored gut stuck out a little more than a foot, and sagged down slightly forcing Evan to leave his shorts unbuttoned. So big was the lion's belly that even Evan's largest shirt couldn't cover him up. When he sheepishly entered Jake's apartment, his formerly baggy grey shirt was almost riding all the way up to his chest.
The swimmer stared dumbfounded. It had been little over a week since Evan started on The McCarthy Plan. Yet the lion looked like someone had stuck a bicycle pump in him and blew him up. "Did...did you cheat on the diet plan I gave you?" asked Jake. Even if Evan did, he figured there was no way he could have eaten himself to the size he was now unless the lion got himself trapped in a grocery store or something.
"No!" lied Evan. It wasn't exactly a lie. Overcome with cravings, the lion did splurge a bit and bought a couple of cartons of Jen & Berry's. But there was no way that ice cream could have blown up his belly this big.
Rubbing a paw along his temple, Jake let out a sigh. "Uh...let's cool it with the diet plan for a while," he said. "I obviously need to tinker with some things. Is that cool with you?"
"Oh, yeah. That sucks, but you gotta do what you gotta do," replied Evan. Jake didn't see the lion's tail wag in delight.
***
A loud sucking sound came from the straw as Evan drank up the very last drops of the chocolate milkshake he was drinking, the third for the day. Crumpling up the paper cup, he tossed it into the garbage can sitting in his kitchen. The lion gave his firm full belly, swollen noticably larger due to the near gallon of milkshake digesting in it, and burped a little bit. He then went back to the task at hand: Boxing away all of the strange and bizarre ingredients Jake had shipped over for Evan's dietary shakes.
The cabinet he store them all in was nearly empty aside from one plastic jar way in the back. His belly made it hard for him to reach inside as it bounded against the edge of the kitchen counter. Sticking a paw in, inch by inch he pulled the jar out. But his paw caught an edge of the lid. The jar flipped on its side, rolled out of the cabinet into the countertop, and bounced onto the floor where it continued rolling away for several more feet.
Evan cursed. He walked over and picked it up, which took considerable effort because of his engorged belly getting in the way of him being able to bend down. Legs spread wide apart to make way for his gut, the lion bent at the hips until he was able to grab the jar.
The jar was of one of probiotics Jake had sent as part of the shakes. Evan never really bothered to read any of the labels on the containers the swimmer gave him. "Pro...bascilla...mono...nuxtra..." he muttered, trying to pronounce the name of the probiotic. He gave up pretty quickly and glanced at the rest of the label. Evan never before noticed the bold text on the back.
ATTENTION: IT IS ADVISED YOU AVOID THE FOLLOWING FOODS WHILE TAKING THIS PRODUCT IN ORDER TO AVOID DIGESTIVE ANOMALIES: KALE, BROCCOLI, SPINACH, ANY DAIRY PRODUCTS, CASHEWS, AND ALMONDS.
"Well, damn..." Evan said, looking down at his blimp of a belly. He figured out what made him blow up so rapidly. Even though he only cheated on his diet with a bit of ice cream, the dairy in it must have interacted with the probiotic in his shake, making his belly swell up massively.
"Jake will glad to know this," he thought to himself. Then, Evan realized something. If he told Jake about what he found out, then he'd be back on The McCarthy Plan in no time being that the flaw in his plan would be fixed. His stomach churned at the diet of sucking down another shake that tasted like dirt. Perhaps this could be something he kept to himself, for a while, at least.
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