Page 13 of Ready, Willing and Abel (Dog Tags #6)

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thirteen

Abel

Thanks for joining us. I’m your host, Meredith Banks. On today’s episode of From Fat to Fit we have everyone’s favorite chubby boy turned hot heartthrob. Let’s welcome Abel Cartwright.

Abel Cartwright: Thank you for having me.

Meredith Banks: Of course.

Meredith Banks: As you well know, the diet industry is a massive one and you could have monetized this. A tell-all book. A cookbook. A cooking show.

Abel Cartwright: If I had to cook for myself, the world would be in danger of burning to the ground. Sadly, I am a walking disaster in the kitchen.

Meredith Banks: You sound like my husband.

Abel Cartwright: You are right, though. I could have monetized this a lot over the last decade.

The offers have been there. But I’m not going to put my name on something that’s going to be marketed as the silver bullet for weight loss.

I lost all my weight the way millions of other people have lost theirs.

Meredith Banks: Which is?

Abel Cartwright: I found what worked for me and what I could live with.

Meredith Banks: That’s it?

Abel Cartwright: That’s it.

Meredith Banks: So, how has your life been different since you became a heartthrob?

Abel Cartwright: It’s hard to tell, to be honest. Because my weight loss happened during a lull in my career, in that natural transition when I went from teenager to leading man age. So for much of it, I wasn’t really in the spotlight.

Meredith Banks: That’s right, because Oliver’s Twist had been cancelled.

Abel Cartwright: Exactly. I had some time to figure out what I wanted to do next. If I wanted to continue acting or just be a normal teenager for a while.

Meredith Banks: You played that title role, Oliver, for several years.

Abel Cartwright: Yes. Started it when I was seven and ended right after I turned fourteen.

Meredith Banks: So what instigated the weight loss?

Abel Cartwright: Honestly, I was told that if I didn’t lose weight, I’d be pigeon-holed into the fat funny sidekick roles for the rest of my life.

Meredith Banks: That bothered you?

Abel Cartwright: It wasn’t so much that it bothered me. I felt like I owed it to my family. They’d all made so many sacrifices for me to be in that show.

Meredith Banks: The show filmed in Texas, though, so you never had to move to Hollywood.

Abel Cartwright: Correct. And I am thankful I didn’t spend my formidable years there. That I was home with my parents and my twin brother.

Meredith Banks: So you owed your family and that’s why you lost weight.

Abel Cartwright: That’s why I started. Along the way I discovered that exercise, as much as I don’t love to do it, makes me feel better. I have ADHD, so the exercise gives me the dopamine my body needs and helps clear my head of all the static.

Meredith Banks: What about your diet?

Abel Cartwright: I don’t limit my food choices, for the most part. I listen to my body and eat what I’m craving. Sometimes that’s roasted asparagus, and sometimes it’s a brownie with ice cream.

Meredith Banks: What’s it like being a role model for other guys who want to go from fat to fit?

Abel Cartwright: My body transformation happened at the right time as well.

Puberty and the flood of hormones worked well with my efforts so it was easier to build muscle when my body was already trying to do that.

Yes, I did hard work, but I don’t consider myself a role model for weight loss or anything.

Meredith Banks: Why not?

Abel Cartwright: I guess because my motivation seems kind of shallow all these years later. I didn’t do it to improve my health or to have more energy. I did it so I could keep getting paid to be in front of the camera.

Meredith Banks: Even that, though, was somewhat altruistic, right? To pay back the money your parents lost.

Abel Cartwright: I guess you could say that. I brought some people into my family’s life that nearly cost us every dime. That was a wrong I needed to right.

Meredith Banks: As a teenage boy?

Abel Cartwright: You grow up fast when you’re in that world. It wasn’t like I crashed the car and their insurance rates went up. Those people took everything from my parents. I had to get it back.

Meredith Banks: And you did. Eventually.

Abel Cartwright: Yes. The first role I took after my “transformation” earned everything we’d lost and more.

Meredith Banks: You’ve been pretty guarded about your story and how you went from fat to fit. What made you decide to come out and tell it now?

Meredith Banks: Because I have to tell you, when my producer called me this morning, I was shocked. We’ve been trying to get you on the show for years.

Abel Cartwright: Here’s the thing, I know that as a public figure, I forfeit a certain amount of my privacy. It’s part of the gig, as they say. The truth is, I don’t owe anyone this story, and frankly, don’t even think of it in those terms. It was just my life.

Abel Cartwright: But you’re right, something changed which prompted me to come onto the show.

Meredith Banks:: Does it have anything to do with the pictures that appeared of you with that brunette in Texas?

Abel Cartwright: Yes.

Meredith Banks:: Is she someone special?

Abel Cartwright: Very special. And while I love the support my fans have given me over the years, I am furious with the callous and cruel comments on all of those pictures.

Meredith Banks:: Because your special lady is?—

Abel Cartwright: Beautiful. Sexy. And so many other things. What she’s not is a dumpster for internet trolls to shit all over.

Meredith Banks:: The comments haven’t been kind, to say the least.

Abel Cartwright: Here’s what’s wrong with our current culture. First of all, we need to stop acting like what someone weighs is a morality issue. Thin people aren’t better humans than fat people.

Abel Cartwright: Losing weight is hard. It was hard for me, and I had every advantage a person could have. For a lot of people, losing weight is doubly hard because eating right and exercising is a luxury some people don’t have.

Abel Cartwright: Like the single mothers working multiple jobs. When is she supposed to cook a well-balanced meal and go for a three-mile walk?

Abel Cartwright: Yet, society judges her for carrying extra weight.

Abel Cartwright: I am a firm believer that people should be healthy. They should do what they can to make their bodies as strong and healthy as possible. Sometimes that looks like being thin, but not always.

Abel Cartwright: Standards demand that women be tiny and waifish rather than healthy. We swing hard in the wrong direction. An unhealthy thin person isn’t more or less than an unhealthy fat person.

Abel Cartwright: The truth is, Meredith, no offense to you and everyone who works on this show, because I know you work extremely hard. But I never came on here before because I never wanted to capitalize on my “journey.”

Abel Cartwright: Glorifying weight loss is actually a dick move. And now people want to come at me because they don’t think I’m with the right woman.

Meredith Banks: You are obviously feeling very strongly about all of this.

AC: She’s everything to me. I love every part of her. I don’t love her in spite of her curves. I just love her. The body Esme Morales has is perfection to me because it’s her and she is my home.