fat

Leaving Fatville (don’t eat the wagon wheels)

In the last few months of 2013 two things happened:

  1. I stopped running.
  2. I started eating a lot of shortbread. Delicious, yummy shortbread.

In October at my annual physical I weighed in at 160 pounds. This was eight pounds more than the previous year. It was also ten pounds above my usual target of 150 pounds. This was bad.

On January 1st I stepped on the scale (it cried out) and saw these numbers: 174.6.

Yes, I was nearly 25 pounds over my target weight and more than 30 pounds over my low of 2012 when I tipped the scale at a mere 143 pounds during the height of my summer runs.

My size 30 jeans were no longer feeling comfy. I had to stand really straight to get a sort-of flat tummy in profile. I felt blah and listless. I kept stuffing shortbread into my face.

With the new year conveniently at hand I put myself back onto a weight loss regimen. As of this morning that horrific 174.6 number has changed to the slight-less horrific number of 172.2. It could be water, it could be a rounding error, the important thing is it’s going in the right direction and even though there is shortbread here right now, mere feet away from me in the kitchen, I AM NOT EATING IT.

I have been mostly snack-free these four days and the snacks I’ve allowed myself–a cube or two of Havarti cheese, some popcorn, a few carrot sticks–have kept me well under my daily calorie total. This is the hard part, the first week where my fat stomach says “I’m hungry, please continue to shove food into the mouth, okay?” and I must tell my stomach “No, you big stupid fat thing. You’ll have your two carrot sticks and you’ll like it!”

I’ll check in once a week or so to report whether my brain or stomach is triumphing.

When We Was Fat

This picture is from December 1999 or thereabouts, one of only a handful taken of me while I worked at the computer department of London Drugs. It was the last time I worked in retail. It will remain the last time I work in retail. I do not like retail. Don’t let the grin fool you. Pokemon just does that to you.

The two notable things here are:

1. No gray hair.
2. Fat. Do you think that shirt I’m wearing is kind of baggy? It’s not, really. I just had it mostly untucked to cover up the fact that my midsection looked like I had ingested a tire intact.

ld-pokemon-cropped

Here’s the full uncropped version of the same photo (click to enlarge). You can see the festive holiday decorations (a single red bow) and Viewsonic 17 inch monitors were going for less than $600. Such a deal. One day I’ll write about how I was forced to quit my job there and less than a week later three people in the department got fired. Good times all around!

ld-pokemon-big

I am the sty in the eye

Within days of each other I get both a sty in my eye and my most fun organ (hereafter referred to as my MFO) decides it is suddenly going to become infected again and no longer be in a pro state (see what I did there?) Every time I put my right foot forward I get a small jolt of pain in my abdomen. It’s great aversion therapy to keep one from walking about on a hot summer day. But I’m going for a 25-minute jog tomorrow no matter what so I insist my MFO co-operate fully in this matter and stop being a nuisance.

Whilst I strolled about today gnashing my teeth with every other step, I observed that pretty near every young male (let’s say 40 or under) had a distended belly, as if they were bodily trying to empathize with the malnourished children of some impoverished African nation. Having had this sort of prominent midriff myself until recently, I know that it is in fact a kind of malnutrition that causes this. I call it The Twinkie Diet but it goes by other names, too:

  • Ronald McDonald is My Father
  • The Sugar & Fat is Where It’s At Regime
  • Chocolate is a Food Group, Right?
  • Jolly Elf Fitness Plan
  • My Shirt Doubles as a Tent Diet

I now regard the movie WALL-E and its depiction of our future aboard the Axion as prophecy. Choose your super-reinforced hover chair today!