I’m fat

Yep, it’s true. Big fucking deal. More than 2 out of 3 people in this grand land of the United States are fat.

Really fat.

Maybe like me you are also fat. The super scientific* BMI calculator from the US Department of Health & Human Services puts me at 35.

That’s off the scale fat, well into the obese category. There is a 33% chance that you are in the same boat as me.

When I look at myself, I don’t really hate who I see. I don’t see an “obese” man. I live in NYC and can walk quickly for miles without having a heart attack. I have a wonderful lady (who is super hot btw) whom I met while I look this way, and I generally don’t feel that terrible about myself.

About two weeks ago I realized that when sitting on a chair, and bending over to put my shoes on…I couldn’t breathe. This has been happening for quite a while, but I only recently became conscious of it. That’s because becoming fat isn’t like drinking a twelve pack of PBR. You aren’t immediately punished for your poor choices.**

What was really shocking to me was that to compensate for my large gut I had subconsciously created a routine for putting my shoes on:

1. Find a hard chair, preferably one with a solid back(1. so no couches or soft cushions that you sink into 2. solid back so you don’t see my ass come out of my pants)
2. Take off button down shirt (don’t want creases from smashing it between my legs and gut)
3. Expunge all air from lungs
4. Bend over and put shoe on while feeling my gut crush my inner organs and lungs
5. Straighten up and gasp for air
6. Repeat step 3, 4 and 5 for the other shoe

Not being able to breathe was the trigger where I finally realized that my weight is: unhealthy.

So I made a plan to change things.

Fortunately I come from a freak show of a family that spends 90% of it’s time thinking about health, gluten, supplements and super scientific*** remedies for feeling anything less than 100% superhuman.

When I was younger and I just straight trusted everything my family told me; I would do what was called a Purification Program about twice a year. It’s basically a diet of raw veggies and fruits with some protein supplements for 21 days. The first time I did it, I felt like a superhuman. I couldn’t believe how I felt, all from raw veggies and moonbeams!****

The truth was that at the time I was about 24 years old, I smoked a pack of cigarettes a day and hit up the bars with my buddies 6 days a week in NYC.

Anyone who is that young and living that kind of lifestyle that just stops smoking and drinking for a few weeks is going to feel like a superhuman. The whole idea and results of the Purification Program was intoxicating, and I was encouraged by the family unicorn to continue to follow the yellow brick road of alternative medicine thinking.

Some years later I was at work when I pulled out one of these:

A colleague laughed and asked me if I was ready for the retirement home. I gave him the finger and called him the fat piece of shit he is, but it still got me thinking.

“Why am I taking some 40+ ‘supplements’ a day as a 20 something year old in good health?”

This got me questioning a lot of what I believed about health and food.

In any case I stopped doing the purification programs. Some of it because I stopped believing in purification and some of it because I got older, jobs got more stressful, I had less time and Dorito’s sounded better.

Back to how I’m fat.

My plan is to take some of the things that I learned when I believed in the Supreme Being of Kale & a good healthy dose of science to design an eating lifestyle for myself that will make me: not fat.

I’ll share the details of my plan, my progress and how I’m doing it here.

Next up: The Plan.