Descend into the Maelstrom

My entrance into the club of fat fucks is taking shape.  No, I’m not in there just yet, but I’m certainly waiting in line by the velvet rope, just about to get in.  Maybe this analogy is a bad one: being fat isn’t exclusive.  In fact, 40% of America is supposed to be obese.  However, I’m cursed with the Indian version: your stomach grows, but no other part of your body does.  So you walk around with thin arms, chicken legs, a normal chest, and a lard-ass belly.  You’re not proportionally fat, just fat in the stomach.  And as an added disadvantage you don’t look very tough, like a fat lineman from an NFL team or the bully who beat kids up in the schoolyard.

In fact, the growth of my belly coincides with a disturbing nationwide statistical trend.  For the last 150 years straight, life expectancy in America has continued to go up year after year after year due to advances in medical care and public education.  The doctors qualified to do these types of studies are finding out that for the first time in this era, life expectancy is actually beginning to go down.  Because of obesity.  How bad is that?  What’s wrong with us? 

We all know the answer.  Modern people suck at taking care of themselves.  TV, video games, and the advent of personal computing keep us inside with sedentary work or entertainment instead of outside riding our bikes or chasing each other up and down trees like God intended us to.  Cheap, fatty, salty fast foods, at various times frozen, thawed, preserved, and otherwise processed, are washed down by delicious carbonated beverages saturated with high-fructose corn syrup to ensure that another generation of kids, rich and poor will tip the scales at a young age and never shed the weight because clever marketing tools like the Happy Meal will keep them hooked to a lifetime of french fries and soda.

Obviously, there’s more going on.  There’s genetics and metabolism, things out of our control.  However, I would argue that our will is the strongest factor in our obesity.  I know I am getting fat because I’m letting it happen.  I’m overeating every day, and I haven’t gone to the gym, rollerbladed, or played basketball or touch football for 6 months.  This is unfortunately coinciding almost exactly with several other things: my stress level at work has risen, my metabolism has just noticeably started to slow down, and on a more fortunate level, some issues with my digestive system have been resolved.  The result is that I have gained about 30 pounds in two years, almost all of it in the aforementioned belly.

Will is my problem.  I was disturbed that  the prospect of a trip to Brazil featuring me running around shirtless or tank-topped for the majority of a week, surrounded by what I expected to be beautiful girls and muscular dudes, did not motivate me to lift some weights.  Here’s roughly what happened.

One month before the trip I told myself: "I’ll hit the gym at the three-week mark."

Three weeks before the trip I told myself: "I only need two weeks to get into shape.  I’ll hit the gym in a week."

The two-week mark: "I only need one week to lose this gut.  In fact, I don’t even need to go to the gym.  At the one-week mark, I’ll start doing tons of sit-ups and push-ups every day in my living room."  I got so good at convincing my lazy self of this, it’s scary.

The one-week mark: "Fuck it.  I’m American.  I don’t need to work out, they’ll love me down there anyway."

So the biggest motivating factor in the world didn’t get me off my lard-ass.  What will?  I don’t know.  It’s not as if I like becoming fat- but I’m not at the point yet that I look completely unattractive, at least to myself.  And it’s still kind of a novel, new thing to me, because I have never been fat my entire 26-year life.  I look at my belly in part amusement, part disbelief, part awe.  I’m used to being the skinniest kid around for miles.  My older sister used to tell people when we were kids that it was funny to see me in a swimming suit because you could see all my bones.

Therein lies the rub:  I’m in denial.  I look at myself and I think, "Look at that guy.  Isn’t that funny."  My mind hasn’t yet registed that I’m getting obese, that it’s time to bring on the self-loathing.  My mind doesn’t yet understand that I’m not the person I used to be just a few years ago, when I could wolf down unlimited amounts of food and not gain a single pound from it.  I’m not accepting that I’m getting older, and in a larger sense, I have yet to accept adulthood itself.  I have the feeling that I’ll wake up one morning after doing a couple sit-ups, and the belly will be gone, and instead there will be the six-pack that I have been used to having all my life without really trying.  Believing this kind of crap is the reason that I am not changing my lifestyle- and why the country is full of lard-asses.  I’m under the impression that I can get the six pack whenever I feel like- the frame is under there somewhere, right?  In the meanwhile, why not enjoy life with some good eats and sit around, reading the Economist or writing a blog?