My first serious attempt at
losing weight came about many years ago as a result of the shock and horror I
experienced after sitting for a new passport photo. I had gone to one of those
storefront photo places and paid good money for a half dozen shots from which
to choose. The best of them looked more like Herve Villachaize than me and that
image, still gracing my passport today, has led to more than one uncomfortable
encounter with Homeland Security. I'd recently had an annual physical at which
I'd been greeted by my comedian-doctor with, “You are one fat bastard!.” This
was the same doctor who said, while snapping on the glove just prior to
investigating my prostate, “I just want you to know, I ain't your bitch...”, so
I paid perhaps less attention to the fat comment than I should have. But the
night I spent at the hospital sleep-study for snoring, sitting in a fluorescent
lounge watching “Touched By An Angel” with a group of four-hundred-pounders
squeezed in to johnnies pretty much did the trick. Too much neck weight, I was
told.
Cabbage soup was the current cure and the
recipe hadn't changed much since the siege of Stalingrad: simmer shredded
cabbage in water to cover until soft. Enjoy. This seemed to work pretty well,
particularly as eating nothing at all soon became preferable to another bowl of
cabbage soup. I found myself reading the
fine print on the calorie section of everything at the supermarket. In fact, I
could spend hours grazing the aisles picking up tasty looking items, reading
the labels and putting them down again. I wasn't missing the food so much as
the cooking, and this led to experimenting with all the “fake” and fat-free
items then beginning to crowd the shelves. I made a cheesecake from fat-free
cream cheese, fake sugar, zero-calorie egg product, one of those Keebler,
severely reduced graham cracker crusts and a variety of CoolWhip which,
according to the label, had nothing whatsoever in it at all. In fairly short
order I managed to lose forty or fifty pounds, gave up a few chins and the diet
and commenced to fatten up again.
Here in Maine it's fairly common to round
the end-cap of the Entenman's aisle to find oneself up close and personal with
a vast expanse of bulging lavender stretch-pant. Endless winters of bad TV,
coffee brandy and crock-pot Mac n' Cheese have set the standard for both the
male and female form. Whereas a few of us fat bastards continually binge and
purge, most of the folks I see waddling around the Shaws or Walmart parking
lots seem pretty content and unconcerned with their prodigious girth. The cars
and trucks they're squeezing into or being helped out of list to one side after
years of unevenly distributed weight, and sport bumper stickers that say “Fat
Chicks Have More To Love” and “I Don't
Skinny Dip I Chunky Dunk”.
I'm pretty much down to my fighting weight
these days; been working on it now for a few months with my friend Malcolm. We
share carrot sticks and the occasional bag of popcorn for lunch at work. I
broke a tooth last week and the abject terror involved in speculating about a
remedy for that has worked wonders, too. Tomorrow they are removing that tooth together
with a few of its neighbors..... leaving me without much chew. I suspect this
will help keep the weight down as the winter months approach and images of
comfort food crowd the imagination. I'll be reaching for that coffee brandy,
though....
