Return of The Fatman Chronicles

I’ve had this sneaking suspicion hanging over my head for quite sometime now. I didn’t want to say anything about it, because the implications could be disastrous. So I buried my head in the sand and tried to pretend that things were not as they appeared to be. Occasionally, I would notice little signs that pointed me towards the truth, but I denied the existence of these messages, dismissing them as the product of an overactive mind and a sensitive ego.

But truth has a way of making itself heard, no matter how far into your ears you can plunge your fingers while loudly singing, “La La La…I can’t hear you.”

Last weekend I went to dinner with some friends. We sat on the patio in the warm, late summer sun. With the armrests of the wicker-esque chairs digging into the sides of my legs and sweat running down my forehead like the Nile overrunning its banks, I could no longer avoid the nasty truth: I am fat again.

Four years ago, I stepped onto a scale and read the number out loud to myself. Three hundred sixty pounds. Say that again, just for effect. Feel it roll of the tongue and hang in the air about your head. Three…Hundred…Sixty. That number confirmed for me what my family and my doctors could not do with their incessant pleading and pointing and screaming. I was a fat bastard.

When we left the restaurant, I wedged myself out of my seat and limped on weak ankles and crushed knees across the parking lot to my car, wheezing the whole way. I was afraid that I had let myself get back to the horrible condition in which I spent a large portion of my life.

I was so scared that I went straight home and tried on my fat pants. The fat pants were the only pair of dress pants that fit me when I was at my largest. Luckily, they were still entirely too big for me, but they didn’t feel quite as tent-like as they have in the past.

I don’t have a scale, so I don’t know what I weigh exactly. At my best, I had made it all the way down to 235. At that point, I was wearing 38 inch waist blue jeans and single XL shirts that billowed at the midsection and strained across my shoulders (if I ever get back into weightlifting, my upper body will truly be a magnificent sight to see!). Now, I stretch out XXL shirts after washing them, just to make sure they don’t shrink too much, and I can fit into a pair of 42 inch waist pants if I suck in my gut and speak falsetto. I’d guess that puts me somewhere around 280 or 290, which means I have a long way to go if I hope to ever make it down to a reasonable weight.

In “The Fatman Chronicles part 1,” I kept a journal of what happened on a daily basis as I waded through a sea of fresh vegetables and diet soda, muscle building exercises and the endless miles of roads I trekked in my quest to loose the extra few tires I had accumulated around my midsection. So I’m doing it again! And I hope you’ll join me. You might not make it out on the road for the late night walks through dangerous neighborhoods, and you probably won’t choose brussel sprouts over pizza, but at the very least you can read this journal and make fun of me as best you can.

Because if Saturday Night Live has taught us anything it’s that fat people, by their very definition, exist for our enjoyment and our ridicule. (*please note…I don’t believe this about all fat people…just me!*).

So, without further adieu, I bring you the first of what will be many FATMAN CHRONICLES!