Carry That Weight A Long Time

Friends,

I promised another post about my weight, which is decreasing at about the speed as the continents are moving at this rate, but hey, progress is progress.

The other day on the news, they had a story about the alarming weights of mall Santa Clauses. Apparently, Santas are fat (gasp!) and that may not be sending the right message to kids, so Santas may need to slim down to a fitter, more athletic giver of joys. His belly would no longer shake like a bowlful of jelly, but rather remain rigid and firm, like a washboard (male model Santas?). This seems a little reactionary to me, rewriting icon like Santa because cheap food is fatty, is a bit much...seems to me that's like trying to fix going bald by dying your hair red. But, they recast the Cookie Monster as a recovering cookie addict (cookies are now a sometime food for the hair blue monster), so maybe this is a trend. Easter Bunny will give out carrots now, Peeps will be stuffed with Vitamins, chocolate hearts will be replaced by cauliflower hearts on Valentine's Day, Uncle Sam handing out stalks of celery for the fourth of July...sky's the limit.

Back to the fat Santa's. The average Santa weight according to that report, nationwide I believe, is a rotund 254 pounds...with some Santa's over 300 pounds. Right now, I weigh around 289 pounds, give or take a few, depending on what time of day I get on the scale. That's a 35 pound difference. I am fatter than the average Santa Claus (if you read this with some Yogi Bear inflection, it's kind of funny). Goddamn.

It's a strange feeling knowing you're fatter than Santa. I'm not sure what it's equivalent would be. Being better at archery than Cupid? Bigger buck teeth than the Easter bunny? Taller than Uncle Sam on stilts?

This wouldn't be that bad of a gig if I were 35 pounds more jovial than Santa. Or 35 pounds more magical. But, turns out I just ate 35 pounds more cookies than the red-cheeked, red-cloaked man of gifts. I'd overtax those eight tiny reindeer...probably would need to strap Donner's wife and that one cute reindeer that Rudolph liked onto the sleigh to make sure we got off the ground. I'd never make it up those chimneys, if I could get down them in the first place, and not wind up some stinking corpse wedged in the chimney come New Years.

It got me thinking about when exactly did I weigh as much as Santa. Like, how old was I when I eclipsed St. Nick? It must have been sometime in college, or maybe even high school...I don't know how exponential my weight gain was. I was never self-aware of my body before I began this weight loss adventure. Not that I didn't know I was fat, but it was more like that I didn't fully realize what fat looked and felt like, and didn't think thinner was a possibility because I doubted I had the discipline to stick to a diet or a workout regiment. So, I was okay with being overweight, even if that gave me some bouts of depression. That all changed, thank goodness, but this being fatter than Santa set me down the road of thinking about how long I've been the fat kid. A it's been a long goddamn time.

I remember in junior high, the first girl who ever said a kind word to me, said "You have pretty eyes, and if you lost some weight, I'd date you." I don't remember her name, but thanks for the compliment whoever you are. But there was fatness before then. I was a fat kid in sixth grade, not picked on because of it because I was charismatic. Same story with fifth. There is a picture of me as a kid, maybe I'm in fourth grade, and I'm trying to sit up, and my gut is hanging out of my shirt. I remember that picture very, very well. I have t-ball pictures where I was a tubby kid. But, never the tubbiest.

There was always someone fatter than me, which gave me a bit of a license to not feel so bad about myself. As a little kid, there was my Uncle Herbie and Cousin Todd who were hugely fat. In t-ball, it was Jeremy. Fifth grade through junior high, Tanya. High school, this fella named Conrad. College there were people walking around that I was able to say "Whew, thank God I'm not like X." All throughout my life, there was always someone fatter, so that double whopper wouldn't be that bad for me, or six Pepsis in a day, because hey, I wasn't as fat as "that guy" so I was in the clear.

But when I got to Mankato, I looked around...there really wasn't anyone I could compare myself too. Or at least those I could compare myself too were harder to find. I couldn't say, "Oh hey, look at that guy...See, there's no reason why I couldn't have three chicken sandwiches because at least I'm not like him." And when I lost that, my fat security blanket, I saw how goofy my logic was in the first place.

I never considered myself healthy because I was thinner than the fatter-than-mes. No, no. It was a matter of degree. Just as long as I wasn't the fattest guy, I was okay. I could still make fat jokes. I could still eat what I wanted. I was okay because I wasn't the worst. And that was just plain dumb. I mean, c'mon...just because the guy next to you in the hospital bed is going to die in 3 weeks, doesn't make your 5 weeks all that much better...still gonna die, and soon...and you'll both need a handful of extra pall bearers.

But this weight comparison trick is something I haven't been able to let go, but now it's the other way. When I see weights lilsted or see people about my height but thinner, especially on sporting events, I get a little jealous. I'm not crying buckets of tears or anything dramatic, but more like "Goddamnit. I need to not eat today." Like when I'm watching football games, and they start quoting the weight of linemen, I get a little depressed that I weigh more than some of them, and I'm not being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to push equally tubby people. Or anytime I hear someone considered fat, then they say a weight under mine, it gives me a bit of a pause...and a want to leap on my exercise bike and ride until I pass out because if they are fat, and they weigh less than me, what the hell am I? So when I saw that Santa Claus tidbit, that was another damn thing. What I'm still trying to figure out is what exactly changed. Yes, I lost my fat blanket, but that doesn't seem like enough. If I wanted to, I could have found someone to compare myself to, but the levee broke just the same, and here I am...with my vegetable foodlife and loose pants. Albeit these pants would be loose on every normal weighted American, but hey, they weren't that way before.

But, at least I'm reasonable with the comparisons. It's not like I'm looking at thin people or models and getting pissy. Just other tubbies who weigh less than me. And when I get under that threshold, then I'll aim lower. Eventually I'll start feeling bad about myself because some normal people weigh less, but I'm not there yet.

And, I am making progress. I've lost around 10 pounds or so since my last weight post, so I'm moving in the right direction, but tortoise like. So, eventually I'll be back to my Santa weight, hopefully sometime around April or May. Then, it'll be time to find someone else to compare myself too.

Viva el mustache y weight loss!