The Credible Shrinking Man

If you know me, you know that for a while now I have been fat. In my skin-tight, 2XL navy blue work uniform, I have been mistaken for Violet Beauregard, and the Oompa-Loompas have tried to roll me to the juicing room more than once (I really do chew gum constantly).

This was me the week before Halloween 2007:

It would be convenient for me to say that emotional eating took over my life when Mom died last July; by that point, however, I was already superfat. At Mom's funeral, I was wearing this monster of a shiny grey suit with about 27 buttons down the front. I bought it at a thrift store and I think it had been previously owned by Bruce Bruce (the host of BET's Comic View). It was very urban churchy. On any normal-sized man, this would have looked like David Byrne's giant Stop Making Sense suit. For me, it was tight through the middle.

By Christmas, I was nearly 300 pounds. 5' 8" and 300. Almost 300 -- 298 and change.

I needed a change. I don't really make New Year's resolutions, but January First was a convenient date for me to make some lifestyle changes. Then, on January 31, I turned forty. Four-oh. I have not been to the doctor for the big four-oh physical. When you are forty and you go in for your checkup, they send you to the proctologist. The proctologist essentially takes a plumber's snake with a webcam on the tip and jams it straight up your ass. All the way up your ass. Slowly probing and twisting. Is this making you horny? WTF is wrong with you. Yeesh. So that isn't kinda hot, in a way? WTF is wrong with you. Yeesh. As I say, I have not been. I am not ready to pay a millionaire to tell me that I am way too fat, and then send me to pay some other millionaire to also tell me that I am way too fat and while feeding a roto-rooter up my rectum. Rectum? It nearly killed 'um. Bah-dum, ching. About his own probative event, comedian Robert Schimmel said, "I taste metal." I couldn't possibly suffer the indignity of it all with Greenpeace simultaneously trying to push me back into the sea.

I was already getting smaller in March of 2008, when The Learning Channel aired British DJ/hypnotist Paul McKenna's I Can Make You Thin. This provided me with a couple of strategies: step counting and distracting myself from cravings.

• Step counting. I hate exercise for the sake of exercise. I love physical exertion in the name of something practical, but athletics and the gym are not my bag. I have maintained for years that I have a very active job which should completely make up for my hate of sports and workouts. It turns out that I was right. Paul McKenna reccommends 10,000 steps per day. My workday averages 12,000 to 15,000 steps. If I am a few steps short one day, a walk up to the grocery or the drugstore usually makes up the difference. My wife Tracey easily doubles my average daily steps, that showoffy skinny bitch. My Dad scoffs at all this walking...as he drives his Cadillac the few blocks to the drugstore to pick up his meds for type-2 diabetes and high blood-pressure.
• Distracting myself from cravings. Paul McKenna uses this rapid succession of hand movements, tappings, and vocalizations to scramble the brain a little bit and disrupt the craving. It helps. So does green tea. So does a frothy Metamucil smoothie. So does MGD 64 (I blame my b-sis Beck's mention of this redo of MGD Light for getting my alcoholic beverage average over 1 per month -- yay booze).

This is where I am now, the week before Halloween 2008:
This year, so far, I have lost 75 pounds. An XL is now a pretty loose fit, and much of the time I wear L. If the additional notches I've drilled in my belt are to be believed, I have lost 8 inches off my waist. Still, I am around 225. I am at a plateau. I have hit diminishing returns. Poopie. Nothing is ever good enough.


I would like to make it an even 100 for the year -- but Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas are realistically going to knock me off my pace.


Next time: more hi-jinx, and a look at the start of the New Fall (eating) Season.