I imagine people would find it hard to believe that I was heavy for years. Heavy is putting it lightly; I was fat as hell. Portly by way of obese. Truly a fat fuck.
Not anymore. It has been years since I was overweight: gone are the days of my thighs rubbing together as I walk and I make semi-regular eye contact with my undersized penis, which are really telling signs that you've hit a point of concern: If chapped leg skin and disappearing genitalia doesn't raise a red flag then what does?
There were a couple of incidents that opened my eyes to my problem:
1: It was a Sunday and I was going out to lunch with my Father. Nothing upper tier, no tie required. I remember I was wearing a red polo shirt, sunglasses and uncomfortably snug pants and for some reason I noticed myself in the highly reflective glass of a Subway sandwich place. I looked fucking terrible. Really quite bad. First off, my mouth was open as I was gulping down air to prevent a black out from the little bit of mobility required to move me from vehicle to food repository. Two, I had tits. The red polo shirt betrayed me. I looked as though I was smuggling a ham and a pair of cut cantaloupes on my torso. It was a shocking reflection, but not enough to dissuade me from entering a restaurant and chowing down all of the high caloric treats on hand.
2: I had gotten into the habit of buying larger pants as I was still in denial about that which was obvious. One day while fresh out of the shower I jammed myself into some khakis and cinched the waist closed. It was a struggle. I had managed to suck my gut in, probably rearranging some vital organs in the process, to the point where I could just barely align the big pink button with the buttonhole. Relief as the button slid home. My muscles relaxed and my belly came rushing back against the waistband like a raging storm surge attacking a floodgate. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiip. Ptoom! The button exploded off my pants with enough force to ricochet audibly against the bathroom wall before landing in the pedestal sink.
"Shit", I thought, "I think I am fat."
No one ever told me how bad I looked. That's a problem with love, no one can be honest. There I was swelling up month after month, eating cookies, donuts and heavy breads all the while unaware at just how awful my body was becoming. I've heard that no one gets fat behind their back but it happened to me. Even as my knees ached, my thighs rubbed, my walk became a waddle, I still wasn't convinced. The stories listed above were the final straw, when the elephant in the room was revealed to be me.
Violently losing a button was the day I knew I had to go on a diet. But what was the diet going to be? I assume for most people this is the hardest decision because what are you willing to part with? What are you willing to do without? For me sugar was the enemy and I knew that in order to shed some pounds Big S had to go. I'm also a lazy fuck so I needed a diet that would keep food simple and easy to understand, and if I could get away with meals that I could eat on the reg, all the better. Keep me the hell out of the kitchen.
I settled on the Atkins Diet which at this point in time is probably too controversial a choice for most people but, fuck it, it worked for me. The tenets of my new faith were basic: Thou shalt not eat sugar, thou shalt not eat bread, thou can eat a fuckload of bacon however.
This diet came with a detox period as I had been enjoying the sweet stuff on a daily basis. I had to go cold turkey and amazingly I did it with no relapses or cheating. There is something in me where if I commit to something, I do it. I put my head down and work through it no matter what.
Funny, that may be the only semi-complimentary thing I could ever say about myself. You Formally Fat Fuck.
When I was a kid we had that classic analog bathroom scale upstairs, the one with the spinning dial of shame that spun wildly as you stepped on. When I was 9 or 10 I used to weigh myself all of the time because I was still under 100 pounds and I liked to keep track of that. Christ knows why. I've heard, mostly in TV and movies, of boys studying their bodies searching for the first signs of puberty as a sign of approaching manhood. I was too focused on hitting triple digits in the most shit carnival game I could find. And I would do it multiple times a day; Eat a meal? Weigh yourself. Get home from school? Weigh yourself. Have a bath? Weigh yourself.
When I was fat I hadn't weighed myself in years so I had no clue just how far the train had derailed: 241 pounds. Maybe that doesn't sound like a ton but the last number I remember seeing on a scale was 185, a number lost in the mists of Avalon at this point.
"Fuck. That is a lot."
Another decision made on D-Day, do I obsessively watch the scale or do I put that out of my head? I decided to avoid the whole thing. I focused full time on maintaining the diet. My thinking was if this 'eating reasonable amounts of food' thing was so damn smart, I will drop the pounds. If I focus on a number than it owns me and if I worry about how much that number drops or rises, I know I've lost. I refused to buy new clothes in a larger size, again owing to the thought that I shouldn't commit to the misshapen blob body I had. I would only buy things that were snug fitting in a size suitable for a healthy human: if they became loose fitting my routine was working.
Dieting was not difficult. Cravings came and went. I had a simple mantra, "I can't have that anymore". Simple. Just because you want something doesn't mean you should get it. Look, I don't feel that I deserve anything positive or good so it is nothing for me to be withholding. I am sure my mindset isn't one that other people can necessarily replicate. As I understand it dieting is absolutely brutal for other people but I am not a 'food guy'. In the days and years since doing the Atkins Diet I have lost any food lust I once had. Everything sucks now. You can give me the slowest roasted, most succulent, most praise-worthy roast and it tastes like shit. It tastes no different to a dollar hamburger. My relationship with food is now one of contempt: I don't want to eat but I have to. My diet de jour mainly consists of things people traditionally hate: a lot of plain spinach, bland rices and pastas with under seasoned poultry and fish.
Within a few months I had dropped from 241 pounds down to 198. I was doing well. I had incorporated the body flailing exercise / video game cross-'em-up Wii Fit into my new healthy life. Now I was being asked to scale daily, noting my fluctuating weight as I learned how to step in rhythm to clapping. Also yoga. During the summer months I took up walking the 'burbs with my iPod, digesting albums by The Smiths and Joy Division and feasting on podcasts from Kevin Smith's SModcast network. I still don't know what the attraction is to wandering neighborhoods with names like Galahad and Princess but it does something to me. It's nearly wistful or nostalgic. The summer before my Father died I distinctly remember strolling cul-de-sacs thinking, "Y'know, for ten grand I could probably do a shot-for-shot remake of Joe Dante's 'The 'burbs'".
Life hasn't gotten in the way so far. I can still find time to workout or exercise or whatever the hell people insist on calling physical activity these days. Gone are the Nintendo mini-games and now it's the far more traditional treadmill and weights routine. I love the treadmill. I like the fact that it feels dangerous; one false step and you fucking face plant or get hurled backward into a brick fireplace. Yeah, for some reason the treadmill at home is buttressed against the hearth, directly in front of an often ignited fire. What better motivation could there be than, 'Run unless you want to crash ass first into flames'. I'll either break records or my neck.
Embracing fitness has kind of ruined me for leisure activities. I don't like sitting around doing nothing. I still do it but now it pairs sloth and restlessness rather than sloth and self-righteousness. I don't Netflix and chill or Playstation and Rage, I usually just move around thinking, "shit, I guess I should watch/play something", but as soon as I boot up a movie or game I become instantly bored. I don't know how other people do it.
There are days when I miss being able to kick back and blast zombies all by myself while consuming 5800 calories in chocolate chip cookies. Back then I was physically warmer. I had hair. I had an Xbox 360 groaning with games. I had regular contact with friends.
Maybe getting fit was a mistake.
Adam Greene
Not anymore. It has been years since I was overweight: gone are the days of my thighs rubbing together as I walk and I make semi-regular eye contact with my undersized penis, which are really telling signs that you've hit a point of concern: If chapped leg skin and disappearing genitalia doesn't raise a red flag then what does?
There were a couple of incidents that opened my eyes to my problem:
1: It was a Sunday and I was going out to lunch with my Father. Nothing upper tier, no tie required. I remember I was wearing a red polo shirt, sunglasses and uncomfortably snug pants and for some reason I noticed myself in the highly reflective glass of a Subway sandwich place. I looked fucking terrible. Really quite bad. First off, my mouth was open as I was gulping down air to prevent a black out from the little bit of mobility required to move me from vehicle to food repository. Two, I had tits. The red polo shirt betrayed me. I looked as though I was smuggling a ham and a pair of cut cantaloupes on my torso. It was a shocking reflection, but not enough to dissuade me from entering a restaurant and chowing down all of the high caloric treats on hand.
2: I had gotten into the habit of buying larger pants as I was still in denial about that which was obvious. One day while fresh out of the shower I jammed myself into some khakis and cinched the waist closed. It was a struggle. I had managed to suck my gut in, probably rearranging some vital organs in the process, to the point where I could just barely align the big pink button with the buttonhole. Relief as the button slid home. My muscles relaxed and my belly came rushing back against the waistband like a raging storm surge attacking a floodgate. Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiip. Ptoom! The button exploded off my pants with enough force to ricochet audibly against the bathroom wall before landing in the pedestal sink.
"Shit", I thought, "I think I am fat."
No one ever told me how bad I looked. That's a problem with love, no one can be honest. There I was swelling up month after month, eating cookies, donuts and heavy breads all the while unaware at just how awful my body was becoming. I've heard that no one gets fat behind their back but it happened to me. Even as my knees ached, my thighs rubbed, my walk became a waddle, I still wasn't convinced. The stories listed above were the final straw, when the elephant in the room was revealed to be me.
Violently losing a button was the day I knew I had to go on a diet. But what was the diet going to be? I assume for most people this is the hardest decision because what are you willing to part with? What are you willing to do without? For me sugar was the enemy and I knew that in order to shed some pounds Big S had to go. I'm also a lazy fuck so I needed a diet that would keep food simple and easy to understand, and if I could get away with meals that I could eat on the reg, all the better. Keep me the hell out of the kitchen.
I settled on the Atkins Diet which at this point in time is probably too controversial a choice for most people but, fuck it, it worked for me. The tenets of my new faith were basic: Thou shalt not eat sugar, thou shalt not eat bread, thou can eat a fuckload of bacon however.
This diet came with a detox period as I had been enjoying the sweet stuff on a daily basis. I had to go cold turkey and amazingly I did it with no relapses or cheating. There is something in me where if I commit to something, I do it. I put my head down and work through it no matter what.
Funny, that may be the only semi-complimentary thing I could ever say about myself. You Formally Fat Fuck.
When I was a kid we had that classic analog bathroom scale upstairs, the one with the spinning dial of shame that spun wildly as you stepped on. When I was 9 or 10 I used to weigh myself all of the time because I was still under 100 pounds and I liked to keep track of that. Christ knows why. I've heard, mostly in TV and movies, of boys studying their bodies searching for the first signs of puberty as a sign of approaching manhood. I was too focused on hitting triple digits in the most shit carnival game I could find. And I would do it multiple times a day; Eat a meal? Weigh yourself. Get home from school? Weigh yourself. Have a bath? Weigh yourself.
When I was fat I hadn't weighed myself in years so I had no clue just how far the train had derailed: 241 pounds. Maybe that doesn't sound like a ton but the last number I remember seeing on a scale was 185, a number lost in the mists of Avalon at this point.
"Fuck. That is a lot."
Another decision made on D-Day, do I obsessively watch the scale or do I put that out of my head? I decided to avoid the whole thing. I focused full time on maintaining the diet. My thinking was if this 'eating reasonable amounts of food' thing was so damn smart, I will drop the pounds. If I focus on a number than it owns me and if I worry about how much that number drops or rises, I know I've lost. I refused to buy new clothes in a larger size, again owing to the thought that I shouldn't commit to the misshapen blob body I had. I would only buy things that were snug fitting in a size suitable for a healthy human: if they became loose fitting my routine was working.
Dieting was not difficult. Cravings came and went. I had a simple mantra, "I can't have that anymore". Simple. Just because you want something doesn't mean you should get it. Look, I don't feel that I deserve anything positive or good so it is nothing for me to be withholding. I am sure my mindset isn't one that other people can necessarily replicate. As I understand it dieting is absolutely brutal for other people but I am not a 'food guy'. In the days and years since doing the Atkins Diet I have lost any food lust I once had. Everything sucks now. You can give me the slowest roasted, most succulent, most praise-worthy roast and it tastes like shit. It tastes no different to a dollar hamburger. My relationship with food is now one of contempt: I don't want to eat but I have to. My diet de jour mainly consists of things people traditionally hate: a lot of plain spinach, bland rices and pastas with under seasoned poultry and fish.
Within a few months I had dropped from 241 pounds down to 198. I was doing well. I had incorporated the body flailing exercise / video game cross-'em-up Wii Fit into my new healthy life. Now I was being asked to scale daily, noting my fluctuating weight as I learned how to step in rhythm to clapping. Also yoga. During the summer months I took up walking the 'burbs with my iPod, digesting albums by The Smiths and Joy Division and feasting on podcasts from Kevin Smith's SModcast network. I still don't know what the attraction is to wandering neighborhoods with names like Galahad and Princess but it does something to me. It's nearly wistful or nostalgic. The summer before my Father died I distinctly remember strolling cul-de-sacs thinking, "Y'know, for ten grand I could probably do a shot-for-shot remake of Joe Dante's 'The 'burbs'".
 |
| You were going to spend $10,000 to remake a movie? |
 |
| RUN |
There are days when I miss being able to kick back and blast zombies all by myself while consuming 5800 calories in chocolate chip cookies. Back then I was physically warmer. I had hair. I had an Xbox 360 groaning with games. I had regular contact with friends.
Maybe getting fit was a mistake.
Adam Greene
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