Baby Monkey Riding Backwards On A Pig

It seems like a million years since the last F.A.T. diary entry. I have lived this entire year out in my head, the laps at the gym, the heartbreak at the weigh ins, the relationships, the tribulations I’m having up at my job, the whole kitten caboodle. I have gone through the entire dramatic arc of life only to wake up and realize… holy shit, it’s only been seven days! Things have sort of been on fast forward this week. I was listening to “Don’t Give up” by John Legend and P!nk while walking up here to my favorite coffeshop in a very calm and picturesque Los Angeles sunset and realized that it was probably the most tranquil I have been all week. I’ve been meaning to write just about every day but I have just been bombarded with so much other "extracurricular" stuff that I really haven’t had the chance. But today, thankfully, I got a little time for some peace.

So first off… yup… 289.2 lbs... Fuck yeah! Curiously enough however, that’s a weight loss of 5.4 lbs… the exact same amount that I lost the very first week back in 2008… creepy! Regardless… I was just ecstatic to have lost anything. Awhile back I bought a scale and I used to weigh myself religiously back in the day. I have since sort of trained myself to step on it not more than two times a week. Mainly because I just didn’t want to be surprised at the weigh-in at the actual meeting. However, when I stepped on it this week I was horribly shocked to find that my scale was broken. (Either that or I actually do weigh 62.E pounds). So when I stepped on the scale this time at the meeting, it was with total blinders on, I had no idea what was going to pop up.

During the million years that went past this week, not only was I not able to squeeze in some much needed writing time, neither was I able to squeeze in some much needed gym time. I didn’t make it in there one single time this week. For those not in the know, I have recently changed positions in my company whereas for the past eight years I have been the IT guy and as of date I am more the PR/Graphic Design guy. It was a move that I welcomed with open arms and I feel could be very beneficial to the company as well as my own professional growth… however, as Damon Wayans once quoted in a movie, “a job ain’t nothing but work.” A point that became evident my first week back from Christmas vacation as my immediate supervisor had the gall to expect that I… show up on time, finish my tasks, not show up in pajama pants with night club stamps all over my wrists. Sometime last week it suddenly occurred to me, “Oh shit… I have a job.” So I constructed this plan whereas I would workout in the morning then write when I get home… but neither ever really happened. I was, however, virulent about writing down every single solitary thing that went down my gullet… and I mean everything. It’s one of the main edicts of Weight Watchers, they call in “journaling”; keeping a record of everything you eat. I have always hated it and I don’t think I have grown a fondness to the task but I decided to just look at it as homework and just do it with hopes that it would help in the end. I realize that the main purpose of this is to just be aware of everything you eat. It kind of goes in congruence with that Maya Angelou quote, “When you know better, you do better…” Like, when you’re eating five Big Macs a day, there’s a certain delusion that you build whereas, you kinda know that it’s not completely right, but you don’t really know how wrong you’re actually being. Well… if you flat out know that a Big Mac is 540 calories… and five of them is 2,700 calories… and you need to keep under 1,200 calories… a day… it’s hard eat them. It’s hard to consciously do something that you know is wrong (for the most part at least. I recently lost a really good friend of mine who consistently did just that and who’s pathology of purposeful evil doing was starting to creep me out to the point of imaging that she was going to wind up making a “woman suit” one day, but I digress…)

Even though I never did make it to the gym, I tracked every chicken breast, Lean Cuisine, Baked Lays BBQ Chips, even Hershey’s kisses that I engulfed this past week. I do have to say that as tiring as it is, it is extremely helpful in coming to some sort of realization of exactly how much food you consume in a day. That was one of the main reasons why I never wanted to do it; I figured my hand would just be so tired from all that scribbling. I mean, seriously, can you imagine the reams of paper Marlon Brando would have gone through writing down everything he ate? I really do think that if your typical overweight person would write down everything they ate and realized that they have exhausted a ream of paper and/or pack of pens… and it’s only been two days since you began writing… you would alter your food consumption just a bit. I, for sure, certainly did.

I can tell you pre-Weight Watchers a typical day for me would be to have a Popeye’s 2 piece fried chicken meal with macaroni and cheese and mashed potatoes with gravy, a biscuit and large Coke for breakfast. During the course of the morning I would have approximately three or four Cokes from the vending machine. Lunch would be a Chicken Whopper, Whooper Jr., Onion Rings and a Strawberry pop. About three or four more Cokes from the vending machine. On the way home I would want a little something to nosh on so I would hit Burger King one last time for a cheeseburger and another Coke. I would get home and order… a large Meat Lovers pizza from Pizza Hut, and an order of Spicy Honey BBQ Wings… and a two liter Coke. This was a typical day, every day, for years. Did I mention I’m 5’6” (5’7” in heels) and used to weigh 382 lbs.? Now you know why. And if I would have sat down and wrote all that stuff down with its total nutritional value it would have blown my fat little mind away! I haven’t actually done it, actually figured out how much all that adds up, but I’m pretty sure it’s comparable to the amount of shit they shove down an elephant’s throat at the zoo.

So a typical day for me now:

Breakfast: McDonalds’ Egg McMuffin (which is surprisingly enough, one of the healthier breakfast foods you can have. Seriously… look it up...) or if I have time, multigrain blueberry waffles, two eggs and two Morning Star Vegetarian sausage patties.

Lunch: Usually some sort of Lean Cuisine frozen dinner. Sometimes I get a bag of Baked Lays Potato Chips.

Snacks, etc: I keep apples, bananas and/or carrot sticks on hand. Sometimes I’ll get a salad and use Fat Free Dressing. I don’t do pop anymore… but I do coffee. I don’t know if it’s better, but it works for me.

Dinner: Usually some sort of Healthy Choice, Lean Cuisine frozen dinner whatever, with a skinless, boneless chicken breast and some vegetables. I’m partial to using low sodium Liquid Aminos.

One glorious day I’m going to learn how to cook or get married to somebody who knows how to cook so I can eliminate all the processed frozen foods out of my diet but until then, quite honestly… popping low calorie, high protein, high fiber Roasted Chicken Tenderloins in a balsamic glaze with orzo pasta and vegetable medley with green bean amandine in the microwave works just fine for me. Now Weight Watchers actually doesn’t want you to be dependent on prepackaged frozen foods and would rather you learn how to cook healthy foods yourself and make healthier choices. It’s definitely the endgame for me, I definitely don’t want to be fifty and having a diet filled with frozen dinners but… what can I say… I’m a dude… I fucking hate cooking. I’m going to have to take baby steps on that one. (And even when/if I decide to learn how to cook, do not expect me to take pictures of it and paste it up everywhere… I just think it’s a goofy thing to do… I LOVE you Jen but it's just fucking GOOFY! LOL!)

There are going to be a few people in my life that are going to wind up being featured prominently in this blog, mainly because they are featured prominently in my life. Let’s start with Harold. Now Harold, quite honestly, is not a terribly close friend, but he is a very dear “associate” that I befriended online a couple of years ago. Actually if I remember right it might have been on one of those man-on-man sex hook up sites (we never did have sex by the way). He lives in Atlanta and whenever he visits Los Angeles, which is often, he hits me up and we go have Thai food and catch with each other’s lives. We have both gained a substantial amount of weight since the last time we saw each other. While I think I gained more than he has, he claimed that his present weight is the highest he has ever been in his life. He plans to eventually monitor his eating habits but he is determined to begin the monitoring by first “fasting” and cutting back his caloric intake dramatically… which I can’t stand in judgment of. I didn’t even want to advise him of anything different, “Shit, if it works for you… fuck it…” He asked me what the worst experiences of being 382 lbs. were… what the worst aspects of it were. Losing my boyfriend because I couldn’t get it up tops the list. A bacterial infection similar to a diaper rash on the back on my neck is another one. Hemorrhoids. Never being able to buckle up on a plane. Taking up two seats on the city bus. Not being able to walk half a block without taking a break. That one time when they had to call on the assistance of four maintenance workers to try and snap the safety bar down on my pudgy body when I was trying to get onto a roller coaster at Six Flags... I think I stopped there. I don’t think I mentioned that my laundry bill went up because a normal sized washing machine can only hold a single pair of 62” waist jeans or that whenever Pizza Hut came to my apartment or office building they automatically placed my name on the order thinking there was at least an 85% chance that I was the one who had placed the order. Or the time when I and my 72 year old father were caught in the rain and he beat me by a good ten minutes fast walking to the car. None of which convinced him to thwart his plan of fasting the fat away. If anything it convinced me to drop the whole Weight Watcher’s shtick and just start vomiting right then and there...

Another is a really good friend of mine named Elroy whom, unfortunately, I have not seen physically seen in approximately three years. When I first met Elroy years ago, he was morbidly obese. At 5’7” (5’8” in heels) he well toppled the scales at over 500 pounds. He had since elected to get some gastric bypass surgical procedures and dropped well over 200 pounds in the process. However, in a completely unrelated issue, his doctors found cancerous cells and proceeded to attack them with various forms of chemotherapy. In the process, he dropped well over another 100 pounds. For the life of me I could not imagine what this man could possibly look like considering the fact I have known him to be the Michelin Man's doppelgänger since the day I met him. But there he was, on the front porch of my apartment building, looking every bit of the 150 pounds he had pre-warned me that he was. It was shocking to say the least. He had previously told me that when he went to the club recently, his old associates took one look at him, a gay man who has been out of commission for a long time and returning noticeably skeletal, and made the most obviously heterosexual assumption of his physical status. Some looked at him and began crying instantaneously. Others greeted him with curt graciousness then quickly ran back to their gaggle of friends who began to point, giggle and pontificate. Being the kind hearted, decent, child of God that I am the first thing that came to mind was, “Bitch you do look like you’re on your death bed!” His response, “The last time I saw you, you were looking buff and muscular. You look like you’ve been eating balloons ever since!” Needless to say, time didn’t change a thing between us. We went to get some beers and shoot the shit and we had a really good time. He’s in good spirits and despite his gaunt appearance, he’s in good health. No more cancer cells were present and he’s just taking everything one day at a time. He joked that he was pissed that he got the gastric bypass surgery… that if he had known that he was going have to one day get chemotherapy that he would have just ate his ass off until it happened. He was really thin. Amazingly thin. I don’t want to be that thin. I wondered; if I had to choose, 382 or 150… I’m thinking I would choose 382. I think the whole thing just kind of creeped us both out and we were just trying to deal with it the best way we could. I got us both some Bud Lights. He said, “Do you really think a light beer is gonna make a difference ‘Precious’?” I said, “Well I was trying to be nice. I was thinking anything over 16 oz. of liquid and you would fucking collapse. “ No, time has not changed us at all.

And the last, but certainly not least [insert long dramatic drum roll here]… Dean. Yup, the ever (in)famous Dean. The Ballad of Dean and Breeze: We were intense lovers. We were intense enemies. We became half way decent friends. Then I hated him again. Then I loved him again. Rinse. Wash. Repeat. For almost a decade now that I think about it! He’s married now to some philandering asshole that totally deserves him and I don’t regret a thing about not being in that cycle again. However, as demented as it seems, and even Elroy who absolutely hates Dean understands the logic of this… Dean and I are pretty good friends. At this point it feels like we are old army buddies, having gone through the war… with no intention of enlisting ever again… at least on my part. Sometimes I think Dean is a little shell shocked and as Alanis Morrissette once intoned he wants to “go to the dungeon to make peace with his days in the dungeon.” But all in all, I don’t think he’s ever going to leave his husband. Harold asked why do I think that. I responded with one of the more profound things I’ve said in a while, “Because he doesn’t know any better.” But he does have a weight problem. In fact he pretty much has the same weight problem that I have. He “gets” it. That diet of Popeye’s and Pizza and Burger King… he gets it. It was definitely one of the few things that we had in common when we were together. And while I might still harbor some childish animosity about our breakup… I can’t turn my back a chubby guy needing some help, especially when I am well aware of the intimacies of the pain he’s going through (it took five maintenance workers to try and snap the safety bar down on him when he was trying to get onto the roller coaster at Six Flags). So… [start your eyes rolling now] he tagged along with me to my Weight Watcher’s meeting last Saturday. He went with me once before when I was going with the Church Ladies. He was not impressed (I assume the chanting got to him). But this time around, my group leader is like the best in the city. I really love this woman! It’s really like going to church for me sometimes. I go in, I say my peace, I get some solace, I give my offerings, and leave a completely stronger and happier person. I think Dean felt the same way. I told him to just come and if he was impressed that he could go ahead and sign up. Midway through it I could see that twinkle in his eye. He was hooked. When I showed him I had lost 5.4 pounds that first week he signed his name on the dotted line. He said, “I guess we’re going to be Weight Watcher’s buddies!” I felt like it was the debut episode of some obviously doomed Fox sitcom. “I guess so.” I grimly said through a false smile.

[insert hilariously cheery song to be used as sitcom theme music here]

Weigh-In: 289.2