A Victory for Fat Guy

I know this is going to come across as insensitive to all of the Hostess workers who lost their jobs when they shut down operations, but seriously, can we acknowledge the fact that this is a victory for Fat Guy!  I love, crave and hunt after Twinkies, and well now, they're not on the shelves! 

In honor of Hostess I did binge eat a box of Twinkies the other day in honor of the wonderful memories I've made with this Hostess snack cake and am happy to report that after multiple trips to the grocery store I can earnestly say that no replacement Twinkies are to be found!  This is a good thing for me.

When you consider the time of year and all of the temptations that come with Thanksgiving and Christmas for Fat Guy it's nice to finally see one of my major temptations disappear all together.  So, even though I do feel bad about the job losses that came with Hostess' demise, I have to admit, there are some personal positives that came with it too.  Farewell Twinkies... Farewell!

--Fat Guy

Potlucks Suck!

For those of you familiar with Weight Watchers you understand the ups and downs of your weekly "weigh in day".  This morning I had my weekly Weight Watchers weigh in and found out that I had gained a pound this week.  Somehow though, I'm still managing to declare this a minor victory because of all of the temptations that were floating around this week.

Halloween for working adults tends to mean potlucks at work... I HATE POTLUCKS, for 2 key reasons:

1. The food is always GREAT!
2. The food is always a personal contribution from the individual who made it from scratch which adds a "guilt complex" to not eating it.  If I choose not to eat, am I going to offend someone?

Number 2 is the worst!  I am in a position of leadership in my company which makes me feel a little extra pressure when it comes to potluck sampling.  Whenever we have a potluck I like to walk into the break room and compliment people on what they've brought in.  My compliments are always followed by "well have you tried it?"  To which I feel the immediate need to respond with "no, no I haven't, but I'm going to right now..."  One big scoop of some random something immediately follows and within no time I've eaten 4 days worth of calories just to make others around me feel good.  I guess I need to become more selfish!  I need to make a stand for my own needs and simply say "Sorry, but I can't button the majority of my pants right now, so your freaking food is going to have to sit in the bowl and not be touched by me, just deal with it!"  I may just have to try this line out at our next potluck!

The best anti-potluck defense strategy though is probably just to spend the majority of my day during potlucks in my office.  If I bring in my own food and just avoid the break room all together I won't find myself in awkward situations of trying to justify to someone why I don't want to eat their triple-decker chocolate cake with raspberry topping.

I better get my discipline in order now because we're approaching the season of never ending eating, Thanksgiving and Christmas.  I'm down to only having three pairs of pants which are comfortable and I refuse to buy a larger size...

Come on wall against food, kick in, kick in!

Best Regards,

--Fat Guy

A History of the Fat

 

It's day one of my building of walls around my desire to eat.  Yes, I've gotten desperate and find that the idea of throwing my struggles out into the void of the Internet is an encouraging one..  Others will see, read and hopefully support the struggles of this Fat Guy.  That's my hope at least.

When I was in high school all 5'11 of me weighed a cool 145 lbs.  I used to have to drink Slim Fast shakes with my meals just to try to encourage a shred of fat to cling to my bones.  I hated it!  My football career ended at the flag football level because I didn't have the mass to endure the tackles that came with the man version of the sport.  I resented my weight, hated seeing ribs poking through my skin when I'd take off my shirt and found myself constantly in the shadows of well built "men" when it came to dating.  They got the girls, I got the smirks...

I used to eat an entire dozen of donuts and chase them down with a 32 ounce Pepsi and not gain a pound.  I used to send buffet servers into cold sweats because I wouldn't stop eating until I'd tripled my body mass, only to lose all of it later in the swirling stream of a toilet.  I couldn't get past 145 lbs... and the scary thing is that I thought I'd always stay that way.

With my turning 18 my descent into manhood proved to be the brutal end to my hyper speed  metabolism.  My body hit a wall, and my ass paid for it!  In other words... it grew.  I continued my high school eating habits and started to bulk up.  At first, I felt the thrill of seeing the needle on the scale rise.  I felt like my weight helped me fill out my shirts more and helped me feel more toned and less of a toothpick.  I started to work out and started to sculpt myself into a pretty fit young man.  And yes, the dates started to come.  :)  155 lbs, 165 lbs... 179 lbs... in a little over a year and a half I went from 145 lbs up to 179.  The problem was that I started to get compliments on my size and started to feel a lot better about myself because of it.

I then went out of the country for a few years, got lazy with my working out and allowed myself to get up to 190 lbs.  When I came home I pushed myself again and worked hard on getting my weight back down and was able to get it back to my personally desired weight of 179 lbs.  But it didn't last long.

Before long I was married, weighing in at a cool 190 lbs.  Within a year of marriage I was up to 206!  I got into Weight Watchers and vowed that 206 would be the highest my weight would ever get.  I managed to get it back down to 191, but couldn't get it any lower than that and got incredibly discouraged!  With discouragement came eating, and with eating came weight gain.

Since then, I've fluctuated up to as high as 236 lbs.  This is where I'm at today.  I keep trying different things (HCG lost 9 lbs in a week and a half and also lost all desire to smile, so I went off of it), My Fitness Pal (great information but doesn't have any "teeth" so it wasn't overly motivating) and now, Weight Watchers, again... this time online only.

All of this has brought me to the simple realization that weight management isn't easy.  Wavering levels of motivation constantly derail my best efforts, that and a love for Coke.  The end result of all of this however is that I weight nearly 100 lbs more now than I weighed when I graduated high school.  100 lbs!  I catch myself making fun of myself all of the time about my weight.  I make up excuses all of the time in order to justify that extra piece of cake or my having 3 Coke's before 10:00am.  I surround myself with the negative aspects of my weight and in turn have surrendered myself to the self fulfilling prophecy of my being heavier than I'd like.  I'm not happy.  Which is why I'm blogging.

My goal with this blog will be to push myself to be less self destructive and more motivated.  In turn, hopefully I'll come across the mentality and drive that will help me reach the goal weight of 179 lbs.  It's lofty, but honestly I'd love to not have to pick out my pants each morning based on which ones still fit me.

So, as of today, I officially declare the creation of a wall between myself and the mistakes of my past in relationship to food.  This blog will keep me honest and will keep me on the right track as I am sure I'll have multiple mishaps along the way.

To myself and anyone else who chooses to follow this blog and follow the journey I sincerely wish you the best of luck.

With Regards,

Fat Guy