Fat Chance

By Joe Gresh

Here at ExNotes we cover a wide variety of topics. Some relate to motorcycles or outdoorsy type of activities. Some are about ways of telling time or shooting a bull’s-eye with great precision. This ExNotes story stretches our genre as tight as my t-shirts stretched around my belly. I wouldn’t have written this story had it not been for Berk’s suggestion. So don’t complain to me. It’s all Berk’s fault.

I have a bad relationship with food. I’ve always had a bad relationship with food. When I was a tiny, undersized kid my Pops used to harangue me to eat more food. He would pound his fist on the table point at my plate and yell, “You’re never gonna get big unless you eat!” Mealtimes were misery for me. Mom wasn’t that great a cook and with the old man badgering me to eat more the whole dinnertime affair was something to be endured and gotten over with.

For years I dreaded mealtime, there was always such a stupid drama over my food. I wanted to throw the food against the wall and tell him, “You eat the crap, I’m done!” I used to hide food under my plate to show him I’d eaten everything. I just wasn’t hungry, man. I can’t really blame my dad. He came from a poor family and food was scarce. It must have galled him to see me rearranging food around my plate in an attempt to make it look eaten. Wasting food was the ultimate sin in our house.

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As I grew older and slightly larger my appetite increased. I could tuck into some fried chicken and collard greens, you know? For most of my life I never had to worry about being fat. I kept busy working and ate whatever I wanted. My dad would beam with pride as I polished off two helpings of stew beef washed down with a quart of sweet iced tea.

We made our iced tea so sweet the sugar would drop out of solution. The water simply couldn’t hold any more sugar. You had to stir it before taking a slug. The tea was at maximum saturation and by some mysterious combination of temperature and barometric pressure the sugar fell to the bottom like morning dew. And that banana pudding was divine, I tell you.

My weight stayed around 174 pounds for decades. It didn’t matter what or how much I ate and believe me, I wasn’t too discerning about what I shoved into my mouth. It was all just food. Some food-stuff tasted better than other food-stuff but never good enough to wash a dish for. I frequented fast food places because their offerings were paper wrapped, disposable and filled the void. I was just going to eat it, man, it’s not like I was going to put it on display in my trophy cabinet.

Things stayed that way until the last five or so years. My clothes started fitting tight. My stomach required copious quantities of Tums to keep the acid from gurgling into my throat and burning the back of my mouth. I kept eating like always even though my activity level went down. I was no longer working 6 days a week crawling in and out of boats.

My belly grew larger and larger until I hit 195 pounds. For a modern American male 195 pounds isn’t all that surprising but hang all that meat and blubber on a 5-foot, 6-inch frame and you’ve got a fat little bastard. My dad would have been proud. Nothing fit anymore. Even my shoes were tight. My riding gear became coat rack decorations. I puffed going uphill, my fiberglass filled, burnt out COPD lungs struggling to supply oxygen and my heart pounded to circulate blood through all that fat.

And I was fine with it.

CT is the one who decided it was time to slim down. She started watching her food intake and I began to follow along. We don’t really have a diet we just stopped eating food. I began to lose weight. Both of us urged the other on. Just how little food did it take to stay alive? Turns out, the answer is very little food. I probably eat about a quarter of the calories I used to eat. Some days we have only toast and unsalted peanuts.

I’m hungry and miserable but in a strange way I feel liberated. Eating is a trap; I had to get angry at food to break the eat-reward cycle. Now I despise food for what it did to me. I look at food as poison. This is probably not a healthy relationship with food either but I figure food needs me more than I need it.

I no longer care if it’s feeding time. I eat whenever I can’t stand the hunger. I never eat until I’m full because satisfaction is the opiate of the people. I don’t want to be full and I stay hungry because it’s righteous and I am striving to be a righteous man. CT and I recently went on a 1000-mile jaunt through Arizona and since neither of us eat much we never worried about stopping for lunch or going out to dinner. You can save a lot of money starving to death.

Beyond nutrition, food has always played an important social purpose. I imagine the earliest proto-humans gathered around the fire pit to grunt in a rudimentary language about their lives. Even hyenas share their kill, kind of. Social gatherings are tough but I get through them with a doggie bag and sparkling conversation. Hopefully no one notices I’m not eating much or that I pity their food-centric lives.

This dietary change made me aware of how much eating had become a part of motorcycle riding for me. In retrospect, all I ever did on a motorcycle was ride to restaurants and eat. The other day I rode down to my favorite taco place in Alamogordo and just kept riding past. I don’t need an excuse to ride. I carry a thermos of hot, robust Dancing Goats® coffee and stop my cycle to have a sip now and then.

I’m down to 172 pounds. I’m shooting for 170 but the ounces are coming off very slowly. My buddy Ren gave me the best advice on how to lose weight. He said, “It’s making 1000 small, right decisions each day.” I’d like to say I feel better but I really don’t. I can get up the hill a little better and I don’t eat tums like candy anymore. With my stomach empty the acid can stay put where it belongs, not sloshing over my back teeth. CT tells me I’m breathing easier at night. I can even wear my old leather motorcycle jacket; it’s been a few years since I could. But truthfully I’m not any happier. If I could eat all that junk food without gaining weight I would.

As a for-instance, this morning I ate tortilla chips with guacamole and a small container of Motts applesauce. For lunch I had some unsalted peanuts. I don’t know what I’ll have for dinner and I don’t care. I don’t want to anticipate food. Each meal must stand on its own. I’m kind of lucky that I was never a foodie-type person. I get no thrill from a well-prepared meal and just eat it for fuel. Exxon or Texaco, makes no difference to me, it’s all gasoline.

Anyway, being hungry isn’t the worst thing in the world. I guess a large percentage of humans on earth go through their entire lives like that. The longer I keep at this starvation diet the less desire I have to eat. Like right now as I type this I’m hungry but I’m making a small, right decision to ignore the feeling. Maybe after a while it will go away.

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