Fat Thoughts

If you are not fat or have never been fat, congratulations. Having just undergone a bariatric by-pass procedure to prevent the train wreck that I was headed for - made me more contemplative about being fat.

There is only one upside to being fat -- you are experiencing the joys of unabated eating. Everything else is downhill from there. I want to pencil in some of the little discussed attributes of being fat. Hopefully, if you are heading into the wind with overeating, you might want to rein in some of those belly-bursting meals because the results to your body are not so pleasant. The stereotypical portrayal of the jolly fat person is a myth. (Except at eating time.)

Listed below in no particular order are just a few of the handicaps a moderately fat person will encounter. Note that things are much worse for the real heavyweights -- 400+ pounds, so this list does not generally apply to them. But for those who are potential candidates for obesity, please take heed. This is what your future holds.

1.) Tying your shoe laces. I know it doesn't sound like much, but when you can't bend in the middle very well, it can be a real problem. Usually, since you can't bend over, you have to be sitting down and try and get a leg crossed over the other one so you can reach your shoe. Even then, the knot does not center up on the shoe but will hang on the side nearest to where you can reach. Fat people find shoe tying a real problem.

2.) Cleaning yourself after toilet. Somehow, even with a fistful of toilet paper, you have to manage to reach around all that added girth to reach the area to be cleansed. It can be a daunting chore at times. For the sake of nicety, I won't go into details, but rather leave it up to your imagination as to the trouble with manipulating toilet paper when you can just barely reach your tail.

3.) The dickey-do for a man is one of the first signs that you are getting too fat. The phrase first coined by a comic, references your belly when it sticks out more than your dickey-do. It can get so bad that you have to look into a mirror to be able to see your private parts.

4.) Penis loss is another manifestation of being fat. (Sorry ladies, I can only relate the male side of what happens.) Penis loss happens because as you get fat, it accumulates in stages. But with each successive stage, another roll of fat adds to the last roll of fat and gradually hides your manhood. You haven't actually lost anything, the penis is just swallowed up by the accumulation of fat.

5.) Damaged joints join the parade of afflictions encountered by the fat person. Torn meniscus in the knees and hip problems make walking and especially getting up and down a problem. In fact, it takes so much effort to get up and down that you limit activities that you would normally enjoy. The decrease in physical activity adds to the problem because you burn fewer calories, but maintain the same caloric intake as if you were active. (You get even fatter.)

6.) Then there are the afflictions of having the workload of the heart increased. Are you aware that for every pound you add, there is an increase in the veins, arteries, and capillaries through which your heart has to pump blood? Most overweight people experience high-blood-pressure. Up until now, the only added expense to us was the food cost, but now we have to worry about having to buy pills to control blood pressure. High blood pressure is a killer.

7.) Diabetes is next on the list of maladies from being fat. If your pancreas is overworked and cannot produce enough insulin to help break down sugars, the sugar increases in the blood. High blood sugar can affect most things that happen in our body leading to everything from kidney failure to loss of limbs and death.

Okay, I'll stop but you get the idea. Just remember, nobody is immune from the seduction of overeating. I will guess that everybody's situation is different but in my case, I can honestly say that every diet that I ever tried, worked. The problem I had with dieting was in maintaining the weight loss after the diet becomes intolerable. For instance, one of my favorite diets was the cabbage soup diet. This diet was simple because all you had to do was take the vitamins you needed but it allowed all the cabbage soup you wanted to eat. In fact, you could gorge yourself with cabbage soup and still lose weight if you followed the plan. Cabbage soup is okay at first, but even changing the taste from spicy to normal and using different broths doesn't overcome the desire for different foods.

I finally gave up with diets and with my heft of almost 300 lbs. I sought out a bariatric specialist. Already using heart medications, diabetes medications, and endured a surgery to my right knee, I underwent a by-pass operation to prevent the calamity for which I was headed. In my next article, I will describe my operation and how it changed my life.

Cheers,

-Robert-