I’ve always been one skinny motherfucker. When I joined the Air Force in 1998 I weighed 174 lbs. I am also 6’2” tall, so one seventy four is really thin. I was actually kind of self-conscious about how wiry my body was, with its tiny arms and knobby knees. Knees like a baby giraffe, but legs like a chicken’s. For many years I hovered around the 174 mark, sometimes a little larger, sometimes even less. Then I was like “Fuck this, I’m going to the gym.” The gym is the worst place to go for a tall, skinny weakling, because I was so self-aware of how stupid I looked trying to bench 115 lbs. at three sets of eight that I just sort of tapered off and remained a noodle armed bitch boy. A year or two went by and I realized I needed to stop being a pussy and start being a dude who was stacked. I hit the gym hard. A little too hard, actually. After day one, my arms folded up like a velociraptor’s and I could barely move them for a week. But I persevered and went to the gym religiously, getting stronger and awesomer looking. I could max out the tricep machine, no lie. I could do dips until I got bored. When I did abs, I put a 25 lb. plate on my chest and started to realize I needed even more. I did bicep curls in my spare time at home. Those muscles on the sides of comic book hero rib cages? I had those. I could stand on my head and push myself up. I was in shape, you cocksucker, you see?
That was 10 years ago. I ended up losing a lot of my muscle and overall weight and got all gross and skinny again pretty soon after being in great shape. Then I spent the next ten years not giving a fuck. I was neither fat nor skinny, nor was I in shape. My arms are pretty good sized, but that’s because I do a lot of manly work with my hands and arms and back.
Now I weighed myself the other night, knowing that I had put on a few pounds. Fuuuuuuuuck. A few? More like a few dozen. Two hundred thirty pounds. That’s sixteen and a half stone for you UK types. I am a fat sack of shit now. So instead of cursing the darkness, I’m lighting a candle. A metaphorical candle, made of rendered fat. I am just going to consume less food and beer. I’m soon to be 35 and that’s when most guys turn into mush FOREVER. I’m not going to be the hard body mother fucker whose abs were AWESOME, but I’m also not going to be the guy with a set of swinging man-cans. This is day two of the defattening process. I’m aiming for 200 lbs when all is said and done. I am very hungry right now, but that’s because usually I eat an ice cream sandwich or something to hold me over for the pathetically short amount of time between lunch and dinner.
I’m not going to obsess about it, but I wanted to post this mostly to remind myself to stop eating all the time. That is all.
