BATTLE OF THE BULGES

I’m fat, and I don’t care.

I am so sick and tired of all the people- mainly women- I hear belly-aching about how they wish they could lose weight. They blather on about faddish diets, like not eating is the solution to their problem.

The person who has lost the most weight, hands down, is Richard Simmons. The man in the fruity shorts has burnt off more fat than the rest of the diet world combined. How did he do it? He made people get off their lazy arses and actually exercise. THAT is how you lose weight- you burn it off.

Whenever I try to tell people this- typically while knawing on a candybar or drinking a non-diet coke, I get death glares. I guess people see my manly stomach and think I’m full of hot air and fat. They fail to understand that I really could care less if I have a little fat. They must think I’m joking when I tell them that when the apocalypse comes, the skinny people will die soon, but those of us with fat reserves will be sittin’ pretty.

Still, despite my built-in survival rations and my laissez fat attitude, I have decided to enter the weight loss game for awhile myself. Not because I particularly want to or need to, but to shut people up. That’s right, I’m going to put my money where my mouth is and show how easy it is to lose weight.

I plan to do this by a combination of diet and exercise. Lately, fate has conspired to put me on a diet anyway. We had some storms last week that knocked our power out for 21 hours. We cleaned out the fridge, throwing potentially-spoiled food away just like a crazed dieter. In the aftermath, there’s just not a lot of good snack food left in the fridge. My gallon of vanilla ice cream is gone- partially melted and replaced with a flavor I don’t like (it was the kids' turn to pick the flavor).

Then there’s the kids- they have eaten all the cookies and snacks that didn’t require refrigeration. I know, I can replace them when I go to the grocery, but last night I had nothing to snack on. Oh, the humanity.

For the Diet part of my plan then, I plan to limit myself to one softdrink in the evening (down from my usual 3 or 4), one 32oz glass of milk (down from my 2 or 3), reduced snacking and I’ll swear off thirds at dinner and only have seconds every now and then. That alone is bound to knock a load of calories off my weekly diet.

For the exercise part of my plan, instead of spending all my evening time seated on the couch watching TV, I shall try one half hour on the pedal-powered clothes rack in the basement- or what most people would call an "exercise bicycle". We’ve had it for years, but it never gets used.

Finally, to make this a manly endeavor, and not some girly exercise in trying to justify a wardrobe change, I’m making a contest out of this: one of my pals and I are having a weigh-off. Whoever can lose the most weight by Halloween wins a cash prize AND a smorgasboard-like lunch at our favorite purveyor of fatty, delicious food: Wendy’s.

Personally, I don’t think this is going to be so hard. And I’m going to get the perverse joy of still eating a candybar and coke for breakfast every morning at work, in front of the diet-obsessed chicks in my office, while somehow shedding pounds. It’ll drive them crazy.

So here we go. Week 1, my weight is 315 Lbs, stacked 6'4" high- when I stand up straight. I'm wearing 46 pants. I’ll be following up with weekly weigh-ins, so my pal and I know we aren’t cheating.