Before I write my little diatribe today, I thought I would try to comment on the title of this entry. The title of this entry starts with “Crazy Fat People Thoughts” and then talks about pairs of jeans. Please understand, I’m not suggesting that all fat people are crazy or that fat people, in general, have crazy thoughts. However, after being a fat guy for the majority of my adult life, I do have some excellent first hand knowledge of the sometimes crazy point of view that fat people have on certain issues.
For example, I once weighed 385 pounds and then lost 125 pounds to settle at 260 pounds. After a while, I wound up gaining back around 100 pounds. Not good. But to show you how sometimes fat people can be crazy, when I weighed 260 pounds I would look in the mirror and see every bit of the 385 pounds that I used to weigh. In fact, despite the nearly non-stop compliments that I was receiving on losing all of the weight, there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that I looked exactly the same as I did when I weighed 385 pounds. No doubt in my mind at all – even though I was completely wrong.
A huge stack of unworn jeans sitting in my closet
The point is that I understand the crazy thoughts that fat people have from time to time. And on that subject, I figured now would be as good a time as any to report to you all about my recent weight loss efforts and one of the positive outcomes of those efforts. I began a weight loss contest with both of my roommates at some point in June. The winner of the contest will get free rent for the month of September (a $587 value). The contest ends in 13 days and I’m in second place by a few percentage points.
Since the contest started, I’ve dropped about 42 pounds. That’s pretty significant. However, since I know from my previous experience that I’m prone to having crazy fat people thoughts, I started snapping pictures of myself (front shot and profile shot) in just my underwear at different weights. Unfortunately, I didn’t start at the 363.6 pounds that I weighed when the contest started (or the 365 pounds that I weighed a week before the contest started), but I did begin taking pictures somewhere around 356 pounds. Again, my purpose for taking these pictures is so that I can see for my own two eyes a “before and after” shot of my body before I began losing weight and after the weight has come off.
And wouldn’t you know it, but the pictures don’t lie. I can clearly see a marked decrease in the size of my torso between the 356 pound picture and the 321 pound picture. In essence, I’m trying to use these pictures to trick (or untrick, really) my brain into recognizing a difference when it looks in the mirror. I don’t know if it’s working yet, but I do know that I have picture proof of my body getting smaller.
Along with that picture proof has come a little bit of pride in losing the weight so I did something the other night that I haven’t done in a while – I took out pairs of jeans that I know I can’t fit into and tried them on. That’s the picture above – an entire stack of jeans (rotated sideways so it can fit in the JerseySmarts.com format). Now here’s where the craziness comes into play – most of those 20 or so pairs of jeans have never been worn! And when I say never been worn, I mean the tags are still on these things! That’s one of the crazy things that some fat people do – we buy things that don’t really fit because we know if we lose a little bit of weight then they’ll fit just fine.
Of course, most folks never really lose the weight and thus what they wind up with is either a huge stack of unworn clothing sitting in their closets like you see in the picture above or a huge stack of unworn clothing that they donate to charity (and ultimately get less of a tax benefit on a per dollar basis than if they just didn’t buy these things in the first place). And to wrap up this part of the conversation, I thought I’d let you know that while I did manage to fit into about 6 or 7 of those pairs of jeans, I put the rest of the stack back and will give it another round of testing after I drop another 20 pounds or so.
To finish up this entry, I thought I’d make a brief observation about what I’d “win” if I win the contest. Sure, I get to keep $587 at a time when I could use the extra funds (with my brother’s wedding coming up and his bachelor party, etc). However, even if I don’t win (and, in truth, my roommate’s lead will be tough to overcome), I am still going to reap a financial benefit. By losing weight, I’ll reduce the number of prescriptions that I need to take each day and thus reduce my medical bills. By losing weight, I’ll be able to fit into some of these jeans that are sitting in my closet that I haven’t been able to wear until now – that saves me money by not having to buy new clothes! So, even if I don’t win the contest, I’ll still reap a financial benefit – and that’s enough to make my crazy fat person thoughts dissipate for a little while!
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