There comes a time in every fat guy’s life…

That’s right, fat. Don’t grimace. I don’t like the word any more than you do, though I often use it in description of myself. Half of you, when you read the title of this introductory post, said something to the effect of, “Oh, Jon…You’re not fat.”  And I appreciate your sympathy. I really do. But it has a sort of null effect, like a woman who hears “You look nice” everyday of her life. After a while, that statement loses its power, its truth. Not because it’s any less true, but because the perspective of the hearer changes over time. It’s all horribly subjective, isn’t it? Because, what is fat exactly? To some of the more sensitive sex, fat means anything other than stark thin. To others, fat is much more extreme, like those who are morbidly obese. Your standard of fat determines whether or not you think I’m fat. For a moment, let’s throw all of our subjective measures and standards out the window. Medical science is a bit more lucid, a bit more black and white. Let’s look at the numbers: I’m about 6’1″, give or take the length of my hair. I currently weigh between 270-275 lbs, thirty or so pounds from maxing out my scale. Based on appropriate height-weight proportions, which say that (according to my frame size) I should way about 170 lbs, I am in excess of 100 lbs overweight. Give me a moment. I need that to sink in.

Yea, I’m fat.

But there is hope, isn’t there? Don’t fat to fit success stories fill an endless collection of health and fitness magazines and episodes of daytime talk-shows? Don’t we live in a world where men like Jared the Subway Guy can become celebrities and symbols of the cindarella story for the gravitationally-challenged? In future posts, I’ll recount my history of going from fat to thin to fat again, but the important point here is that I have been skinny before. Surely, I can return to such glory. I have a plan, anyways. A pretty simple plan, but here it is:

I’m going to ride my bike until my face falls off.

No really, a good bit of it will actually fall off in the process (hopefully, the jowels), as will my burgeoning gut, man-boobs, gluteus super-maximus, and the other parts of my corpus humongousthat have suffered under the extreme weight (get it?). I have loved cycling for the better part of four years, ever since I learned that running was the worst thing ever and a tool of the devil himself. In all reailty, I couldn’t run anymore. It killed my ankles. A friend of mine, who is a massage therapist of sorts, told me that cycling is a low-impact exercise. So, I borrowed a bike and got to riding. Then I bought a bike of my own (a Trek 820 mountain-bike) and have both ridden it and ignored it since my junior year of college. I’m a hot-and-cold kind of a guy, you’ll find. Though I went through periods where my bike collected more dust than road grit, I developed a love for cycling. I didn’t just like to do it myself, I liked to watch it on TV. I remain a member of that sad and lonely few who actually watch professional cycling. But that’s all beside the point. I’ve wanted a new road bike for a long time now, telling myself that if I only splurged and bought one, I would ride all the time and become a serious cyclist. Well, now is when I put my money where my mouth is, or more appropriately my legs (?), because I just bought a beautiful black and red 2008 Specialized Allez Elite. A glorious combination of carbon fiber and aluminum, that roars down the road and makes my old bike look sluggish and silly. So, I’ve got the bike, now what?

I’m going to ride my bike until my face falls off.

And for your entertainment and pleasure, I’m going to write about it. They say, those nameless experts, that you’re more likely to lose weight if you have a host of people who know about your goal and will hold you accountable to it. Plus, I’ve seen my share of motivation come and go, but I haven’t opted for that most functional form of motivation: severe public embarassment. This is certainly not a new literary form. If you’re interested, you should check out one of my favorite books Heft on Wheelsby Mike Magnuson. He gives a lovely and self-deprecating account of his journey from a fat, and often drunk, English professor to a competitive cyclist. There’s another guy out there who has become famous amongst the cycling crowd for his blog The Fat Cyclist. So, I figured I would draft off of them for a while and follow their line (sorry for the bike-speak). I enjoy writing. I have a degree in it. Some say I’m all right at it. Thus, I’m going to write once or twice a week (I’ve tried the blog thing before and have found I’m not too consistent) about this valiant attempt to lose weight. You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll likely make fun of me for being a big, fat guy on a bicycle. But at the end of it all, I hope this blog will be an account of my success, and that I will be able to read all that I have written and smile, knowing that it’s all behind me, that I’m skinny, and sexy, and a good cyclist, and all that. It’s possible. “All things are possible,” right?

Current Weight: 275 lbs.

 

~ by chubbyanddangerous on May 20, 2008.