Chronicles of a Fat Man

Many regular readers of the Grady blog have commented on the striking frequency with which our posts involve food, eating food, discussing food, and excitedly discussing eating food. True, Leslie has elected to share with the world our lustful obsession with Five Guys, Sno-2-Go and other fine establishments which exemplify the pinnacle of culinary achievement, but
unfortunately, excessive indulgence cannot be had without consequence.

As a result, for obvious reasons, Leslie and I have fully committed to silence the voice of our inner fat guy and strangle the demons of obesity. Unfortunately, inner fat guy will not go down without a fight! It would be nice if slaying inner fat guy was as easy as karate chopping nameless henchmen in a B-grade 1970’s martial arts movie, but destroying inner fat guy has proved to be more difficult than assassinating Rasputin.

I am happy to report that we are winning the fight. Leslie has thus far lost over 15 pounds, and I’ve lost around 55 pounds since the conclusion of my 13-week gluttonous binge-a-thon, aka, summer internship. Nevertheless, we have noticed that much like Chuck Norris, inner fat guy does not sleep…he waits. You may think you have slain the beast, you may think he is dead, you may be convinced that you have torn inner fat guy to pieces and burned the ashes (Twilight reference), but just like the killer/zombie/ghost in every horror movie ever, inner fat guy will always come back to life for one last heart-stopping scare (cholesterol pun).

Despite the recent success Leslie and I have had combating inner fat guy, I’ve realized that there are some tendencies which may be subdued, but which will never be eviscerated. I’ve included a few of my more shameful and egregious inclinations in the hope that I am not alone—in the hope that someone reading this will understand and possibly validate my shortcomings:

1. Eating Brownie Batter—I better not be alone on this. By “eating brownie batter” I don’t mean that you make brownies and lick the spoon before you cook them…I mean you make brownie batter and eat it. No cooking. I have done this more than once in my life and I really hope I’m not alone. Fortunately, thanks to our friend Hayley Bean, we have discovered “No Pudge” brownie mix at Trader Joe’s. This has further facilitated my life-choice to eat brownie batter but in a more “health-conscious” way.

2. Late Night Food Runs—You know how sometimes at night you’ll think, “Man, I really want a Big Mac.” Well, most people just ignore that and go to bed, but fat people don’t. One night, just before bed, Leslie and I were flipping through the channels and saw a special on the history of McDonald’s. After watching for about 10 minutes or so, we looked at each knowingly and said, “are you thinking what I am thinking?” Instead of going to bed, we got into the car and obediently reported to our nearest McDonald’s for Big Macs and McNuggets. Inner fat guy won that night, but it was delicious!

3. Circling the Parking Lot at the Gym—We’ve all circled the parking lot looking for a closer spot, but recently I caught myself performing this favorite pastime of the obese at the gym. Bear in mind, I had gone to the gym to work out, I wanted to lose weight, but inner fat guy wanted me to make sure that getting inside the gym took the least possible amount of energy. Since then I have noticed countless others doing this as well. Inner fat guy does not want us to realize that when we go to the gym, we can drag our morbidly obese carcasses the length of an additional four parking stalls instead of circling the lot three times hoping to get a closer spot!


This will likely be an ongoing list of tendencies that I’ll add to later. I promise my inner fat guy cannot so easily be summarized in three bullet points. In the meantime, if any of you have any inner fat guy traits, we’d love to hear about them and commiserate. Until then, happy eating!