Size 46 Walmart

By Paul Hughes / March 21, 2012

There was a time when my weight goal was to fit into size 46/30 khakis from Walmart, and that time was last Thursday, when I bought them.

I weigh some 334 pounds. I am 42 years old, heading to 43. I am officially diabetic, per my doctor’s adjudication of some recent unfortunate blood tests.* The flu I now get the spring of each year (it didn’t used to happen) this year left me coughing and hoarse for, and I am not making this up** at least six weeks after the flu itself was gone. I have red and grey inhalers for widening my airways now.

I am fat fat fat. My BMI is above 50. My BMR is 2700, if I lie in bed all day, and north of 3200 if I sit at a desk. I can have nearly as many calories as an athlete in recovery mode. If I start moving, I close on 4,000 pretty quickly. I can eat for two, and have for years.

I get winded on one flight of stairs, and take the elevator to the second floor at work. I’m in that place where I don’t think I look that bad until I actually look.

As a late Atlantic Monthly editor once said of America at large, I am some kind of fat.

I Am The Fat Guy.

* Full disclosure: I actually have good blood pressure, and one of my cholesterols is OK. Blood sugar is just past the threshold, and, as I may have mentioned, I am extremely fat.
** As Dave Barry used to say, when it was still funny. He said it after it was funny, too—but by then it was his signature line, and if he didn’t make it up, I’m pretty sure he used it most, and to most effect. It’s good to be #1. Ask Apple or Coca-Cola.

Recent

What I Recalled Watching Netflix

[Television is educational.] One Saying the same stuff over and over looks like you have different things to say. Two If you’re ever in a below-average film or streaming series, and you beat the tar out of a guy, in a house, and you gaze down in both some shock as also a certain

Seeking the King

A line everywhere misattributed to Chesterton reads thus: The young man who rings the bell at the brothel is unconsciously looking for God. This line is not from the great [several senses of the word] man who recently celebrated his 150th birthday, but the mid-century most unmodern novelist Bruce Marshall. The words — which do

He’s the Guy

Those social media posts of ‘this moment in this famous film was totally unscripted!!!’ as if that by itself makes it better miss the point. Moat unscripted material, like most ideas, inventions, ideas, notions, &c … fails — such is the nature of creativity: the best stuff, it is devoutly to be wished, sticks around;

‘Round Here

Imagine someone, potentially anyone, even you, perhaps, but let us, in any case, say. Yes, you. You pull into the diner – Earl’s, Norm’s, Dinah’s, something like that. A sort-of Googie architecture … but maybe not quite, as if it’d been a little late for the Space Age, and late is the one thing you

Random

Seeking the King

A line everywhere misattributed to Chesterton reads thus: The young man who rings the bell at the brothel is unconsciously looking for God. This line is not from the great [several senses of the word] man who recently celebrated his 150th birthday, but the mid-century most unmodern novelist Bruce Marshall. The words — which do

Sign Posts

The physician must be able to tell the antecedents, know the present, and foretell the future — must mediate these things, and have two special objects in view with regard to disease, namely, to do good or to do no harm. The art consists in three things — the disease, the patient, and the physician. The physician

The American Poet

In evangellyfish circles there used to be a joke thus — Let us now turn to Malachi, the Italian prophet. The joke works if you say chi the way we’re supposed to say Qi if it’s the Chinese thing. And it works, though my Italian wife will die on the bruschetta with a hard “k”

Didn’t Graduate

Hadda a girl once, this was during college. Darkest, longest hair, biggest brownest eyes … Not that kind of story, whatever kind you thought. Being stupid (I said this was during college, yes?) I’d no idea … none. Not what it was nor what it cd be and thus not that one though it set

Related

The Fat Guy and Buffets

The word is buffet, and it is 300 years old, from the Old French, of “obscure origin” as the kids say, if the kids wrote etymological dictionaries. Obscure origin, but the word is more than making up for it three centuries later. They are everywhere. Everywhere the Fat Guy lives, and everywhere he has been. I

Around the House

One night I watched about half of “Extreme Makeover: Personal Edition.” Or something like that. It was about body renovations instead of housing, which is an interesting way to extend the brand. I can’t help wondering if as they pitched the idea a guy didn’t say, “Heh, heh — fat people … house … get

I Am The Fat Guy

One New Year’s Eve I was in Big Bear with friends. I was in college and we’d been coming up the mountain for a few years, first at Mike’s, then at Andy’s. It didn’t take much for us to decide to drink while we were up there, but we weren’t hardcore, as far as I

The Fat Guy and Buttons

Buttons are the bane of the Fat Guy’s existence. Buttons leave gaps when the Fat Guy’s fat rolls jiggle around and peek through them. Buttons catch on drawer pulls, come undone at the belly, and are generally uncooperative. Buttons are generally on costlier clothing, which means the Fat Guy is spending too much money on