Fatness and the void of dignity

There is very little dignity or coolness in being fat. Though people try to tell you differently, that you are normal, there are few occasions when fatness may be misconstrued as a positive.

Yeah, there is winter, but that only comes around once a year and although the ladies are quite forthcoming during this rather cooler period towards the more robust partners, it still isn’t worth carrying that bulk around just for a couple of months of frivolity each year. The fun times in winter leave a good three-quarters of the year that are pure drought for the hefties as the temperature rises and our sweat glands gallop into overdrive.

Winter aside, there is absolutely nothing remotely fabulous about having a BMI over 25. Well, unless you have a job as a stand-in Walrus at amusement park for kids to, literally, poke fun at you or maybe you are lucky enough to be captured by aliens and be probed for research into the new species emerging on earth know as the Nutrient Retentives – those space holidays cost quite a bit, you know.

Fat people — even the handsome Sumo is not spared here — struggle with acceptance in our society. Sure, you will have friends, colleagues who like you and even a girlfriend, but one remains the fat friend, or the fat hilarious colleague, or the fat boyfriend or husband probably settled upon by a has-been-hottie who has failed in her pursuit of Mr Right.

Sure, everyone knows that being fat sucks juicy, tender baby chickens, but I doubt that people who are not and have never been accounted for in the fat leagues ever fully understand the unpleasantness that accompanies a few hundred kilograms of extra lard that some may haul around.

Therefore it is my express duty, as one who has both extra lard in abundance and literary talent bestowed upon him (modest, I know), to speak out about the life lived by other, more nutrient-retentive individuals.

The talent and experience coupled with a highly regarded and award-winning platform such as Thought Leader should let you, the normalish-sized individuals who squeeze yourselves into too-small clothes for the sake of your own vanity, in on the lives of your best friend, funny-fat-guy colleague and family members and loved ones who smile in your face but cry through every night with their sorrow as their one and only companion … accompanied by the fat, naturally.

I will let my talent be my instrument and my experiences be my guide as I toddle you through the life of the highly nutrient retentive. I will not sweat the big stuff on this piece of thought-provoking writing — the big stuff is for the ground-thumping body of work that is The Memoirs of the Nutrient Retentive, which is being currently penned by yours truly, the profoundly insightful Sumo.

Let us start you off at a waddle here: I present to you the common pastime of jogging or “running”, as this evil is commonly known. Have you ever actually thought what running entails? Probably, Skeletor, to you running means “moving with quick steps with always one foot off the ground”, which would be the correct answer if you consulted the Oxford English Dictionary, but running has a totally different definition when one is a 4XL type of individual. I believe I can redefine fat-running as follows — and please feel free to submit this to the Oxford crew for next year’s edition:

Fat-running: An act of self-humiliation and dignity erosion where excessively plumb individuals waddle along, hauling their great behind down an unfortunate and thereafter very beaten path in a aesthetically dehumanising and hideously graphic display of a malformed body’s movement patterns for the disillusioned purposes of lard burning for the ultimate prize of weight loss and societal acceptance.

Brilliant, I know, but The Sumo is thus. Have you, my dear readers, missed me? I sure hope so.

But back to the main course: picture it and see the grotesqueness of the scene, or watch The Biggest Loser if you dare, and you are bound to get the same results as those poor fatties are put through their rather laboured and slow paces with a prize pot of money dangled in front of their salivating selves as currency paid for them to allow millions of total strangers to watch them humiliate themselves in a creation of Lucifer himself, named reality television.

You can keep your money, thank you very much; this burger muncher is quite fine without it, though if that spawn of the devil Tito keeps in the same vein that he is going, I may yet need to sign myself for the SABL programme and join the other losers in the pursuit of the extra dow. Don’t judge me, ladies and gentlemen, a diet of 24 hours of service-station cuisine is not cheap; public humiliation is a small price to pay for high-cholesterol happiness.

But I am labouring on this abomination of real-life weight-loss events; let us move on.

I doubt that anyone who does not have a size-52 waist has ever given any thought to the common and ever-at-hand challenge of tying one’s shoelaces. You have never given any thought to it, have you, Skeletor?

Count yourself very lucky, my friend, but observe the following: as you walk around the office today, take note of every nutrient-retentive individual you come across, and then look at their footwear. I will bet you that 95% of the burger munchers you meet will be wearing slip on shoes, with no shoelaces anywhere in sight.

There is a reason for this phenomenon and I will attempt to baby-step you through it: imagine you are a baby seal on an iceberg just floating away happily. Just for kicks, imagine it’s one of those pretty, multistriped icebergs and you are stuck there, along with those of your kind, as fat and lazy as you are, because your mom seal has gone off to fish for your ever-hungry blubber-filled behind.

Now imagine that your mom comes back and feeds you some more, because that’s what mothers do, right? Imagine she feeds you into seal heaven, otherwise known as seal obesity. Now imagine that after a hard day’s lazing and feeding and with your ungrateful lard-laden stomach to the brim, you feel an itch at the very tip of your little-baby-seal-foot flippers — and so begins the struggle of the day.

You are fat, full and you have an itch at the far reaches of the mass of flesh and fat that makes up the sum of you. Imagine that you can barely reach the area that needs alleviation by scratching; now move on from that scene and imagine there are foxes watching (your thin colleagues, your spouse or your siblings), and imagine that you have to scratch your little baby-seal self and all the while look good and healthy while doing it.

Stop laughing and think of your dressing sequence in the morning. Probably one of the last things you will put on are your shoes (your itchy baby-seal flippers); if you are a rather more rotund individual, there is no way that you can put your shoes on, lace them and look cool — there’s absolutely no way! Physics forbids it. You will either look cool barefoot or you will look hideous while tying your shoes.

1. Nutrient retentives (NRs) breathe heavily — it is a natural consequence of blubber putting pressure on your lungs; you will breathe heavily. It is one of the sentences for allowing yourself to deteriorate to such low functional levels of physique.
2. NRs sweat at the slightest provocation and without warning — this is also one’s punishment and a consequence of one’s heart struggling to pump blood through clogged arteries to the far reaches of one’s blubbery universe.

These two plagues, among others such as exposed crack and minor bolts of flatulence, come springing into action at shoelace-tying time. It is beyond one’s control — there are two choices: be a slip-on-wearing cool-fatty or be the idiot, sweaty, farting and heavy-breathing fatty who constantly forgets the shoelace predicament when purchasing shoes and has nine pair of shoes that need lacing every time he wears them.

If you are that fool, there is hope for you yet. Don’t get excited; there is no miracle drug that The Sumo possesses to end your lard predicament (or you could just stop eating burger and exercise or buy slip-ons), but there is a very well worked-out sequence of shoelacing that you can adopt to save you at least 5% of your self-esteem. I like to call it shoelace yoga; it’s already patented and copy-written, so don’t even bother to try to steal it from The Sumo. It goes a little fat something like this:

Play some soothing music, like Beethoven’s Fifth in E Minor; this will disguise the aforementioned bolts of flatulence. Plus you will find that the cords on that piece of music bear an uncanny resemblance to the unpleasant acoustics of flatulence. Genius, I know. Now, imagine that I am your guru; follow my voice as I take you on a serene journey of carefree shoelace tying:

Start off with the sneaky-weasel pose (sit on the bed or chair pretending that what you are about to do is not a feat of human endurance; check around you for onlookers — once the coast is cleared, proceed).
Assume the seated-tub-of-lard pose (sit on the edge of a bed or chair).
Now take a few quick breaths with your hands placidly at your sides (beached-whale pose).
Draw a deep breath and in the same motion stick out your left foot with shoe slipped on, and arch your spine backwards (charging-walrus pose).
In one swift motion release the breath and plummet down towards the outside of your foot; be careful to leave your tummy between your thighs for maximum comfort.
Now loop, loop, under and over and pull the laces tight as you heave yourself back up into the seated position (tub-of-lard pose). New members of the class may at this point be allowed to assume the gasping-walrus pose (seated with hands behinds your back for support as you gasp for air).

Repeat with the same poses in sequence for the right foot once you have taken in enough oxygen and have returned to normal breathing patterns (normal huffing and puffing).

As I have said before, both the above scenarios, as full chapters, form the extensive body of work under construction that will come to be revered as The Memoirs of the Nutrient Retentive. However, I do need an editor, publisher and agent. Anyone know of such individuals? If you do, please email me at [email protected].

I rest for now,
The Sumo