Summer’s Coming, Lardbutt. What Now?

My Gut today. The T-shirt was purchased at Goodwill for $1.99.

I am fat.

And in case someone is reading this to you, that’s “F-A-T” fat, not “P-H-A-T” fat. 

According to the Urban Dictionary, “PHAT” stands for “Pretty Hot and Tempting.”

I haven’t been pretty hot and/or tempting since my salad says. Had I eaten more salad and less fat then, I might be a little more Phat and a lot less fat now. But that ship sailed, foundered, and sank in a vat of cake batter ages ago.  

What to do? Start yet another diet, of course. I created this blog and I'm telling everyone I know about this new diet because my fear of public humiliation can make me pass on pork chops, forgo fries, eschew Éclairs and decline donuts like nothing else.

I have other good reasons to diet.

*My once top notch medical numbers are now Top Gun—I am in the Danger Zone.*

*I need wide-angle lenses for Selfies.

*In silhouette, I look like a toothpick smuggling a bathtub.

*I can’t walk from here to the liquor cabinet without a rest stop.

*I’m a few pounds shy of having to wear a Wide Load sign under California’s Draconian “No Fat Guys” ordinance.

*I’m 6’0” 244.  Didn’t say I was morbidly obese. Just Fat.  Fat for my age. Fat for your age. Fat for everybody’s age.

*I have a deadline. I want to weigh 220 by May 10^th.  That gives me nine weeks.

My Three Most Memorable Diets

I’ve had many disastrous diets and two successful ones in my lifetime.

The Most disastrous was my infamous Two-Day Metrecal Diet at age seventeen. Metrecal was the first diet drink in a can.  It tasted like liquefied chalk with just a hint of cat yak.  You drank it four times a day and ate nothing else. 900 calories.

Day One:  Drank four cans of Metrecal. NOTES: Mild hunger.  Good energy. Optimism high.

Day Two: Drank three cans of Metrecal, then ate six fried egg sandwiches. NOTES: I have never been so hungry in my life.

My first successful diet was in college.  I carried 225 gelatinous pounds wrapped over, under, around and through my frame. Summer after sophomore year, my Air Force officer Dad started a new diet. Dad was no fun on a diet. Grizzlies ran from his mighty Roar of Hunger. Windows shattered. Dogs climbed trees. Pigeons bled from the eyes. The Sasquatch Legend was born.

But not this time. Dad had new pills, prescribed by his flight surgeon. He nibbled at food, turned raconteur at the dinner table, then washed the dishes while whistling camping tunes. The pounds poured off.  “I love this Diet,” the shadow of my Father said. “I’m losing weight and I’m flat out adorable.”

Of course he was. He was on Speed. Amphetamines had just hit the diet market. Soon, I had my own prescription.  The weight also slid off me. Dad and I washed and rewashed the dishes together, chattering like chipmunks. When I returned to college a sylph-like 170, I was welcomed with cries of “Are you dying?” and “When did Audrey Hepburn join the fraternity?”

Before long, college kids wasted this perfectly good diet pill to pull all-nighters, and the great Legal Amphetamine Crutch was gone. Dad and I got fat again.

My third memorable diet boasted an official 46-pound weight loss. The event was recorded and documented by the highly respected “The Washingtonian” magazine years before the Reality Show diets hit TV. It was started by four fat writers bumping bellies at the magazine’s annual Christmas Party.

Next:: How I won the PHAD Diet. Why competitive weight loss can work for you. More fat jokes. And how did my first week go?

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*Movie reference. The song "Danger Zone" by Kenny Loggins was from the movie Top Gun.