Hand to Mouth Disease

It is no big secret that I am fat. I've been overweight to one degree or another since I was six years old, and it's something I have never really tackled seriously. When I was growing up, my mother would let me stuff myself with whatever food I wanted, so I had little incentive to control my eating habits.

I could decry the psychological causes of my obesity. "Oh, my parents were alcoholics who didn't treat me right. The kids in school tormented me and made me depressed. I didn't get all the toys I wanted as a child. Waaaa, waaaa, waaaa!" No, I don't put a lot of blame on others (not even the nasty little bastards in grade school). It doesn't matter what the original excuses were. The only thing that matters is what I do now and in the future.

Martin T. Ingham, Age 16.
What a fat pig!!!

In the past, my weight was a worse problem than it is today. When I was 16, I bloated up to a grotesque 300 pounds (We're talking Fred J. Dukes fat)! Shortly thereafter, I started a work regimen that helped cut my weight down somewhat, though I have never been a comfortable weight.

Despite being fat, I am in relatively good health. This is due partially because of good genetics, and because I am required to physically work much of the time in order to make a living. Even though I'm fat, I do burn a lot of the crud out of my system on a regular basis, but it gets replenished. The weight isn't an issue of being sedentary, but of eating to excess.

When it comes down to it, I like to eat. I always have, and it is the only real vice I have. While others might find cigarettes or booze to be their weakness, food is mine. Especially candy. Oh, the sweet, sweet sugar! I need my refined, granular white, man! I'm Jonesin'! Gimme, gimme gimme! Where was I? Oh, yes, I'm a lard-ass!

Yes, to be perfectly blunt, I have "Hand-to-Mouth Disease," the illness of putting food in my mouth compulsively. I'm not the first man to be cursed with this ailment. John Candy, Drew Carey, Rush Limbaugh, Ted Kennedy, John Goodman, Chris Farley, Meat Loaf; they're just a few famous people who have suffered from this accursed affliction. Looks like I'm in both good and bad company (I'll leave you to be the judge of who's who in that regard).

I've come to the point in my life, however, where the weight can no longer be tolerated. I'm almost 31, and if I don't get rid of this fat now, it'll get increasingly difficult to discard it. There is only so much you can get away with, and I've eaten enough. It stops being fun when your body begins to bother you, and I have felt the warning signs. The immutable force of gravity is beginning to drag me down, so I must discard the extra ballast, or drown in a sea of gluttony.

I'm not going to be drastic with my mission. There'll be no stomach staples, no fat sucking surgeries, and no fad diets. I'm going to do this the slow and steady way, eating right and eating less! It may be troubling at times, for I can get irritable when I'm not stuffing my face (especially when the sweet, sweet sugar is sitting right in the other room, oh, man!) but I have a stubbornness of will, and I can overcome. Anyone can do it if they really want to, and I have decided I want to be lighter. Not "normal," because that's an arbitrary statement that can never truly be defined, but I will drop the extra pounds.

It won't happen overnight, and I expect it'll be a year or two before I am really where I should be, but I'll get there.