Girth

I went to the doctor yesterday ready to celebrate my relatively normal blood pressure but the conversation turned fairly rapidly to my girth. I am enjoying doctor visits less these days. When one has a regular physician, she tends to keep track of things one says one will do. I said I'd increase my excercise and lose weight about three months ago, and apparently she wrote it down. Damn!

The staff refer to our doctor as "the Boss," and she's a good egg. She got me to do something about the low grade depression I carried around after years of deteriorating parents wore me down. She takes good care of my mother. Yesterday, she offered me Meridia, which is supposed to diminish appetite. Just what I need: a pill to do what I won't do. If the pill made me get off my ass and walk the dog every day, I might take it. The Boss mutters about risk for diabetes.

I have been battling issues of weight since I was a child. When I was six, I had a pre-cursor to an ulcer, an irritation of my stomach lining, and was hospitalized and put on a soft food diet. My mother felt very guilty about my ulcer, thinking as folks did in those days that it was the result of stress. We had plenty of that, but ulcers are actually caused by bacteria that can survive in stomach acid. I tell my mother that sometimes and she is immensely relieved, but then forgets. I get to ease her mind over and over again.

Anyway, at fifteen I went on my first diet. It was sponsored by the American Heart Association and was laden with milk and cheese and protein. Dieting makes one's body hungrier, and actually messes with one's "set point," the point at which we feel full. Over the years, I have lost enough weight to start a whole other human, and have gained that weight back. Girth embraces me like an old friend. In the end, I decided that the best route is to be more active, but I find excercise for it's own sake very tedious. (The Boss says "suck it up.") I like basketball and raquetball and cross-country skiing. Treadmills are awful. I used to like to run, but getting to the point where that is fun is pretty tough on one. I have started running a few times recently and find reasons not to.

I have a friend who is critical and almost anorexic in his monitoring of his own weight. "I've gained three pounds, I have to work out!" He worries about me in less than helpful ways. Last time I lost a bunch of weight, he was very happy for me and said he'd worried about it but didn't know what to say. "How can you tell your friend he's getting to be a fat fuck?"

What he doesn't realize is that girth stays inside us, whether it is visible or not. My inner fat fuck was offended.

I will walk the dog and play more ball and cultivate a local raquetball partner and be more active, because it really does make me feel better. I turn fifty this year and will feel better about it if I stay active. It would be fun to be one of those lean older men, jogging with ease along the highway and breaking a mild sweat. Maybe if I take Meridia college coeds will begin to fantasize about being mentored by me. Maybe my audience will stop cringing when I sing "I am lying naked in the garden."

But I'll be damned if I'll take another pill. C'mon Tye. Let's take a stroll.