Fatty Fatty 2 x 4

Weight loss advice from Matt Yglesias HERE. He lost 70 lbs in ten months last year. It's funny how insurmountable weight loss looks in the beginning, and then you get even more depressed because you start to think "gee, if a year ago I had lost a mere pound a week I'd be 52 pounds lighter..." and on and on and on.

Personally, I know it's possible, since when I was thirty I lost 75 lbs in about six months. It's easy to lose big numbers when you're 1/3 chicken skin, I guess. And that was only by walking an hour every day - I still ate like an animal let loose in a McDonald's. And of course I immediately put the weight back on, which means this time I'm gonna try to do what everybody else is doing these days: confronting my relationship with food. In my case, it's simply "I need to eat like a normal person." Most people get a sandwich on white bread or whatever, read the paper, and absentmindedly eat the sandwich over about 15-20 minutes. I'd get as large a version of that sandwich as possible (usually a hero) along as the biggest bag of chips available ("I'll just eat a handful now, save the rest for later!") and then inhale the sandwich as quickly as possible, buzz-sawing through it like a goddam beaver, and of course "without meaning to," ie "gee, was that all the chips?" scarfing the pound of potato chips from the bag. Normal people don't eat until it hurts, nor do they spend all day obsessing about food. Hopefully that's something I can stop this year. I need to learn that food is about nutrition (with occasion of revelry) and making myself feel better, and not some thrice-(at least) daily Caligulan orgy of fucking epicurian face-stuffing that starts with ecstasy and ends with absolute misery and lethargy. Food should not be the highlight of my day, everything else should be.

2011, motherscratchers!