Growing up Fat

January 28, 2012

A.E. CHECKLEY

Section: Health + Beauty -

Being fat is easy. Becoming morbidly obese, now there’s a challenge. Let me break it down for you.

CHILDHOOD
Be the only chubby, non-athletically inclined individual born into a family of sports fanatics. You earn bonus points if your mother is a tomboy who organizes neighborhood track meets in the vacant lot next to your house and you manage to avoid participating in any of these events. Learn quickly to grab your red bike and peddle off to the library when you hear rumblings from your mother about gathering the bats and mitts and calling the neighborhood children over for a game of baseball. It’s especially helpful if a sibling with a perfect physique and athletic prowess teases you on a daily basis about the way your thunder thighs jiggle when you leap a hurdle (a.k.a., a picnic table bench) during one of those neighborhood track meets. (Remember the library strategy.) This constant demoralizing banter crushes your self esteem. A crushed self esteem is one of the most critical elements in achieving a morbidly obese existence.

MARRIAGE
Marry into a culture with awesome food. Okay, not just awesome food, but food with a high fattening potential. Th e Persian culture is a great choice because while it is possible to eat healthy, upping the calorie count is a piece of cake. Always eat your basmati rice with butter. Don’t hesitate to devour the dark meat from the lamb’s jaw. Put a couple of extra pieces of pita bread on your plate at every meal to dip into that luscious maast-o khiar or sop up all that golden juice from your ghormeh sabzi. Learn to make your own baklava, so you can be sure a single pan contains the requisite pound of unsalted sweet butter between all those delicate layers of phyllo dough. Always take second helpings, just because it tastes so damn good.

PREGNANCY
Observe the perfect pregnancy, then let loose with a gluttonous year or two of lactation. It’s tremendously important to gain only the amount of weight prescribed by your obstetrician during your pregnancy. Do it. Th is is not the time to be piggish. You aren’t smoking. You aren’t drinking alcohol. You are growing a healthy child. Just keep in mind that at the end of nine months of disciplined consumption all bets are off . It’s time to breast feed! Feed your baby on demand. Every time he cries, pick him up and let him suck. Th is will increase your milk supply substantially, which will in turn increase your appetite to that of an elite athlete’s. Two added perks: the happiest little chubby baby on the planet and breasts the size of Dolly Parton’s. So, give in to all those cravings that you put on hold. Eat those pints of Ben and Jerry’s. (Th ink calcium.) Drink that quart of chocolate milk. (Keep thinking calcium.) Put that butter in the oatmeal, butter on the rice, butter on the popcorn. (Calcium. Calcium. Calcium.) Do it.

MENTAL ILLNESS
Be diagnosed with a mental illness; preferably bi-polar disorder. Because research shows that people with bipolar disorder are at higher risk for weight gain and obesity. Keep in mind, however, that a diagnosis will only gain you entrance to the morbid world of obesity if you’re willing to go the extra mile and actually take the pharmaceutical cocktail that your psychiatrist chooses to prescribe. Because invariably the side eff ects of at least one of the medications in your cocktail include “increased appetite,” and odds are pretty good that the cravings connected to this increased appetite will be focused on grainbased carbs (feel good foods that make you, well, feel good), which is great, because even one cinnamon raisin bagel with peanut butter at midnight every night seven days a week means the diff erence between just being fat and being morbidly obese.

THE ENVIRONMENT
Maintain a high carbon footprint. If you don’t already own a car, buy one. Drive it everywhere. Park as close as possible to the entrance of the grocery store/ nail salon/ ice cream shop/ dry cleaners/ bakery, etc. Even if it means waiting with the engine running and the heat/air blasting until a parking space at the entrance frees up. If you live in the city, move to the suburbs. Avoid walking anywhere further than your mailbox. Join a warehouse, buy your food in bulk, and eat it that way, too.

That should do it. One final note: The beauty of being morbidly obese is that when it comes to gaining weight, the sky’s the limit. Although, for you they may not be very friendly skies, unless you’re willing to fork over fare for two seats. Just don’t forget to pack your own seat-belt extender.