Posted by He Said
While in China (I know, China again, get used to it; I think that many blogs will still start like this for some time to come), I initially lost weight for the first couple weeks. Then I discovered fried bread, and I lost that anorexic look I have worked so hard to achieve.
For those who don’t know me personally, I have struggled with my weight since my late 20’s. I started out life as a plump well rounded 10lb 4oz baby but thinned out quickly and was a stick for most of my early years. I could eat whatever I wanted, as much as I wanted, and never filled out. During my late teens I would eat an entire box of Lil Debbie Swiss Cake Rolls and wash them down with a quart of chocolate milk. Oh, those were the days. Here is a picture of what I looked like in my late teens. I am the guy on the far right. Please, no comments on the shorts. I know how hot I look.
Then something terrible happened. My metabolism slowed and slowed, and food became a battle. Not just because I could no longer eat whatever I wanted, but because food is also something I turn to when I am stressed or depressed. Of course, the same time my metabolism slowed I also went through a divorce and boy oh boy did the pounds come on then. I went from around 185 (I was 165 in the pic above) to a whopping 275 near the end of my 30’s. To prove this, I have a photo taken of me at Skywalker Ranch. Yes, THE George Lucas Skywalker Ranch – do you know how HARD it is to work in an excuse to brag about that one. I’m the tall young one on the right. Not sure who the statue is of, but it looked pretty cool.
So you can see I put on a few pounds and lost a few hairs (but that’s a blog for another day). Some time after this picture was taken, my beautiful wife, She Said, and I decided it was time to crack down and work on our weight. It took a long time and many struggles, but we did it. I actually rocked my way back down to 210 and was feeling really good about myself. Here I am in 2005. Looking pretty slim if I do say so myself.
But I was never able to keep my weight down that low. It has always been a struggle and while I knew that I have been putting my weight back on ever since we went to China, I have not done anything about it, nor have I really wanted to.
Until today.
Today I was walking out of the office with one of the China employees who is here visiting, and he looked at me and squinted his face. This is the look I am all too familiar with. It is the look he gets on his face when he is processing language translations so that he can say something he is not sure of the correct English for.
“You are looking different since you were in Beijing.”
“Really? I did shave my head this weekend,” I say.
“No,” he replies, “you are looking rounder.”
“Are you saying I have gotten fat?”
“Yes,” he says, “Why is that? Too many burgers?”, which with his Chinese accent comes out sounding like “boogers”, but I get the point.
I need to ride my bike to work.
Or eat fewer boogers.
Sorry, all I can think about are the shorts. They are burned into my brain.
ReplyDeleteSuzanne is a lucky lady.
Bike to work!! If you need pointers, feel free to ask...
ReplyDeleteyeah, yeah, stop whining Dad. Who's the stud in the blue socks?
ReplyDeleteWeight, yeah. Me too. We struggle. We succeed. We fail. And for some reason, remarkable women still wanna do us. Weird.
ReplyDeleteOh yeah, and re: shorts, I say, at least you're not wearing the ones the guy on the left chose.
ReplyDelete