I believe my love of eating is genetic. I can never remember not loving to eat. It's not something I 'grew into,' which only leads me to believe I was born with it. As a young lad, I know I ate plenty. I remember snacks at all hours of the day consisting of everything from bing cherries to Cheez-whiz on crackers (or- when desperate - taken mainline straight from the pressurized container into the esophagus.) Saturday mornings were the stuff of legend, with entire boxes of Frosted Flakes inhaled before the hour of 8am, usually straight from the box. Ding Dongs, Twinkies, even those oft-reviled Snoballs were pounded regularly before my second foot entered the kitchen door after school.
Despite this relentless gastric attack, my body never relented. I was thin as a rail, skinny as a whip - all arms and legs with a bony ol' chest and hips that barely supported my plain pocket jeans with patches on both knees. I could eat ten pounds of non-nutritious garbage a day, and at bedtime I'd be two pounds lighter and starving for a bag of JiffyPop.
This phenomenon perfuddles (if you don't know what this means, read my earlier blogs, lazy!) me in my state of older age. Mind you, I never gave it a second thought in my teens, twenties, and most of my thirties. But at some point after my accomplice-to-childbearing years, I began to notice my rail was less thin, and my whip was far less skinny. I figured there had to be a logical and reasonable explanation for all this. So after at least a solid night's research on the subject, I gave up and forgot about it until a few days ago. By this time Wikipedia was invented, the internet was on computer, and my ability to thoroughly research the source of my perfuddlement was secured.
After another long night of beer drinking, all-star-celebrity poker reruns and serious internet research, I've arrived at the answer.
Let's start at the beginning with some basic science I learned on Wikipedia. The reason I was so skinny throughout my childhood and early adulthood is because I had a very rapid metabolism. This word, it appears, is from the Latin root "bolis" meaning things in your innards and "meta" meaning a whole, helluva lot 'em. As it turns out, scientists (known then as "barbers"- which, of course, was accurately depicted in a SNL skit with Steve Martin in the scientifically advanced 1970's) were accurate in their belief that living things inhabited your innards and helped you digest your food. In young people, which I was once one of, these innard-dwellers run amuck, eating everything that comes down the chute. Picture thousands of Pac-Man-type critters lurking in your intestines, waiting for that next surge of Cheez-whiz or undigested Suzy-Q.
Wikipedia went on to explain that in healthy young 'uns, of which I was one, these critters living in your stuff did everything from helping regulate your weight to causing you to talk back to your parents, which I sometimes did. Thanks to the joys of internet research, my entire childhood was explained in one all-encompassing click!
Apparently, however, some people lack these little regulators inside them. Reasons for this (according to various scholarly posts on the site) include a lack of sleep, wearing underwear that's either too loose or too tight, and living in the wrong zip code. Luckily my stars aligned in my youth. My underwear fit just right, and I lived in a zip-code that was metabolically friendly. Thus, some kids were chubby. I now realize that chubby kids weren't the result of eating too many oreos dipped in chocolate milk and whipped cream. I apologize wholeheartedly for my ignorance in this matter. I understand now that it's probably their moms' fault for living where they did or not checking their Fruit of the Looms.
Consequently, I am now able to piece together the misconstrued nuances of my current physical state. I now realize (according to someone named 'gdawg69' who posted a scholarly Wikipedia study)that my current weight 'condition' is not my fault at all. Apparently sometime after my fortieth birthday, the innard critters need rest. They take vacations and go on sabbaticals and such. There's less of them left around to take care of all the stuff heading down my intestinal track. So it appears that I'm getting a bit heavier. Well, I am actually, but I learned it's not my fault. I've just got less help inside me to help me metabolize all that wonderful grub.
There are obviously varying schools of thought on how to counter this condition. You can take the word of so-called 'experts' in the medical field who quote their research and statistics that 'prove' that a combination of diet and regular exercize can bring your weight back into 'healthy' proportions. Or you can put your faith into the wisdom of our 14th century forefathers, passed along to the current generation of computer-literate Gen Y'ers who are obviously a lot more informed about this subject matter than I am. I choose this route. After all, the internet brought us the wonders of eBay, YouTube, and eBlogging! And I know that I trust everything I write on this blog, so I might as well bank on the wisdom of gdawg69. I wouldn't lie to you. And I'm sure he (or maybe she) wouldn't lie to me!
So, as I rest my laptop on my expanded belly, I know it's just a matter of time before my little crumb-eating regulators return from their sabbaticals, ravenous with a long-awaited hunger for more crumb cake and little smokies. I know then my figure will return to an outline quite similar to my rail-thin boyishness. I have faith in the findings of ancient science and Latin-root derivations posted online by my newfound scientific heroes.
You can sweat in the heat while you walk around a paved track in the county park, counting your calories and monitoring your portions. I'll stay on my course as well. I might not be able to see my toes right now, but I know that my metabolizing friends will return. And when that day comes, I'll drive by you as you walk the trail, roll down the window of my air-conditioned car, and give you a silent salute of pity with my Pepsi and my SlimJim.
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