Waist Watchers

I feel fat. Not fat fat, like obese. I'm the kind of fat that when I put my pants on and they're tight, I blame the clothes dryer before my fork. I'll soon be in my fifties and most people who know me generally tell me I look like I'm in decent shape, with only a few adding the "for your age" qualifier implying I'd look like shit if I was thirty. I know that. I also know I'd look fantastic right now if I was seventy, so it's all relative. But perception isn't always reality, and the reality is I'm not as unshapely as I used to be. I have developed a spare tire that I want to keep closer to a fatty for a bicycle than a dually for a truck.

While being mindful that I have a handful of extra pounds I could do without, I'm not concerned about reaching the size of Costco loading-dock-entrance fat. Nor do I have medical issues that put me in any at-risk categories should I indulge in an extra piece of cake or a full rack of ribs instead of a half rack. In my opinion, if the ribs are good you should always go for the full rack and take some home. Good ribs are good the next day, and you don't have to eat the whole thing in one sitting, fat ass. As far as what I eat, I do have responsibility for opening the pantry, the refrigerator, the extra beer, and my mouth. I just have to make sure there is some attention to how much goes in and how much comes out. 

I can look at my descendants and take some comfort that my genetics don't make me predisposed for being a load-bearing biped. Some are not as fortunate. They are prone to living large. But being large is not the same as being fat. Size for a lot of people is relative to their diet and culture. You don't often see small Samoan adults, and large Samoan adults generally come from large Samoan children. It's who they are. A lot of size, however, is relative to a lack of discipline. It's the discipline of not eating - or for kids, being fed - too many or too much of the wrong things.

I checked the stats. 68% of Americans are overweight based on Body Mass Index calculations. The BMI is a simple mathematical expression in which your weight is multiplied by 703 and divided by your height in inches squared. The resulting number is your percentage of body fat. The equation looks like this:

 BMI = mass(lb) * 703 / (height(in))²

For those of you with funny accents who don't live in the southern U.S., it looks like this: 

BMI = mass(kg) / (height(m))²

^{I have modified the calculation slightly, and my personal measurement standard looks something like this:}

^{BMI = mirror * how much you ate last night you fucking pig / how much clothing you have on}

Albert Einstein fires back at one of his Theory of Relativity

critics by comparing the man’s girth relative to the size

of an elephant’s ass.

I found out something interesting about this universally accepted calculation in my quest for a reference base. The BMI is something called a heuristic proxy. Heuristic methods are used "to speed up the process of finding" - remember, I'm quoting here - "a good enough solution, where an exhaustive search is impractical. Examples of this method include using a 'rule of thumb,' an educated guess, an intuitive judgment, or common sense." An educated guess? Really? That's what we get? Scientists will spend decades and millions on computers to find the end of pi, yet can't find an absolute measure for body fat because of pie. You know what an educated guess is? Patting yourself on the back for not being able to do the math and settling for the answer you got. The BMI is a medal at the Math Special Olympics. It's just another medically applied standard - like pre-hypertensive blood pressure - that's "close enough" to meaning something. Since the Body Mass Index has no factual scientific basis, it's referred to as an indicator. Know what else is an indicator of body mass? Not being able to see your fucking toes when you look down.

I've thought about what I could do to get a little more control of my waist, so I took a look at the food intake part of my life. My wife recently started doing Weight Watchers. Now, she's not fat. Not even close to fat. But she's concerned about her diet and eating habits enough that a) she wants to make sure she's eating the right foods in the right amounts, and b) she wants to look her best for me and feel her best for her. I love her for that. I also love her for not blowing up into a lump of lard and then deciding it's time to fix the problem. I should follow her lead. I also know people not trying to revive a dead acting career who have used the program successfully, so it can't be all Hollywood hype. I need a measure for what I eat, and WW sounds interesting.

Ten weeks into the Weight Watchers program, Pat had

 to start over after learning the goal of the point system

was not to achieve high score.

Weight Watchers seems simple. It basically relies on a system that assigns points to foods and lets you know how many points you should be eating per day. And their weighty equation is like Chinese algebra compared to the BMI. Their mathematical heurism goes like this:

(calories / 2) + (fat grams / 12) - (dietary fiber grams / 5) = points

Looking at it, it's hard not think there's a correlation between America's low math scores in our school's and our country's obesity problem. If you do find the answer, you round it up or down depending on how guilty you'll feel about rounding down. You don't need a PhD to know if you always round down, you'll round up.

What I shove down my gullet isn't the only aspect of dieting. There's exercise. I consider myself somewhat active. I'm certainly not as active as I was when I was younger, and not nearly as active as I could be now. I've been told I should join a health club, but I have no more desire to go to a gym than I do a church. God is everywhere, and so is a good walk. I don't need the motivation of earning a yummy treat by scoring exercise points, just the motivation to exercise. But for now...

 ...I'm grilling a 10 ounce rib-eye steak smothered in chopped garlic. I have an ear of corn. I have a small helping of macaroni salad. I have a beer. By my rough calculation the meal is about 16 points. I'm also sitting on my backyard patio with the sun lowering itself toward the horizon. I'm watching the light filter through the oak trees. It's about 80 degrees with a light breeze. I have music playing, but not loud enough to drown out the hypnotic sound of the waterfall trickling into the pond. My wife, late from work, will be joining me soon. She'll get into some comfortable clothes and we'll sit together, she with her point-free drink and me with my rum and Coke...maybe we'll relax in the spa. I'll look at my stomach and compare it to my life, which despite the daily bullshit looks pretty good right now and think, "Weight Watchers doesn't have points for this."