Soylent Lean

There was a time, several years ago, when I was working a cushy, comfortable office job. Up to a point, I could make my own hours, the pay was decent and considering I was living with my parents at the time, I could have a rather extravagant lifestyle well beyond that of the average twenty one year old. There were a few downsides to this job. For like all offices (insert obligatory Office Space joke here because I know you’re all waiting for the comparison) this one had its quirks which took me a little while to learn. Part of fitting in with these co-workers, six of which were in a position of being able to order me about, was taking joy in culinary indulgences. Like many lower management I often would be tasked with daily ice cream acquisition and appropriation. I’d occasionally indulge but more often than not, I found satisfaction in the daily half hour away from the office and the following twenty minutes when my coworkers would gorge and leave me to my introspection. One August day when most people were on vacation, only three other people and I were in the office. We had all abandoned the pretense of actual work by ten. To celebrate, I took a 20 minute break and went down to the market. I returned with a bag full of produce, fully prepared to share with my other co-workers. One apple later, I found myself discriminated against for the first time in my life. Being a heterosexual, caucasian male, age eighteen to fifty, it was shock. A certain shall we say, amply fed member of staff, remarked how ‘disgusted’ she was by my snack choice. At her desk she enjoyed some refined sugar in twinkie form. Now what she meant to say was, “Your healthy snack makes me feel bad about my weight and the fact that I put on the pretense of being on a diet while sitting here and eating the devil’s own snack food.” For the rest of my tenure at that office, it would continue like that. I’d bring a bag lunch, everybody else would eat fast food and I would suffer their slings and arrows. There was a time not so long ago when the over-weight people of the world were ridiculed by the rest. They were the minority and the majority, by right of mob rule, had the duty to throw snack cakes at them and oink. The ensuing suicides and eating disorders of the sixties and seventies curtailed the public ridicule, probably for the best. But now, things have gone terribly wrong. If a person were to look up the word ‘Ubermenche’ in the dictionary, you would not see my picture. But, you would see me listed under ‘self-respect’. Exercise, proper diet, they’re important parts of my plan to live to see the twenty second century and own a flying car. Sadly, it seems that self-respect can also be found under the sub-heading of ‘endangered species’. When I go out for a run, pass by a gentleman who takes up so much of the sidewalk that I have to run on the grass and over the heroic guitar playing of Jimmy Page I can still hear him letting loose a snort of contempt in my direction, I must take issue. Perhaps he was violently loosening some phlegm and I am over reacting. His being out that night could be part of his plan to regain his self-respect and reduce his girth to something his limbs can support. If that is the case I commend him for taking the effort. Yet, it seems that those that chose to take a healthy approach to life are now in the minority. Furthermore, I stand resolute that people who take ownership of their bodies ought not to have to endure the passive-aggressive jibes of the over weight. Every time I have to hear about how my eating habits make another person feel bad about theirs and then be robbed of fifteen minutes of my life hearing about some their new half baked diet, puts me one step closer to throwing those seven-eleven nachos and cheese at their feet and demanding they dance like a drunken gun fighter in a John Wayne movie. But, I am better than such things. But, even with my self control, the cycle will go on. The balance of svelte versus robust will be toppled thanks to fast food franchises spreading faster than the West Nile Virus. In twenty years stubby arms will throw protein bars at joggers from rascal scooters. And the joggers will go home and cry while doing one armed pushups bellowing, "Why God? Why did you curse me with the potential to be my ideal weight for my body type?" Meanwhile, “It’s genetic,” others will say as the rascal scooter gang, which long since replaced the biker gang, rolls up to the modified drive through window. “I have high bone density,” will come another voice. Any excuse justifying the situation and allowing for the consumption of mass quantities. But in the end only one out of one hundred will have a legitimate genetic predisposition to obesity – if that even is something on the human genome – the rest will just go home look in the mirror and cry. Why? Because they know that in the final analysis they lack the one thing that would turn their life around self-respect. We’re not a fat society Peter Mansbridge, we’re just one that doesn’t hold itself in very high regard.