Skinny is Better

I have spent most of the last 20 years as an overweight, fat slob. I have been fat and I have been skinny, and skinny is much better. 

The sad thing is, for that entire 20 years, I knew exactly how to eat to lose weight, but I tried and failed to go on my diet again about twice a year. So instead, I looked like a pig. Gross, bloated, distorted, with bedunk a dunk thighs, elephant butt, and a gelatin blob of a belly. Ugly! Not sexy! Keep your clothes on, please!

My tittles are something special however; I say tittles and not chest, because the fat men in my family have tittles that compete with those of their wives’. I was 6 foot tall, and weighed 262 pounds just this spring. I have dropped to 215 in four months, and the pounds continue to melt off. I have no doubt that within 6 months I will lose at least 25 or 30 pounds more. I went from size 42 waist pants to 36, and from a XXL shirt to a L, and sometimes mediums. Did I spend $12,000 for lab band surgery? Buy a gym membership? Find a pill that causes weight loss? Some easy, magic method to win the battle with the bulge I have been fighting my whole life?

No, I did what I always knew I would have to do, I became a vegan again.

Again? Yes, after spending a horrible childhood as the butt of every fat joke ever told, I was really ready to become thin when I finished high school. In the dictionary next to the words “childhood obesity” my picture should have been there. I got asked my bra size almost every day at school. My tittles were bigger than most of the girls in high school!

Fat? I weighed 250 pounds in 7^th grade. The cool kids, the athletic boys, all hated me at the “Christian school” I attended, because I was the fat, gay kid. They would fight over me when picking teams for baseball or basket ball. “You take him. “No, we don’t want to lose! You take him.” “No, we took him last time, it’s your turn.” I was the fat, gay kid that nobody understood or wanted. I was so lonely, I hated myself and wanted kill myself, but I was afraid of hell. This is very typical of what fat, gay kids get at “Christian schools," and I felt totally alone, and desperate for a better life.

I lost over 100 pounds the first time I became a vegan when I was around 20. I had been a lifelong vegetarian, as my parents were Seventh-Day Adventist. There was no meat in my diet the first time around, so I was giving up candy, cheese, sour cream, milk, eggs, sugar, butter, fried foods, and junk food in general. My weight went from around 250 to 135-145 for my life between ages 20 and 32. I kept this thin body for 12 years, and felt strong, healthy, and alive.

But then I moved away Georgia where there was a vegan restaurant near work. I could no longer visit my parents, who cooked vegan; it was no longer easy to be a vegan, as I had to cook for myself all the time. My friend ordered a pizza and asked me if I wanted a slice. And just that fast, my 12 years of self-sacrifice and self-discipline when right down the drain. Pizza was my downfall, and cheese continues to be the biggest reason I am fat, as some cheeses are over 60% fat.

My hard, skinny, 32 year-old vegan body, trained by walking 3-7 miles up and down hills almost every day, was 6’, 145 pounds on the day I ate that first slice of cheese lover’s pizza. My nipples barely bulged in my t-shirt, and no one had suggested that I get a bra in over 10 years. When I walked into a gay club, at least half the heads would spin around, and the eyes go up and down. Well, no more.

Wouldn’t you know it, that first pizza came with a soda, and several hundred sodas and pizzas later, I was a hundred pounds heavier and fatter than a puffer fish about a year later. Oh, yes, I was still a vegetarian – specifically a lacto-ova vegetarian, which means one that eats dairy products and eggs. But sugar, milk, cheese, sour cream, whipped cream, ice cream - I scream, I scream because my fat butt is back! My tittles are D cups, and I just still keep eating the candy bars, sodas, pizza and fat fat fat!!! Vegetarians are not necessarily healthily, and my diet defined unhealthily just a year after deciding that being a vegan was too much trouble to cook.

Well, I no longer have the same excuse. Brown rice no longer takes one hour or more to cook. Uncle Bens has pre-cooked boil-in-bag brown rice that cooks in 10 minutes. Trader Joes sells brown rice in microwaveable bags that heat in 90 seconds. Lots of things have changed since I was a vegan in the 70s and 80s. So many things that had to cook for hours are now quick and easy. I am exploring exotic new flavors and spices, as I live with a Hispanic man, who likes his food as exciting as he is.

So is being skinny enough reason to become a vegan? For me, you better believe the answer is yes! But as they say in the TV commercials, “but wait, there’s more!”According to a 10 year study done at Loma Linda University in the 70s, vegans live about 11 years longer than the average American. This study, published in a book called “6 years longer”, compared 100,000 average California residents, with 100,000 people who were a mix of lacto-ova vegetarians and vegans. The study showed that vegetarians have an average of 75% less cancer, and 85% percent less heart disease then the comparison group. The vegetarians lived 6 years longer, and the vegans lived 11-12 years longer than the comparison group.

Nearly half of all Americans 65 or older have multiple chronic ailments, and are on multiple drug prescriptions. Many of the ailments we have, including diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease and even cancer, can be prevented by weight loss and low sugar, vegan diet. So yes, you can be skinny, sexy, healthy, and forget about all those drugs the pharmacy is waiting to give you.

This means that when you are 80 or 90, your friends that are still alive could be saying, “How does he/she do it? How much liposuction has she / he had. What, yes, well he says none, but look how hot he / she looks, and has great grandkids!” Or, they could come say goodbye to you in the hospital when you are 58, dying of some obesity-caused disease. Your choice.

As I have tried and failed to become a vegan again about 40 times in the last 20 years, I know how difficult it is to make the change. What’s different this time?

Jesus is controlling my mouth and my fork, instead of me. 

I have given my appetite to God, and have totally surrendered my life to Him. You see, when we are used to sugar and rich, fatty foods, simple fruit and vegetables taste boring. So when we eat strawberries or blueberries without sugar, they taste like cardboard because our taste buds have been perverted. So go without eating, until you can enjoy simple food. Jesus and Moses went 40 days without eating, you can last a day! Fast one or two days a week, drinking only water if you can, or fruit juice if you can’t. If you can get through the first month, you can be a vegan the rest of your life.

Keywords: vegan, health, weight loss, skinny, fat, Jesus, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, cancer, diet, dieting