6 November (the second)

Apparently the fame of my gaining ways has crossed over into some seriously messed up places...

I was backtracking some of the traffic link stats on my blog (yes, I know it's creepy but I find it fascinating to see just where my blog is getting cross posted to and how people are hearing about it) and I found this:

http://www.reddit.com/r/self/comments/fxw9l/one_year_from_300lbs_to_175lbs/

The thread is about weight loss and virtually all the comments were incredibly fat-phobic.

Imagine my confusion when I got there and tried to find the link to my blog (I mean, why would a bunch of fat-hating ex-fatties want to read MY blog...286 times?)

Now I had to read the comments on that sucker for about 20 minutes before I found out where the link was. Turns out it was in the part of the comments where they're talking about how you can lose weight but keep volume. There's four links: two examples of what someone 300 pounds can look like and two links showing what people can look like at 200 pounds. The first 200 pound shot is of a super pumped up body builder...and the other one is me. Apparently my picture and blog are being used to show how things should NOT be done. According to them: Me=Fail.

After getting over the shock of it (and counting my blessings that I never include face shots or identifying info in my pix)...

The message I'm getting from this is that at 200 pounds I was looking like one seriously chunky monkey. I'm feeling really conflicted right now: should I be furious that my blog and photograph are being used as a source of ridicule by others? Or should I be feeling happy and validated as a budding fat guy that there's a whole lot of non-gainer type people (I mean, the exact literal opposite!) who looked at my picture and said "wow, that guy sure is fat"?

Anyway, to the commenter who asked "why would anyone WANT to get fat?"...my answer is this: "because it's MY body and I choose not to mindlessly work to conform to an arbitrary stereotype of what 'beautiful' is...and instead spend my efforts engaging in things that provide me pleasure. "

Besides, what kind of exotic chemical/hormonal brews do you think those pumped up guys have running through their bloodstreams? Being that hypermuscular is just not natural. All it takes for me to improve myself is FOOD.