Fat Bear Week

It's time for me to weigh in

I recently had a bunch of doctor’s appointments. On a Monday, I went to a Medical Weight Loss Clinic. On that Wednesday, I went in to my primary’s office to get my blood pressure checked because it was abnormally high at an additional doctor’s appointment the week before.

Because I’m fat (I can say it but you can’t), and I have many of the physical attributes colloquially belonging to the “bears” of the gay community, I called it Fat Bear Week¹ to my friends. Haha yes, very clever.

It’s Not the Year, It’s the Mileage (But it’s Also the Year)

The human body was simply not made to last a long time. You know how a rubber ball gets less bouncy over time? Bodies are like that, too.

This makes itself most apparent when my body tries to bounce back from something I’ve done to it. Recovery from everything takes longer than it did when I was younger. The fun but damaging things that I do to myself are less fun. Even worse, the slow curve back to homeostasis is longer and harder.

It is alcohol I have chiefly in mind when I think about this. I have always had punishing hangovers, but middle age has made them worse. Whatever mysterious damage is wrought by too much alcohol takes less alcohol to hurt and takes longer to go away.²

Alcohol, cigarettes³, candy, sleeping in on a weekend -- the small joys of unhealthy indulgences vanish when endured by a middle aged body. All brakes, no gas.

Anywhoozles, Fat Bear Week bore fruit. For one, I have to eat more fruit. I don’t really like fruit, but it has fiber and the good kind of sugar (which I do very much like). A Nutritionist Dietician (thank you Anne, I can never keep them straight) went over my favorite indulgences and suggested healthy alternatives. Also, I wasn’t eating enough.

The Breakfast of Homicide Detectives

I feel like a character in a 70s cop show. My breakfast is black coffee and a hard boiled egg. The doctor told me it was fine, but I should eat 3 hard boiled eggs instead. My face must have given my thoughts away because he said: “You need to eat more.”

This is not the advice one usually hears when one lives in a large body. We are usually told to eat less, not more. In addition to more fruit and more eggs, I have been instructed to eat more protein and fiber. My abysmal eating habits, after six years of living my myself and not moving very much, leave a larger crater than they used to. While I rarely eat fast food, I love eating a lot late at night and then immediately going to bed. This is a terrible habit! Even a lot of sort-of-good-for-me-food is bad when I starve myself all day and slam a heap of casserole or half a bag of tortilla chips (or both!) right before bed.

Anyway, that was the old me. The new me cares about his health by doing things like considering what he eats and how much he moves his body. I’m not used to exercising so I’m trying to rediscover it. I used to love to move my body. I am trying. It’s going okay.

riding my peloton has been going great

I have also begun taking a drug. I believe this drug has the potential to change our society drastically, and for the better. It’s been in regular use for a long time and its mechanism is pretty well understood and has created amazing outcomes for millions of people. I’m sure you’ve heard of it — it’s called Tirzepatide, but the brand name is Zepbound. My insurance won’t cover it lol

You can read all about how it works and all the relevant medical stuff at the Mayo Clinic website (I’m not Hank Green⁴). I won’t tell you how it works, I want to instead tell you how it feels.

If I could eat anything I want, it would probably look a lot like a spice bag — a pile of fried food with sauce on it. I think about how good that tastes and how good it feels to eat it. Or maybe a reuben sandwich with French fries on the side. I can’t imagine anything better than that. I can start to want that sensation so much that I can’t focus on the things happening in front of me. This is magnified when I’m hungry.

I know I shouldn’t eat a pile of French fries that are perfectly crisp outside and soft inside and smothered in ketchup. Sometimes I feel powerless in front of these urges and I give in to them and regret it. Put enough of these in sequence and, well, fat bear week happens.

Zepbound turns the volume on that channel way down. It’s not off, not completely. It makes it easier to do what I know I should be doing anyway. Just like my SSRIs don’t change the way I think, it makes the spikes of anxiety and depths of depression easier to resist, they don’t last as long, and are weakened enough to let my better habits and cognitive behavioral training take over. Tirzepatide doesn’t make me not want to eat bad things, it makes it easier to make good decisions. Some people don’t need that help — they can make those decisions without a drug. Some people also don’t get anxious or depressed. We have to manage with what we have.

Zepbound does other things, too, on a gastronomic level. I don’t understand those things very well. I just know it makes it easier to be a healthy weight. Healthy weight is my goal, and maybe I’ll also feel better about my appearance. Maybe! But that is going to take more than a drug.

The Body-Checking 48 Year Old

As long as I’ve been old enough to be aware of my body, I have disliked how it looks. I don’t know if self image or one’s opinion of one’s own body is genetic. Mine is so pervasive and so deep and so constant that I can’t remember ever in my entire life spending more than fleeting moments approving of my appearance, except in hindsight. I can see old pictures of myself and admire how hot I was, but the person in those photos never, ever thought that about himself.

Everybody in this photo thinks he’s fat, ugly and gross

Body checking is compulsive self-assessment. Some people can’t stop measuring themselves or pinching their fat. I am always seeing that ugly guy in mirrors and reflections.

Some days are better than others. I don’t feel all that bad about myself today. Tomorrow might be even better!

The Year in Review

Which year? I don’t even know. This one? The last one? Who cares.

The last year recedes in the rear view mirror and the urgency of the new year’s unfolding horror clangs on the bars of my enclosure every single time I happen to glance at the news. Everybody’s talking about how bad things are. Even the vanishing Trump-likers in my life are making this face 😅 instead of this one 🤪 and if things keep going the way they have been, they might even start making this one 😬. We can hope!

Your Phone is Killing You

As you can see by the screenshots, I’m still using my phone too much. I have decided⁵ that phones are bad and I want to use mine less. Everything I do that is nice and fun is not on my phone. The phone is full of algorithms specifically designed to keep me using them even to the detriment of my health and society. I wonder what that reminds me of.

Stuff I Did Last Year

I did some things. I traveled a little. I went to New York City, London, Paris and Toronto. I mourned my friend. I met a remarkable lady. Here’s a collage of photos I took.

I’m not being cagey. I am trying to be more circumspect online. Why should I give these billionaires more content to train their stupid robots on? More to the point, I feel like living my life online has lost its luster. Did it ever have any luster to begin with? I’m not sure it did.

I met some nice people and lifelong friends online, but like alcohol and sugar, algorithms and social media are better in moderation. Substack is social media, but I don’t use it for itself, I use it for the people it’s enabled me to find. That’s been my approach to all social media. I use it to connect to people who have a joyful presence in my life, even if only by writing something I like reading. And while staying on Substack is slowly draining my health bar, it won’t last forever. This is why I have been nursing my blog back to health.

The golden age of the internet is long past, and I’m not even sure when it was, but perhaps it’s actually in the freedom of posting up a website and putting your pictures, your writing, your thoughts there, instead of on ten websites that use your information and attention to make money for venal little toads. The personal website and the wounded-but-still-climbing blog are, somehow, viable options. Grab your domain and spin up a Wordpress and take ownership of your digital life for god’s sake.

If You’re Going to Be Here, at Least Read Something Good

For me, Substack is basically just a webring⁶. Remember those? You might not, that’s okay, you’re not as old as me. It was a bunch of like-minded bloggers who all got together and formed a kind of recommendation chain — you could go to a blog, enjoy what you’re reading, and then click around on the blogs in the ring and therefore expand your horizons. We also had blogrolls, which were lists of blogs we liked. My blogroll would always be moving around and changing shape.⁷

I love it when podcasts recommend things and I love it when bloggers I like recommend things and maybe it’s a remnant of the old internet to post recommendations, but I’m letting myself do it here because that’s what I want to do.

My brother Rob left Substack⁸ recently and you should read what he says about it. You should be reading his newsletter anyway, people.

George Saunders, Ottessa Moshfegh, Neal Stephenson and Miranda July don’t need me to endorse them, but you should read them. Their writing and their writing about writing brings me consistent joy and things to think about.

I also like A. J. Daulerio and his writing on sobriety and recovery and mental health and, like, life. BDM has a lot of really interesting things to say about stuff and her writing is enviable. Another enviable writer is Meghna Rao. Erin Williams is also good at words. Rusty Foster is the best internet writer in the world.

Finally, you gotta read my pals Margaret, Andrea, and I’m forgetting others I’m sure and I’m sorry, I’ll get you back next time. And oh yeah, you should read Ellen, ofc.

1. fat bear week is also a real thing that happens in Alaska with actual bears

2. I’m joking of course, the pain of a hangover is not mysterious

3. I haven’t smoked a cigarette in 18 years, but I still miss them. Quitting smoking at 30 gave me a little preview of the need to abandon bad habits that I face in middle age

4. I wish I was though

5. this is supposed to be a joke because I didn’t decide it, I merely had my bias confirmed by science

6. I misremembered at first and thought they were called “blog rings” but then I realized my mistake and remembered that the term predated the word “blog” and suddenly felt the weight of every year of my life at once

7. Substack has a nazi bar problem but I can hang out here in my corner with my favorite writers and pretend like the nazis aren’t there, at least right now

8. I will leave Substack soon but my usage is so slight that I feel like its one of the few things on the internet that gives me more than I give it and for right now, I shall remain