FATBODIES

HARTMAN Are you allowed to eat jelly doughnuts, Private Pyle?

PYLE Sir,no, sir!

HARTMAN And why not, Private Pyle?

PYLE Sir, because I'm too heavy, sir!

HARTMAN Because you are a disgusting fatbody, Private Pyle!

PYLE Sir, yes, sir!

Full Metal Jacket

I've been accused of having a weight obsession. I like to think of it as more of a fat obsession. I don't care if someone is stout or thick-limbed, because stout people can be "built solid" (hard-fat, some call it), but I despise excess fat, particularly on myself. Maybe it stems from my youth --I was a porky kid growing up, in spite of the fact that I was quite active and played alot of different sports. Slow metabolism, maybe? My parents were delighted when I got a paper route at age 12. Besides the valuable lessons to be gained in managing one's own business and learning responsibility, they also imagined that the daily physical activity would help me get rid of my baby fat. Unfortuntately, they did not forsee my eventual transformation into a newspaper delivery tycoon and the inevitable delegation of legwork that followed.

At my peak, I was managing the deliver of 200 newspapers a day on 4 different routes. I say "managing" because I wasn't really delivering the newspapers myself. I devised an ingenious business model which involved recruiting a couple of lucky neighbourhood kids every day to accompany me on my deliveries (they tended to hang out near my house in hopes of getting "the word" --think the longshoremen in On The Waterfront. Carrying two bulky newspaper bags over each shoulder, like bandoliers slung on a bandito's chest, I shuffled up and down the streets of my town, handing papers out to my "runners". The runners were the two or three snot-nosed urchins whose job was to sprint up each driveway and drop off a paper. My job was simply to hand each of them a fresh paper as they returned. It was a fantastic system with very low operating costs --payment for the kids consisted of one chocolate bar at the end of the route (worth about 50 cents in those days). I myself could clear eight or nine bucks a day. As my wealth grew, so did my waistline. I was walking less and less, and eating more and more chips and chocolate bars as a result of my newfound prosperity.

Eventually, I overextended myself when I tried to take on an extra route and adapt my clever system to bicycles in order to make my deliveries on time. Newspaper bags are heavy, and they bump your knees when you try to pedal. A few scraped knees and hands convinced me of the folly of my ambitions, and I eventually scaled back my volume of business as new kids (potential paperboys who did not want to work for me) arrived in the neighbourhood to threaten my racket. I was under pressure. The circulation manager had menaced me with the loss of one-or-more of my routes if I didn't finish deliveries sooner. Luckily, I was saved from this ignominy by a timely career change courtesy of my dad: I was forced to quit the route when we moved to a new town.

In spite of my continued participation in a number of team sports; soccer, hockey, football, I remained chubby throughout my early adolescence. It was only when I became a lifeguard and took up running, cycling and weightlifting that the chub began melting away. Sure, I could get in great shape if I put my mind to it, but I distinctly recall that the minute I stopped working out, lovehandles would appear as if by magic, a symbol of my egregious slackery. I gritted my teeth through high school as I watched beanpole classmates down triple-decker cheeseburgers and tubs of coca cola in the cafeteria. I suppose I wasn't blessed with their metabolisms--which, incidentally, seem to have slowed down significantly in the intervening years, so that formerly svelt boys have now become lard-bellied men (much to my delight). Not so for this boy. My slow metabolism turned into a blessing in disguise. I figure that as I approach the start of my fourth decade on this earth, I still have to maintain approximately the same level of activity as I did when I was in high school in order to stay trim. How many other guys my age can say that?

My neurosis, if you want to call it that, truly coalesced when I joined the military. In the military, thin is ALWAYS in, and FAT equals LAZY plus undisciplined, which is a bad thing, if you are part of an organization that sees discipline as an absolute imperative. It stands to reason that lardasses are treated with contempt in the army. On basic training, I distinctly recall one of my fellow recruits, a tubby fellow, tortured by sergeants as he attempted to do pushups: Private, you look like a dog humping a football! You look like a f*cking beached whale, you fat piece of sh*t and so on... There was little sympathy for the guy. After all, if you are going to join the military as an infantryman, one of the most physically demanding jobs around, it stands to reason that you will get in shape before showing up for training. In this, as in most instances, the transgressor is not the one punished, the group is, as a whole. Everyone does pushups FOR the guy who can't do them himself. It was left to his fellow recruits to "motivate" the private and show him the error of his ways. I think a blanket-party (see Full-metal jacket)ensued, and possibly an RTU (return to unit, for discharge or re-training at a later date), but I don't remember.

I suppose in our infantilized culture, it is conceivable that someone would say to themselves "ah, I won't worry about taking responsibility for my own health and fitness... I'm joining the army! The army will take care of that for me"(Mark Steyn would say this is an inevitable result of the growth of the Nanny-State). Some recruits show up out of shape because it hasn't occurred to them that they bear a share of the responsiblity for ensuring their own well-well being and preparing themselves for their new career-- and that there are consequences if they don't. Nowadays, it seems individuals have abdicated all responsibility for their own personal fitness and health.

Maybe that's why some seem to be drawing the wrong conclusions from Morgan Spurlock's acclaimed film Supersize Me: the "Corporations" (traditional scapegoats and boogeymen of the left)are conditioning young people to eat shitty food, and therefore are to blame for the obesity epidemic in North America. Excuse me? What about the fact that people are simply too bloody lazy to make the necessary lifestyle adjustments that their questionable dietary choices demand? Normally, I wouldn't have any regard for an opinion on this subject from Colby Cosh, a very sharp journalist-turned-Blog superstar who happens to be an overweight chain-smoker (from what I gather), but he makes a fairly good point in bringing up the seldom heard-of idea "personal responsibility" and Les Sayer's clever little experiment, where he actually managed to LOSE weight eating a McDonalds-only diet. HOW you ask? Short answer: Unlike Spurlock, he worked his ass off. Says Les:

Seeing my fat and sugar intake be 200% of "normal values" while eating McDonald's food for a month, caused me to really value the importance of regular exercise. If I can lose weight, lower my cholesterol and triglycerides, and have blood work that reveals a healthy liver and kidneys, and all the while eat at McDonald's, it proves to me two things: firstly McDonald's food isn't laden with the "poisons" some people believe it to be. This makes me smile because the same people who earnestly warned that my liver would "collapse" or "explode" within a couple of weeks of the diet, are now insisting that 30 days wasn't long enough. Some people really believe this stuff. And secondly, diet is important for a healthy lifestyle, but not essential. Exercise, however is essential.

Ultimately, I'm more on Les's side than on Morgan's. I don't think that MacDonalds is trying to con me and everyone else. I don't think that they need to change their menus or their marketing practices (but bully for them if they do it, even as just a PR thing) While I find their food mostly distasteful, I recognize that it is marketed cleverly and I can appreciate the appeal it must have for youth. Nevertheless, as far as I'm concerned, McD's should keep doing what it does --unapologetically selling fatty food of questionable nutritional value to folks. I sure don't think that it's their fault that everyone is getting fatter and fatter because we are eating too much, and letting our kids eat too much, of their crap, or that we are not getting enough exercise, and that we are not forcing junior to get off the frigging couch and go split his XXL trackpants doing a few laps around the track. That's where the personal responsibility part comes in. It isn't a corporation's responsibility to fix things. It's up to you and I.

When I start to put on weight (which happens every once in a while), I know I basically have three options:

A) Eat healthier (How do you know you are on the right track? A good clue is when you stop putting on weight)

B) Exercise more (how much? As much as it takes to stop putting on weight)

C) A combination of A&B

Failure to follow one of these three options will result in me becoming a fatbody -with all the attendant health implications that has (body acceptance my ass-- being fat is unhealthy. Period).

YES, it is that simple. I'm responsible.

Action Comics Presents... POPEMAN!

Please excuse my irreverent take on this subject, but it just occured to me that John Paul II was the nearest thing the 20th century ever had to a real life superhero.

Popeman's origin issue introduces a young Polish man and his intrepid band of seminarians boldly pursuing their studies in wartime Cracow under the very nose of Uncle Adolph and his nefarious Nazi no-goodniks. Right from Panel one, you know that this story will have major fan appeal: a dark street in the Polish city, circa 1943: Spoltlights scour the rooftops as sinister SS men run through the streets. "Mein Gott!" says Hauptmann Heinrich "That Jew-loving priestling has escaped me again!" -- "Better luck next time, herr Heinrich" Young Karol shouts from the roof of the cathedral, before leaping down into the alley and running off to live another day.

No one can forget that successful multi-issue run in the seventies, when the Crimson Cardinal (that's Popeman before he got his new identity in the Action Comics 1978 Super Special Rendez-vous Rome issue) battled the Poland's red menace "the Communist Establishment" with the help of the Social Justice League and a squad of crucifix-wielding nuns; the first of what would be many memorable team-ups and cross-overs.

One of my personal faves was Issue 453 (still have mine mint condition in mylar), where Popeman took three bullets from a would-be assassin and came back to lay some serious doctrinal ass-whuppin' on would be reformers a few pages later. At this point in the his run, the globetrotting caped-and-capped crusader presented the very picture of the man in charge.

No one stepped out of line with this successor of Saint Peter. He was a muscular man of the cloth, an ascetic avenger, a power-packed pontiff. Our hero ran a tight ship. Woe to the hapless political figure who challenged his authority--You best believe that he would set the fool straight with a well-placed encyclical to the proboscis.... and of course, he would be back battling human rights abusers a few pages later-backed up by his priests and bishops. Foes trembled in fear of the Papal ban, but Popeman also had a softer side, and every issue issue featured a friendly encounter with one of the members of his legions of adoring faithful, who were always there to cheer their hero on no matter where he went.

Following his defeat of most of his commie arch-nemeses (and their nefarious Atheist Acolytes) at the end of the eighties, some observers thought that the character had run his course and should be put out to pasture, but Popeman emerged revitalized at the beginning of the nineties, thanks largely to the introduction of the Young Catholics, who had always been background characters, but who now began to take on a greater role in Popeman's struggle against secularism and agnositicism.

After a run of several decades, which has seen Popeman confront every major evil of our time and emerge triumphant, the series now comes to a close. It is fitting that in the final issue of his title, Popeman leaves the world with a message of hope, arms his followers with his greatest superpowers --faith and love-- and urges us onward in our battle with the forces of darkness.

Don't toss out any of the back-issues folks. They are all collectors editions.