Ftrain, by Paul Ford

Pressure up; weight perfectly stagnant--result of Saturday's excess. If I were a simple machine, I should have lost some weight by now, as I ate right and exercised. But one off day leads to several days flatline. Bodies are alchemical. Part of what I'm doing is setting up an environment of true consistency, so that I can see my body as a machine. It's artificial, probably not a 20-year-solution, but you don't learn to do surgery by opening up a body and making sense of the gloop. You look at pictures first, with everything labeled and brightly colored. Keep thing simple. Later you can get a scalpel and start digging.

Examining my "recently added" playlist I realize how little I recall from Saturday night. Whereas the drunks used to gather around the piano now we download prog rock from Russia. Yelling: COURT OF THE CRIMSON BROTHER OF MINE FROM THE WOOD. The women look on in horror and shame. Also, at midnight, [Wife] told me she found me with my hand in the cheese drawer. "What are you doing?" she asked.

"Having cheese," I said.

"Maybe you should go to bed."

There was a special feature in Newsweek, "THE FAT WARS: AMERICA'S WEIGHT RAGE." It spins around in the dark, stabbing at cause and effect.

"Born to be Big: Early exposure to common chemicals may be programming kids to be fat," Sharon Begley, Newsweek

The tributyltin activated a receptor called PPAR gamma, which acts like a switch for cells' fate: in one position it allows cells to remain fibroblasts, in another it guides them to become fat cells. (It is because the diabetes drugs Actos and Avandia activate PPAR gamma that one of their major side effects is obesity.) The effect was so strong and so reliable that Blumberg thought compounds that reprogram cells' fate like this deserved a name of their own: obesogens.

Obesogens! That's what I've been looking for. "I can't eat cobbler because it's filled with obesogens." (This is not what obesogens are, but it's too funny a term to leave to the scientists.) "There are obesogens in that bacon! They are transmitted by sizzle! I am fatting!"

And more, and more. "America’s War on the Overweight":

As many women's magazines' cover lines note, losing the last five pounds can be a challenge. So why don't we have more compassion for people struggling to lose the first 50, 60, or 100? Some of it has to do with the psychological phenomenon known as the fundamental attribution error, a basic belief that whatever problems befall us personally are the result of difficult circumstances, while the same problems in other people are the result of their bad choices. Miss a goal at work? It's because the vendor was unreliable, and because your manager isn't giving you enough support, and because the power outage last week cut into premium sales time. That jerk next to you? He blew his quota because he's a bad planner, and because he spent too much time taking personal calls.

"Fundamental attribution error" = "you are an asshole." People are selfish venal rat-creatures. Watching the country gnaw its own belly open over health care, or reviewing the catalog of atrocities available with any web search, you realize that we can't even act in enlightened self-interest, that we are bound for our own destruction barring a space elevator and dispersal of the gene pool. But also, we're the best we've got, at least until we can get the playful otter an opposable thumb.

The same can be true of weight: "From working with so many people struggling with their weight, I've seen it many times," says Andrew Geier, a postdoctoral fellow in the psychology department at Yale University. "They believe they're overweight due to a myriad of circumstances: as soon as my son goes to college, I'll have time to cook healthier meals; when my husband's shifts change at work, I can get to the gym sooner.…" But other people? They're overweight because they don't have the discipline to do the hard work and take off the weight, and that lack of discipline is an affront to our own hard work. (Never mind that weight loss is incredibly difficult to attain: Geier notes that even the most rigorous behavioral programs result in at most about a 12.5 percent decrease in weight, which would take a 350-pound man to a slimmer, but not svelte, 306 pounds).

So I've basically done this, if you count from before I bought the scale. This website here is, I suppose, a fairly rigorous behavioral program. If you go by math I'm about two months away. I wonder if that's why it took so much brainpower and has ruined me at work. It must be very hard to do the thing I'm doing.

There was, until I caught myself doing it, a desire to lecture others, to spread the new gospel. But "If I can do it, so can you!" is nonsense. I have made a few months' progress. I'm still mooseish. Hardly a good example. But even if I end up in the slend pool, it took me 20 years to get started. I will never be qualified as a good example. Besides, I lack the hubris; failure is always a handsbreadth away, in the pretzel bag.

A man keeps his mouth shut. Grunts unless words are necessary. And then he uses short sentences. Words are trouble. Every one is an opportunity for error.

And only 120 lbs to go.

But why do the rest of us care so much? What is it about fat people that makes us so mad? As it turns out, we kind of like it. "People actually enjoy feeling angry," says Ryan Martin, associate professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay, who cites studies done on people's emotions. "It makes them feel powerful, it makes them feel greater control, and they appreciate it for that reason." And with fat people designated as acceptable targets of rage—and with the prevalence of fat people in our lives, both in the malls and on the news—it's easy to find a target for some soul-clearing, ego-boosting ranting.

I feel this way about New York Times bloggers and large subscription services firms. My hatred is easily exhausted, though. Whereas for others I know it's something to grip. It's the short that hate the most. And it always confuses me, because what do they have to be angry about? They can fly coach.

I was talking with R-- about the various tragic flaws of our mutual acquaintances. I said that my tragic flaw is that I want so badly to be liked. But it is also one of my better qualities. "It leads to sub-par writing, because I want the audience to be my friend," I said.

"But it also makes you a very charming man," he said.

This was always my sort-of victory, that I could make slends love me, treat me as one of them, even though with my corpulence I felt like Gregor Samsa showing up for dinner. "He's handsome for a roach. And funny."

It's very bad for an editor, though. You can't care if the writers like you. And for a father, which I would like to be. And for a teacher, which I am to be. You can't have students as friends. Not at first. You must have authority, and wear power, and cultivate a bit of fundamental attribution error. You have to assume that the problem is theirs. So I am learning not to care if people like me, or if young teenagers yell things to me as I ride my bicycle.

But my fear remains: if they don't like me they'll take note of the obesity, and they will be able to note it in their messageboards and in passing and to their friends and push me out. And thus gain some sort of power over me. Round me up and put me into a camp. Snackwitz. Bredenau. Treatblinka. "THE FAT WARS: AMERICA'S WEIGHT RAGE" is the title of the Newsweek special section. (Fatties will win. We are slower but we have the calories and the defensive girding. And there are more of us, and we are hungry. And yet ironically the destruction of our national infrastructure during the Fatwar of 2043 led to a corn and wheat shortage; forced to make do without sugar or white flour caused America to lose about 30 collective pounds. When it was all over it was impossible to tell which side was which.)

How does one then deal with fundamental attribution error in others? That is, when one perceives that the other would like to blame you for your flaws, and thus feel some sort of pathetic semi-erotic control over their own shitful lives, what is the right way to manage it? One way may be to let them know, gently and in passing, that you see their own flaws, and then to remind them that you choose not to be cruel. A sort of "well, we all have that problem" statement, poking their weakest point ever so gently. Just enough to throw them off balance, to remind them that in their idiotic machinations it's best to factor me out. Alternately, to remove myself from a situation where they can cause me distress. Some people may be lost, and the right thing to do is to ignore them, and if they cause trouble cause it back, as loudly and in as ugly a fashion as possible, quick and quiet and cruel. I can definitely be loud and ugly. But only if required.

Weight: 322.75 lbs