The Skinny on Fatness

I can’t tell if I’m getting fatter or skinnier.

I just know that I am. The general bulk is somehow shifting. A shirt rides loose today; tomorrow my pants rip; on Thursday my head actually fits into a hat. So, what’s the deal, Neil? How’s the fat, Pat? What’s the explanatty, Fatty? I honestly don’t know.

And finding out isn’t as easy as just buying a scale. I already tried that this summer when I stole one from my parents’ house. See, scales only give you numbers, and numbers don’t describe what’s actually cooking in crap’s kitchen—especially since my numbers have stayed relatively consistent.

Just so it’s out in the open, I weigh 212 lbs,* and despite seasonal swelling and shriveling, I have maintained this weight for the past three years. There are two possible explanations for this: I could be atrophying muscles—literally driving them to suicide through boredom—and adding valuable fat pieces to my public collection. Or, by mechanical pathways far beyond my comprehension, I could actually be gaining muscle and shedding fat.

Traditionally I’ve assessed my relative “fitness” through a standardized scientific assessment performed each morning. I’ve copied the procedure below.

Lift shirt confidently above the nipular level, eye-hump mirror extensively; initiate “flexing dive-poke.” To perform the flexing dive-poke, while flexing the abs, dive through the surface fat with a carrot-stiff finger. If bedrock is hit before the finger gets engulfed: success. If not, it’s another day of justifying away the man boobs.

Despite my strict adherence to this morning ritual, recent results have been inconclusive, even with alternative methods.

In high school, I measured my fitness by the amount of sexual attention I received from girls. Unfortunately, Harvard’s ubiquitous case of SADD, Sexual Attention Deficit Disorder, has rendered this method useless. Even the standard “hold the girth, close the eyes, memorize the size of the protrusion” assessment technique has failed to deliver conclusive results. So I’m asking you—any thoughts?

Maybe some more info on my current weight would help. I consider myself, at least for this school, relatively thick. I have delusions about neither the truth of this fact nor how this truth developed. 7-11 provides free nacho cheese on hot dogs. I discovered this three years ago. Hundreds of hot dogs fit into a single year. So now you’re caught up, do you have an opinion?

My roommates certainly do—have always—and it doesn’t help that both of them are fit. Understand, nagging from my roommates is no uncommon occurrence—“at least change your clothes once a day; at least wash your hair once a month; at least clean the pudding off your ear,”—but nagging about my weight has become one of our principle interactions. Just this morning, my roommate recommended I stand near windows more often since I look thinner in natural light. As often, I’ll simply get the line, “Oh, don’t worry, it’s hard to tell you’re fat because you’re tall.” God, I’m tortured.

Then again, maybe I’m obsessing about the wrong thing. Perhaps what really disturbs me isn’t my ambiguous state of fat but rather that I care so much about it.

As campuses go, Harvard is decidedly un-fat, which means corpulent Cantabs carry an extra heavy burden. But why? What’s driving this phenomenon? As I see it, there are two distinct explanations for Harvard’s lack of jiggling back jam. The first might be obvious. Quite simply, A high percentage of Harvard students are caffeine-driven, jitter-prone, type-A neurotics. Case in point: the dining hall withholds calorie cards so Harvard students can’t starve themselves so efficiently. Unfortunately, the other motivating factor is not one that comes from within, but one, more sinisterly, that is imposed on students by their peers. I call this the “Neil Zacky Prejudice”.

In second grade, Neil Zacky and I were debating a call in a game of capture the flag. Neil contended I was “out;” I contended I was “in”. After considering my argument, Neil concluded, “If you’re so smart, how come you’re fat?” Needless to say, I was ruled “out.”

While most Harvard students convey Neil’s sentiments with greater subtlety and rhetorical flare, the prejudice nonetheless exists. Obesity on this campus is like a signal flare: one that indicates a lack of discipline, dependence on gastronomical soma, and at its most basic level, weakness.

The best and most reliable example of this pressure can be seen in the Freshman Summer Squeeze—when hosts of pudgy freshmen return sophomore year with chiseled jaws and hilarious folds of loose skin. I know. Because I did it, too.

Then I let myself go.

Then three years passed.

And here we are. Fretting about my breading.

So what to do? Well, I recently ordered a tank system that measures my body’s fat composition as a percentage of volume—they use it for packing beef—so personally, I’m good to go.

But Harvard’s problem persists. Here’s my solution: we all go to 7-11 (which, by the way, is my favorite restaurant in the Square) and get Bahama Mamas topped with gallons of healing cheese—my treat. The campus gets hooked; our fat hate drops off as our cholesterol levels rise.

Or we take the more realistic approach. We recognize the scourge of the Neil Zacky Prejuidce within ourselves, we think about how much I cried that day in second grade, and we realize that prejudices about weight, even when held unconsciously, are as morally objectionable as those held about race, gender, or creed. And then we fix it.

And along the way—heck—maybe we’ll eat the hot dogs anyway.