Control: I’m 300 Pounds and I Work Out…

I, Dalton Lewis, weigh over 300 pounds but work out regularly. Irony! This is a true contradiction. I sit around my room watching television and playing video games and writing and reading all day long. It’s hard to stay in shape for a writer in the contemporary era. It’s hard to stay skinny when McDonald’s is nearby — they really want my money, and they offer so much delicious sugary food. God, that sugary food is so delicious. It tastes so good. How can I possibly stay skinny when cheeseburgers taste so delicious and vegetables taste so boring? Has anyone really wanted boring? I know I haven’t.

I grew up skinny. I didn’t appreciate what I had. Why didn’t I appreciate it? For the first twenty-four years of my life I was in good, quality cardio-vascular shape. I was one hundred seventy-five pounds or so. Skinny! I worked out all the time. High school required us to work out five days a week so we did that. I continued working out after school because, well, I liked basketball and baseball and liked playing sports. This was the twentieth century. We went outside to play. We wandered around and had adventures around the neighborhood.

When high school ended I went to college at the University of Iowa. I started to run with the guys on Stanley Seven, a dorm floor which housed some of my friends. We would go on runs for forty-five minutes around Iowa City and then buy lemonade afterwards — which was backwards, but we were skinny, so no one cared if we were backwards. I ate pretty poorly but not poorly enough to gain weight. I don’t understand — why was I skinny then? Why am I fat now? I don’t understand.

After college I worked out but not as much. The real, adult world intervened. I needed to work a forty-hour work week. I didn’t have friends who worked out to coordinate with.

Then it happened.

I became crazy.

I descended into madness. Paranoid schizophrenia destroyed my mind and wrecked my life. I have written about this many other times — so I will just say that I became a mentally ill person. One of the many things which became harder to do was working out. At the same time a very nice, qualified doctor began to prescribe me meds which made me more hungry. This combination of effects made me gain weight — a little at a time.

You’d be surprised what can happen when you slowly gain weight over fifteen years. I went from one hundred seventy-five pounds to three hundred pounds. I gained weight a little at a time. I ate poorly. I didn’t work out. I took meds which made me hungry, hungry all the time. Society didn’t help, either — food became much more centered around sugar.

I started working out about a year ago. Some weeks I worked out three times and some weeks six times. I haven’t lost any weight. I don’t know why. I have started to take a med which should make me less hungry and counteract the med which makes me eat more. I work out, watching television. I pedal and pedal on the exercise bike, trying to get in shape, trying to stay three hundred pounds and not gain any more weight. We will see if it helps any. I am three hundred pounds and work out regularly.

Thanks, and take care, friends.