All About That Bass

So it’s been a little while since my last post. It’s a time in my life where nothing of interest is happening. The problem of what to do with my future lies unsolved, despite the vast amount of time my brain decides to devote to it. Occasionally though it take a break to come up with an idea for a blog post. This is one such idea.
We’re halfway through January and by now many a New Year resolution has failed. The whole concept seems odd when you sit watching it from the side-lines. I’ve been gradually attempting to become a new me for some time now (see the early days of this blog) and the new year is pretty irrelevant for me. Whether you have a new year resolution or not, it’s important to remember that change is gradual and does not happen overnight.
One particular resolution/thing I am not keen on is the whole “dry January” thing. A month without drinking alcohol. Obviously I’m all for raising money for charity and I know some people desperately need to cut down on the amount of alcohol they are drinking, but something like this should be a proper achievement. The vast majority of people are not addicted to alcohol and can manage perfectly well without it. Weirdly, I so far am achieving a dry January, through coincidence rather than willpower. I’m not tee-total at all but I just happen to have not drunk any alcohol for a few weeks. It baffles me that something I can do without even thinking about it can be considered as an achievement.
Anyway, that’s not what this post it all about. Probably the most popular resolution is to lose weight and/or exercise more. As sit in our staffroom I see colleagues eating miniscule portions of something ultra healthy and unappealing and hear them discuss which weight loss scheme is the most effective. I witness this in bemusement as I munch on my Wagon Wheel1.
I am overweight. It’s a simple, unavoidable fact. I’m not very fit and I don’t eat healthily. Perhaps the surprising thing to some is that I don’t really mind. Society expects you to mind and go on diets and spend time at the gym to lose weight. People expect you to be a certain shape, or at least want to be a certain shape. I refuse to meet such expectations.
Physically, I don’t look that overweight. I am quite a big guy and if I was really fit I probably wouldn’t look much different. It’s my belly where all the fat lies but I regularly see people who look a lot worse. Obviously I want to be healthy and if my weight was affecting my health I would do something about it. But at the moment it’s all fine and actually my mental health would be affected by eating less. It sounds silly, but I’ve been there.
I think beyond health, the big motivation for not being overweight is to try and be attractive to the opposite sex. I think most people have a good idea of how attractive they are, whether they will admit it or not. Even when I was much thinner, I wasn’t attractive. I am not an attractive person, simple as that. I could lose loads of weight and I know it would be irrelevant in terms of looking attractive. I’ve kind of got to a point where I’ve given up seeking a relationship now anyway.
As so often on this blog, this is another example of me being different from the norm, or at least society’s expected norm. I’m overweight and quite frankly, I’m fine with that. Perhaps in a world where I wasn’t such a failure I would consider my weight something to work on but to me it’s irrelevant. I am who I am, whether people like it or not.

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