Tommy Tomlinson - The Elephant in the Room: One Fat Man’s Quest to Get Smaller in a Growing America

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Simon & Schuster

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Copyright 2019 by Tommy Tomlinson

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Simon & Schuster Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

First Simon & Schuster hardcover edition January 2019

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Interior design by Ruth Lee-Mui

Jacket design by Jamie Keenan

Jacket art by Hein Nouwens/Getty Images

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 978-1-5011-1161-7

ISBN 978-1-5011-1163-1 (ebook)

For Alix

Its quite a mystery, albeit largely unacknowledged, to be alive, and, quite simply, in order to remain alive you must keep eating. My notion, scarcely original, is that if you eat badly you are very probably living badly.

Jim Harrison

So come on, fatso, and just bust a move.

Young MC

I have this dream. Were on a road trip, out in this house in the country, and Im trying to talk to my wife. But this hog gets in the house. It stinks and its slick to the touch and I cant keep it off me. I push it away but it keeps plowing back and I see tusks. I finally shove it out the door. Now Im in bed. Here comes the hog again. I can barely stave it off with my hands. Its all over me. I get to my feet and kick it and ram it with my shoulder and we tumble out into the yard. My mouth is coated with hog-slime, and I reach in and scrape it off my tongue. Im half-dressed, stinking, miserable. Suddenly were back in a room and I can sense Im being watched. Three or four official-looking people are lined up at a table, like judges on a panel. One of them says, Heres what you have to do.

I wake up knowing two things.

One, I have to kill the hog.

Two, the hog is a part of me.

I weigh 460 pounds.

Those are the hardest words Ive ever had to write. Nobody knows that numbernot my wife, not my doctor, not my closest friends. It feels like confessing a crime. The average American male weighs 195 pounds; Im two of those guys, with a ten-year-old left over. Im the biggest human being most people who know me have ever met, or ever will.

The government definition of obesity is a body mass index of thirty or more. My BMI is 60.7. My shirts are size XXXXXXL, which the big-and-tall stores shorten to 6X. Im six-foot-one, or seventy-three inches tall. My waist is sixty inches around. Im nearly a sphere.

Those are the numbers. This is how it feels.

Im on the subway in New York City, standing in the aisle, clinging to the pole. I live in Charlotte and dont visit New York much, so I dont have a feel for how subway cars move. Im praying this one doesnt lurch around a corner or slam to a stop because Im terrified of falling. Part of it is embarrassment. When a fat guy falls, its hard to get up. But what really scares me is the chance I might land on somebody. I glance at the people wedged around me. None of them could take my weight. It would be an avalanche. Some of them stare at me and I figure theyre thinking the same thing. Theres an old woman sitting three feet away. One slip and Id crush her. I grip the pole harder. My palms start to sweat and all of a sudden I flash back

to elementary school in Georgia, standing in the aisle on the bus. The driver hollers at me to find a seat. He cant take us home until everybody sits down. Im the only one standing. Every time I spot an open space, somebody slides to the edge of the seat and covers it up. Nobody wants the fat boy mashed in next to them. I freeze, helpless. The driver glares at me in the rearview mirror. An older kid sitting in front of mea redhead, freckles, Ill never forget his facehas a cast on his right arm. He reaches back and starts clubbing me with it, below the waist, out of the drivers line of sight. He catches me in the groin and it hurts, but not as much as the shame when the other kids laugh and the bus driver gets up and storms toward me

and the train stops and jolts me back into now.

I peel my hands from the pole and get off. I climb the stairs to the street and step to the side to catch my breath. Im wheezing like a thirty-year smoker. My legs wobble from the climb. Im meeting a friend near Central Park at a place called the Brooklyn Diner. Why is there a Brooklyn Diner in Manhattan? Are Manhattan diners not up to lofty Brooklyn standards? I have time to think about such things. Im fifteen minutes early, on purpose, because I have to find a safe place to sit.

The night before, I had Googled Brooklyn Diner interior to get an idea of the layout. Now I scan the space like a gangster, looking for danger spots. The booths are too smallI cant squeeze in. The bar stools are bolted to the floortheyre too close to the bar and my ass would hang off the back. I check the tables, gauging the chairs. Flimsy chairs creak and quake beneath me. These look solid. I spot a table in the corner with just enough room. I sit down slowlythe chair seems OK, yep, itll hold me up. For the first time in an hour, I take an untroubled breath.

My friend shows up on time. By then Ive scouted out the menu. Eggs, bacon, toast, coffee. A few bites and the shame fades. At least for a little while.

By any reasonable standard, I have won lifes lottery. I grew up with two loving parents in a peaceful house. Ive spent my whole career doing work that thrills mewriting for newspapers and magazines. I married the best woman Ive ever known, Alix Felsing, and I love her more now than when my heart first tumbled for her. We live in an old house in Charlotte with a yellow Lab mutt named Fred. Were blessed with strong families and a deep bench of friends. Our lives are full of music and laughter. I wouldnt swap with anyone.

Except on those mornings when I wake up and take a long naked look in the mirror.