It’s official now: I have lived too long

My wife and I are in our seventies now, and each of us is trim. That doesn’t just happen, however. It takes great effort.

First, we had to understand the nature of body weight – why it accumulates, where it accumulates. There are a lot of fad diets, from starvation (and accompanying psychosis) to vegan. In between are things that sell books, like South Beach and Caveman. I cannot speak for my wife, as we each cook for ourselves and eat differently. For myself, I long ago settled on what is now called “Keto,” short for ketosis.

If you wake up in the morning with “morning breath,” you are in ketosis, that is, fat-burning mode. Often during the night our bodies run short on carbohydrates and convert to that mode. This is the essence of Keto, to force our bodies into fat-burning mode, not just as we sleep, but 24/7.

Back around 2009 I remember going to Longmont, Colorado, near where we lived, to buy pants. There was a full length mirror in the changing room, and I did not like what I saw. Nothing I wore hung well on me. Something had to give.

Later on, in 2010, we went to a talk given on the campus in Boulder, Colorado, to hear Noam Chomsky speak. We must have gotten the last two available tickets, as we were in the balcony, and at the very back at that. I had trouble squeezing my big butt into the seat. I was filled with shame.

The following day I told my wife that I was going to go on a low-carbohydrate diet. This meant certain things had to go, such as chips, cookies, pie, cake, donuts, candy, bread, beer and sweet drinks, and most importantly … pizza. She, of course, was not the one gaining weight, and so could partake in anything she liked.

You might think that kind of diet difficult, if not draconian. Frankly, it was easy. My diet consisted of protein and fat in many forms and a limited number of carbohydrates each day. Here’s what is critical to understand: When low-carbing, your body is usually in a satiated state, that is, there are no hunger pangs. Eating is a routine, but never do we crave anything, nor do we ever get the shakes.

The pounds slowly came off. I did not know my starting point, but was noticing that my clothes were looser. I had had a physxial exam in January of 2010, and so called the clinic and asked them to look up my weight at that time. It was 232. They weigh you in with clothing on, so I figured out that I started at 228.

I weighed every day, and each day a few ounces had come off. Finally, when I got to 210, I “plateaued,” that is, no matter the rigor of my diet, I did not lose any more weight. I figured that my body was telling me I was at optimal weight. I few years later, after I found myself at 220 again, I did the same routine, but that time plateaued at 202. I am now at 208, and plateaued, that is, I can no logger get down to 202 again, even as my eating habits have not changed.

I am told that I look good, and I know that I feel good. The important thing to understand about low-carbing or Keto is that it is not so much a diet as a way of life. There is no point in gaining weight only to have to lose weight. If you make this change, you should know it is permanent.

Also, post-menopause women often gain weight below the waist. That weight is terribly difficult to lose, having to do with lack of estrogen. Older men tend to put on weight above the waste, and for us it is easier to lose.

One final note – I find it annoying to be in a restaurant or at someone’s home for a meal, and to hold the waiter or host to my dietary standards. For this reason, when dining out I eat everything put before me. As I like to say, I do not diet in public. In fact, eating out is fun that way, a holiday from regular fare.

The reason I am writing this is because of the photo below, taken from the 2022 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue:

Jordan Peterson said it must more eloquently that I can, “Sorry. Not beautiful. And no amount of authoritarian tolerance is going to change that.”

[This is brought up from the comment section: It appears the more I look at this photo that the head of a thinner woman has been photoshopped on to a fat body.]

This I know: Some guys dig fat chicks. Some people cannot control their weight for reasons beyond their control. All that aside, I do not have to like what I see here. It is not attractive. She is fat. Peterson’s phrase, “authoritarian tolerance” is apropos. We are being cajoled and shamed into pretending to like what we do not like.

I will not yield. She is fat. I find that very unattractive.

Peterson, of course, is catching hell. But he’s good at handling flack. I can’t wait to see him in exchanges on YouTube.

Someone, I am forgetting who, took all of this nonsense of our era a few steps further, wondering how it affects kids. Shown the photo above, a young boy might be asked how he likes it, and might say “I don’t like it. She is fat.” The kid will be told he has a phobia. Shown a tranny, he might say the same thing. Then it might be suggested to him that he is gay. After all, what’s not to like?

There is so much confusion out there about gender and looks. I can sympathize with an overweight person, as I was once twenty pounds heavier than my current weight, and I felt shame. Understand, however, that this shame was internal, and led me to make necessary changes in my eating habits. At no time did I insist that people look at my overweight self and pretend to like it.

It’s tough being a kid today, so much cancel culture, so much shaming for merely being normal. Gender now is alphabet soup. It’s all nonsense. In my view, gay or straight, if you have a penis, you’re a guy. If you have a vulva, you’re a woman. Women are nowadays de-breasted, men have their penises cut off, permanent alterations that might well be regretted someday, if not that day.

What these people need is not the surgical knife, but some support, even therapy, to arrive at that spot as we mature that everyone must: Self acceptance. Just get them through childhood and puberty, talk them down if necessary, set all of the power-of-suggestion originating gender confusion aside. When they become adults, their lives are their own. They can do as they wish.

In the meantime remember, penis = guy, vulva = gal, and fat = fat.

30 thoughts on “It’s official now: I have lived too long”

  1. Here’s my take on the pic, and I apologize for talking past the argument of your post: Even if she were thin and fit, this would be a not-sexy, completely forgettable picture. She has no personality, no intriguing secret or mystery in her eyes, no striking attitude. She’s posing like an insecure 5-year-old trying to make believe she’s a cover model–except without the natural, unaffected innocence and charm of a child.

    Though I’m not into fat women, I have been attracted to and even dated fat women who knew they knew they were sexy, and their knowledge–their confidence–was spellbinding, electrifying, completely persuasive. They weren’t pathetically demanding “validation” and they didn’t give a shit about “authoritarian tolerance.” Their power was entirely their own. I don’t reject this model because she’s fat, or because she’s an obvious propaganda tool. I reject her because she projects nothing but vacuous mediocrity.

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    1. I recently watched the first season of the Showtime series Yellowjackets. One of the main characters, played by Melanie Linsky, is a fat middle-aged housewife who is bored to death with her marriage, even though her middle-aged husband is a fit and handsome man who looks like he just stepped off the cover of GQ. Over the course of the show’s first season, Linsky has an extra-marital affair with a much younger man who ALSO looks like a beefcake magazine model, and who falls hopelessly in love with her to the point of obsession. This might have seemed comical or propagandistic, or an obvious way of pandering to a female audience… except, well, Melanie Linsky made me believe it. She is a fine actress who, when she wants to, knows how to be sexy, and I completely understood why those guys were so crazy about her. Sports Illustrated undoubtedly could have found a talented fat cover model capable of channeling that kind of sexiness. But, as has been pointed out many times on this site, the goal of propaganda isn’t to convince, it’s to humiliate. This cover effectively mocks and humiliates fat women while pretending to empower them. It’s nauseating.

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      1. Along similar lines, my take was that they’re trolling us with that cover. If you search you can find the pictorial, and the other suits she wears are much more flattering. It’s not like she’s grotesquely overweight. I imagine they chose that unflattering suit for the cover to provoke just the divided reaction they got.

        Another angle – if we assume SI swimsuit models of the past might be a bastion of transgenderism, I wonder if this model is a “real woman” and so part of the inside joke could be, the one time they put an actual woman on the cover, everyone either calls her fat, or secretly thinks she looks fat while “celebrating” her. Which could be the view of top gay photographers/ art directors, who prefer their women (if at all) trans.

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        1. With the SI Swimsuit issue, there is obviously a whole lotta Photoshopping going on. After reading your comment I looked again and wonder if the whole black triangle covering her midsection is that. I do not see tranny, but I never do. I just see a very fat, but potentially attractive woman, if she would just lose a few pounds.

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  2. James True just did an interesting video on this gender nonsense. I discovered him here in a comment and have learned a lot from him.

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    1. I did dig in to 30 minutes or so, and then let it go. Thoughtful guy, I agree. But understand that the quantity of 30-60-90 minute videos … not enough time in the day.

      I deliberately went at this issue from a frank viewpoint, fat = fat. I can do that because I used to be 20 pounds overweight, and because the only “shaming” going on was my own inability to make changes in my own life! I had power, but it took something that I saw in that changing room in Longmont: A mirror. I own a mirror, I know how to use it. It reflects me on me. If changes need be made it is on me.

      The fat swimsuit model above may be happy being fat. That is part of self acceptance. I have no problem with that. But if she is saying that in finding her unattractive the problem is with me, I say no, you cannot make me want what I do not want. Find those guys who dig fat chicks, make your life. God bless you.

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      1. Here in my area in corntown most girls are overweight. They like to eat, some are really good cooks because of that fact so that’s a plus as long as a guy doesn’t mind gaining weight too. Years ago the fat girls had to be extra nice to get attention, however they have turned into frigid snobby bossy types. I assume because they don’t have much competition from attractive slender females. Regardless of how large a woman is, there is always some guy that gets her pregnant. The feeling of lonliness is real and those Biological urges for hanky panky become less picky over time. I think the model in the photo above is pretty but she probably spoiled and wouldn’t say hello back or open a door for a blind guy.

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  4. when we age we need less and less food as the cells and tissue will less and less regenerate itself. That is the point when we start to shrink. If you’ve made the transition from regularly eating to eating only when it can’t be avoided then you’re on the safe side. I know aged people who desperately try to lose weight and those who just eat almost nothing. I’m already losing desire to eat special things. I recently caught myself after I started to eat a delicious filet steak that I no longer really care. It may have been my last steak. I sometimes like to have an egg for breakfast but not every day. I still have some obsolete rituals and automatically plan preparing food even when I’m not hungry and I still eat up. But I think it will fade. I still like sweeties though. But don’t need really much of it. A small piece of dark chocolate does the trick usually. Don’t we have to feel lucky not to have bigger problems?
    As for the actress Ellen Page, she just plays a role. As they all do. Did you know that the female muscles have 30% less power than the same amount of male muscles. And women can’t really develop a strong arm without using “substances”.

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      1. if I had to live from what I can grow, I would starve. The entire narrative about self providing food is BS. It’s the globalization which made us weather independent, which allow us to have a wide choice of food all over the year. I remember the times when there wasn’t any tomatoes in winter in Germany, etc. Now we have all kinds of veggies and fruits all the time. This is a great thing. Without experience you can plant some veggies or herbs and with some luck you may enjoy them in the summer time for a few days but what then? Farmers are experts, they have to know their land and know how to control the output. Amateurs can’t match them. Self providing was necessary after the war, when there was no other infrastructure but it wasn’t nice to anybody. We shouldn’t even think to go back there.

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  5. Shown the photo above, a young boy might be asked how he likes it, and might say “I don’t like it. She is fat.” The kid will be told he has a phobia.
    A young girl might be shown this photo and asked how she likes it . . . Let’s hope she calls it. “I don’t like it, she is shallow. And so are the men who who live in fantasyland.”

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    1. Not sure what to take from that comment but snark. I am pretty sure that for a guy to be attracted to a shapely, nice, intelligent woman does not make him shallow. We are, all of us, a mixed drink. Our base attractions are supplemented by qualities of character, such as not being manipulative or insincere, and not going for the prize at the expense of a real human being with real feelings. Want to feel like you kicked a puppy? Seduce a woman, charm her, run away. Ever done that, Kensho?

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      1. Shapely, nice, intelligent, woman. Every single word there based on nothing but a crafted image, a bit fantasy derived from about 16 professionals who crafted that SI cover. Not to mention the associated marketing and distribution. How is that fantasy world not shallow?

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        1. I am pretty sure I have spent my life un-manipulated by corporate fantasies. There is beauty, arriving naturally in my eyes, and to which I react without having it been suggested to me first. The whole of the reproduction game is selection, and that selection is based on qualities that make a partner a good bet for successful offspring. These do not include fat, dirty, unhealthy, unshapely, stupid. I agree stupid people reproduce, as do all the others, but that has to do with desperation, alcohol and other drugs. The guys that go for fat chicks … I just do not get that.

          Knowing you are a woman makes your comments more understandable, but not less condescending.

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          1. Wow.

            “I am pretty sure I have spent my life un-manipulated by corporate fantasies.”
            TV; movies; radio; music (lyrics); billboards; doctors; dentists; grocers; politicians… car dealers; bosses; “teachers”; “waitresses.”
            I seriously doubt that none of these have influenced you Mark.

            “The guys that go for fat chicks … I just do not get that.”
            Your fat is another’s’ slim; surely you know this.

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            1. Fat = fat, as I closed in this post. The idea that we do not operate naturally in our attractions, that it is all superimposed from above, is … as if to say that we are slaves to media. Then media must independently conjure for us what is “attractive.” In fact, that is what is going on with the fat girl in the Swimsuit Issue, and it is not working on me. Fat = fat. I am unaffected.

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              1. OK… as you are NOW, I would agree, but I would still argue that your blanket statement should be altered regarding you [as a child, or as an adolescent].

                Please do not confuse my comments here as acceptance of her, or her looks – she IS fat. Do you know the term “beer goggles?” That old demon alters many a view. “Sheeeze boootifulll.”

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      2. Seduce a woman, charm her, run away. Seduction is a tango, if s/he runs away, how is that not part of the dance? Since I am a middle aged woman, I cannot say anything about the poor wounded puppies, I guess, only that their daddies might have taught them better, maybe. But I don’t think I’d ever purposely kick a puppy, or a boy, if he showed me he was already down. Only if he showed me he was begging for it.

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  6. When I was growing up, obesity was uncommon. We were mostly all lean. No one superimposed that look on us. It was our natural selves. I do remember Jon Stewart on the Daily Show one time commenting on a fat girl that “Someday we’ll be hittin’ on that,” This was maybe ten-fifteen years ago. He was precient..

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    1. You are not that much older than I am… and I agree. “Fatso” was routine where I was growing up (if you can call it that).

      As with many subjects, you, now, are simply immune to such coercion – many are not – and are probably glad for the dubious acceptance of all things stupid, detrimental and unfounded. Ignorance is Bliss is the best I will grant.

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  8. Not sure I’m buying this large Marge cover girl character as ‘real’. She’s 5’11” which is Godzilla sized for someone of alleged Japanese descent. Her grandfather, Rocky Aoki, founded the Benihana restaurant chain, so she never skipped a meal. But her father vibes Samoan, which could account for the size issue. ‘Nu’ is found in Somoan names. Mother was a Dutch model. Her aunt is a sprite sized actress, Devon Aoki. The whole clan is juiced IMO. So why trot out the BBW?
    What is every podcast worth a listen talking about these days? Population reduction. The majority of men are not going to be attracted to enabled women who are being sold the idea it’s okay to pack it on. I read an article years ago, so you can trust my faulty memory, that claimed only about 10% of men went for that plus sized look. What was noted was how much more enthusiastic these men were for this kind of woman relative to the ordinary lust men had for ‘normal’ sized women. What that indicated to me was that a fetish was at play- that these chubby chasers were not attracted to these women in any way but for the arousal factor of what they thought was ‘taboo’ within their class. Such men do not have children with these fetish objects. They don’t marry them and they usually hide them from the other people in their lives. One of the original, if not the first SI swimsuit model, Cheryl Tiegs, commented on another overweight SI model, Ashley Graham, as how her appearance on the cover promoted an unhealthy lifestyle. Of course Tiegs was immediately shot down by media stooges for ‘fat shaming’. Tiegs dutifully backtracked to save from being completely cancelled- allowed to publicly confess her sins, and went back into retirement.
    If one can stomach it, a quick glance at porn sites will show how ALL body types are being fetishized, as well as ages, especially women well past their fertile years. How much of that diminished male essence goes to waste from exposure to such an agenda? Sports Illustrated is just one more media tool being dragged into the vortex of voluntary genocide.

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      1. According to E Michael Jones, some group called for a porn boycott and the ADL labeled the action anti-Semitic, so watch your step-

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