Too thin?

The Complete and Total Loser had coffee with a young ex-coworker today. The two hadn't seen each other for a little over a week. She said he looked too thin.
He is not. His face is thinning with age and his muscles are deteriorating now that he's in the second half of his fifties, but the Loser gets on his scale often and knows that his weight is what it's been for years: Ten pounds heavier than it should be.
He is, however, taking good care of himself as he always does when he's unemployed. He exercises regularly, eats very little meat of any kind—smoothies for breakfast, salads for dinner all summer—and hasn't had any alcohol for a month now. He sleeps a lot, probably too much. But he's healthy.

Seventy percent of Americans are overweight. Seventy percent! Go where good produce is being sold and you'll see a higher percentage of thin, healthy people.

The Loser's Thoughts on Food

The Complete and Total Loser's rear bicycle tire went flat today and he had to walk home from downtown after doing some minor shopping. Outside an expensive hotel he saw a few people taking photos with their cell phone cameras. He looked to see what they were snapping. A visiting movie star? A sports figure? A politician? No. It was, as pictured above, a Red-tailed Hawk eating its latest prey, a pigeon.

The Loser's thoughts on food:

• Raw is best for meat. Cooking's a convention thought up by primitive humans to burn off maggots and rotted flesh, and to make tough meat easier to chew. This made it possible for the older people to eat.
• Raw is not necessarily best for vegetables. Light steaming releases nutrients and facilitates absorption. 
• It's not necessary for humans to eat meat. There are perfectly healthy bodybuilders who are vegan. The Loser is not one of them, though he takes it easy on meat and animal products. The ugliest steaks taste the best, by the way.
• Eating meat is like driving an SUV, environmentally speaking. The Loser rarely eats beef and when he does, he reminds himself that he doesn't own a car, lives in a small apartment and, most important of all, did not have children.
• Putting lemon juice in water will change the alkaline property of your blood for the better. Pure water is great. Water with lemon juice is better. Drinking ridiculous amounts of water (no one even knows who said that 6 to 8 glasses a day nonsense) is not necessary and when you drink coffee or alcohol there is still a net gain of water. When you drink water, do it all at once. Refrain from carrying any kind of bottle of water with you. You are an adult and far too old for a sippy cup.
• Taking lots of vitamins is a waste of time and money. Get a multivitamin and take one day. Don't spend money on organic ones. Vitamins act on a molecular level and their origins are unimportant. 
• If you want to lose weight, avoid sugar completely. The pounds disappear fast.
• Alcohol makes you fat not just because of its own caloric content but because it lowers your inhibitions, letting you order that second plate of fries. The Loser is surprised he doesn't hear health experts say that.
• Speaking of fries, avoid them and potato chips.
• Eating right starts in the store. If it's not in the house, you won't eat it.
• Never drink sodas. They're for teenagers exclusively and they shouldn't drink them either. Sugar free sodas are about as bad and should also be skipped.

The Loser and His Ego

One sad thing about being the Complete and Total Loser is that while he knows what he is there are parts of him that don't fully accept it, even after a lifetime of experience.

An overweight man sits on a train.

So when he tells a new hire at work how to do something a little faster, which he's learned in the six years on his simple job, and the advice is ignored, it stings a little. Likewise with the lack of responses to his greetings from other employees he sees during the course of the workday. And earlier this evening, when a young man on the train who, not wanting to share a brief ride with the Loser, suggested he take a newly emptied seat, the Loser got a small thrill when a man as disgusting and old as he is, but fatter, sat next to the man after he'd taken the suggestion and moved.

How to Lose Weight

He's getting fat, the Complete and Total Loser. He was fat before, and lost it. This was eight years ago. Now his weight has crept back up and he's had to loosen his belt a notch. His clothes don't fit. When he walks down the hall at work he feels parts of himself rubbing together. His aging knees hurt. Three flights of steps leave him panting.

An overweight man struggles to fit in a train seat.

So much is known about weight control, how to lose weight, the right foods to eat. He wonders in his stupid loser head how he let twenty pounds of fat adhere to his never svelte frame.
He'll lose this weight. His motivation is high; he has so many strikes against him he can't control (bald, short, poor, crippled, bad personality) that this one thing he can control, he will.
When dieting he remembers the best advice about food he's heard in his life. It was in China, when he lived there for a year in the mid-1980s, and came from a Chinese man who was in his mid 50s yet had a physique he envied as a 25-year old. It is this: "Better always to be a little bit hungry."
A dozen years later he bought an early Arnold Schwarzenegger movie most laughed at derisively, yet it has one scene in which the future governor talks about eschewing comfort and luxury and how wanting to accomplish more makes you live life more fully. The movie is "Stay Hungry."