It's been said that becoming fat does not happen overnight.
It's a carefully cultivated art that takes place one meal, one snack, one night sacked out on the couch at a time. In today's America, reaching the pinnacle of fatness is easier than ever. In fact, there's actually a fast track to fatness that requires little effort on the part of the eater and provides great success and fleshy abundance in a very small period of time.
Now, I'm no skinny little thing. I enjoy fries and Snickers bars and juicy steaks and cheesy bread, and I have the curves and bumps and lumpy spots to prove it. I look at my weight and level of fitness in a bit of a cost and benefit analysis way. I don't bemoan my girth or chastise the plump. I think we should all enjoy food as much as we can without actively killing ourselves. But as my love handles become less love and more handle, I have become quite aware of the fast track of which I write.
I know that the frozen fries I buy that are so quick to prepare pack a far greater caloric punch than a home-cooked baked potato or even homemade baked fries. Boxed macaroni and cheese, over-processed white bread, Cookie Crunch cereal...all the convenience foods that make my life easier (and tastier!) also make my buns bigger and my arms meatier. The harried American lifestyle (which, being a stay-at-home-mom, I really am not allowed to use as an excuse) makes these high-calorie, low-nutrition foods very appealing. They are staples of the American family diet, supplemented with a can of spinach here and a handful of fresh strawberries there.
Choosing a convenience food lifestyle is taking the on-ramp to the highway of fatness.
Then there's laziness or busyness or whatever it is that keeps us (me) from caring for our (my) bodies properly. Most Americans have days filled with work (often sitting in an office, staring at a computer screen), PTA meetings, trips to the dry cleaners, trips to the video store, children's homework to help with, laundry to do, work to catch up on...there isn't enough time in the day to spend 30 minutes to an hour running or doing TaeBo. Between cooking the boxed mac and cheese and jetting off to Wal-Mart for toilet paper, most adults don't have enough free time to fetch the fish-stick that's been lurking behind the couch for a week, much less indulge themselves in a concerted fitness effort. And besides, who wants to spend their precious down time sweating and grunting (well, unless they're having sex) when they could be doing something fun, like reading up on Angelina Jolie's plans for stealing Brad away from Jennifer?
Yes, now we are gathering speed on the XXL highway.
Here is the part where I get down to what really prompted this article (my clothes are fitting fine...just as tight as usual...it wasn't an unexpected surplus on the scale that got me to typing)...fast food restaurants.
Tonight we ordered Burger King (Star Wars Episode III toys in the kids meals, get yours before they run out!), and I ordered my usual veggie burger combo meal. Not super-sized. Just regular. Medium fries. Medium diet soda. Plain old no-mayo veggie burger. When we got home and I took my veggie whopper (scientific name for the veggie burger) out of the bag, I was convinced that it had to be my husband's burger. The wrapper had it labeled correctly, but its girth and weight seemed to indicate that it was something manly, loaded with bacon and cheese and mysterious creamy sauces.
It was my veggie burger.
This thing was HUGE. I've eaten several dozen veggie burgers in my time, and I've never encountered anything quite as robust as this creature I had unwrapped. My veggie burger had grown. It seems to be around twice the size of its former fattening yet conscience friendly self.
Some people have the will-power to make fast food meals an occasional treat, but most Americans (like me) grab a burger or a taco weekly, if not more often. Fast food is a almost a centerpiece of the American diet. Fast food is not good for us. Most of it is nutritionally bleak, astoundingly chocked full of fat, and wallowing in calories. We can get a day's worth of fat and calories in a single jumbo blueberry muffin. We can drink a meal's worth of calories in a delicious frozen cappuccino blend. We can order a single-serving box of fries with enough crispy fried potato slices to feed an entire family. The burgers are huge. The burritos have 7 layers of jiggle-building ingredients. We gorge on extra bacon (only 30 cents more!) and burgers as big as our heads and sodas large enough to fill a plastic kiddie pool. It's cheap. We don't have to cook it. And if they give it to us...no matter how big or small...we are damn well going to finish it and get our $2.99 worth out of it!
Click on your turn signal, baby, cause we're zooming into the HOV lane and headed straight to I-swear-these-pants-used-to-fit-town!
Are we surprised that we're fat? I don't think we should be. Keep your foot on the accelerator...cause we're on the fast track.
PS - I only ate half my burger and my fries.
I'm going to eat the rest later.
And by later I mean after I submit this article.