Eight Million Double Chins and Counting

Nothing makes me feel more jubilant than obsessively watching a grossly obese man willingly guzzle down a quadruple Big Mac with extra cheese, and oh hell, throw a few more patties on there too. It fuels my ego to know that in ten years their family will be making a custom size coffin and mine won't; that I can still fit comfortably into a Toyota Corolla without spilling my intestine on to the passenger seat; that I can still reserve less than fourteen seats on an aeroplane for myself. And the bleak and miserable truth of the matter is; fat people don't even seem to care.

Yes I said it. Fat people. Shoot me down, take me to I-Am-Struggling-With-A-Weight-Problem Anonymous and watch people fall to their knees crying, clammer about helplessly and ultimately decide to bounce themselves back up to civilization, so I can grasp the reality of the situation. The reality is, after a visually painful hour of sobbing and self-pity, they all line up at Burger King immediately afterwards. I personally don't care for what you call it; weight affliction, BMI index expansion, uncontrollable eating rage, muffinaddictionitis, exponential stomach alteration.

Blatant untruths aside, you are still fat. And chances are, it's your fault.

Statistically speaking, of the 8 million chubbies in Oz, fat kids having a genetic predisposition towards obesity is about as likely as this article being objective in tone. For those of you out there with obscure thyroid related diseases which force you to look oddly like a bipedal hippopotamus, I really am sorry. I'm sorry that you can only score desperate chicks on matchmaker.com, using a display picture taken from the third result you got when you typed 'hunk' into google. But for the rest of you, drowning in your own pitiful cholesterol, buying four litre tubs of ice cream for breakfast, with vocab's ranging from "make it a large" to "do I look like I don't want fries with that?" and clumsily dodging the reality that you brought this upon yourself, take a walk down heartburn lane with me. You were probably quite a healthy child, a bit on the pale side and notably athletic. Then you got your first job at the local milkbar. You stopped playing rugby because you were busy. Then you quit partly because the boss kept making passes at you and partly because you were offered a job with a more attractive salary (and a more attractive boss). Slowly but surely the kilos started piling on and before you knew it, there it is. Staring tauntingly up at you; a timeless and ugly reminder that you hadn't bought a pair of joggers in 8 years; a fold. Inside which, is a half melted mars bar.
Which you grasp with your chubby fingers and shovel into your gaping and overly-hospitable mouth.

I do not have red hair because I chose to. I argued with genetics and lost. But I do have underdeveloped calf muscles because I chose to. And all too similarly, you are fat because you chose to be. You are not fatefully fat. Wrap your greasy brains around that fact and stop lobbying to have the government ban fast food advertising between certain hours and to certain demographics. Images of flame grilled whoppers does not account for your multi-tiered stomach; in the same way images of Ferrari Enzos don't pluck you up off your sprawling, post code sized rear and transport you to your nearest Ferrari dealer so you can fork out 140,000 on an Italian washing machine.

All I'm asking is that you exercise some of your diminutive grey matter. It's the only exercise you ever do, so make it worthwhile and admit you are not biologically addicted to KFC, you just like the taste of their fried chicken. There's nothing inherently wrong with that.

But it would be far more considerate if you were to write a cheque for your children's primary school fees, rather than having them withdraw the money...

From their inheritance account.

Maestro.