COLUMN: Nothing says healthy like humiliation and pain

Of all my self-esteem issues, I point the accusing finger at Jared.

You know, that Subway spokesperson who lost a ton of weight – mostly by coughing up the small child he ate sometime in the early ’80s – by walking to a Subway and eating a sandwich.

When I first saw the commercial, I thought, “Good for him. This guy understands that fast food is a way of life and sticks to it.” I even thought about writing him a letter thanking him for his inspirational message to us fat people to keep eating fast food no matter what other people may think.

Unfortunately I didn’t have time to do that because the next thing I knew, Jared was being hailed as some healthy hero and was idolized by more overweight women than Hugh Hefner in his worst nightmares.

Jared, holding up his size 86 pants, which in women sizes is probably a 14 – I don’t understand women clothing at all – launched a new craze in being healthy and staying fit. Suddenly my worst nightmare had come true.

You see, I was fat before being fat was cool. Sure Weird Al may have dressed up in a fat suit singing parodies of Michael Jackson songs when I was just a small child, but I was a rolly-poly kid.

Before Jared came along, my fast-food hero was the Hamburgler. This guy knew what was up. He would sneak around snagging hamburgers and pig out on them. Unfortunately, Ronald McDonald had to act like some hamburger Nazi and take away the Hamburgler’s fun – “No grease for you!”

But Jared changed all that. Suddenly the only thing the Hamburgler was good for was a model of what Zorro would look like in a Mexican prison. The new buzz around the world was being healthy.

I was not down with this. See, from a young age I realized something about this confusing word “healthy.” It basically means no fun, a lot of work, a lot of pain, gross-tasting food and extremely expensive. So, with the exception of being expensive, staying healthy equates to about the same thing as going to army boot camp.

But being the unlucky child I am, my parents fell for this whole health craze thing, and I was doomed to be dragged down with them.

My dad is a very healthy man. I can only remember twice in my life when he was sick. Growing up, I remember him exercising downstairs while I watched cartoons and ate breakfast cereal, wondering why he subjected himself to such misery. And then he would go up to the kitchen and fix himself a healthy breakfast before heading off to work. I always admired him for that but kept a wary eye on him in case he tried to conscript me into his healthy ways.

I was safe from him, but it was my mother who forced me into being healthy. And I’m smart enough to know you don’t disagree with your mother or your wife.

My parents started looking for ways to get healthier, and I’m convinced it all started with Jared. After he showed up, suddenly hundreds of fad diets popped up. There was a no egg diet, a no pork diet, a strictly citrus diet, a vegetable diet and a drink-nasty-stuff-from-a-can diet disguised as an innocent chocolate shake. But of all the diets out there, my parents selected the worst of them all – the Atkins diet.

At first I was excited. It meant more meat than ever before, and I could gorge myself on beef jerky to my heart’s content. But quickly I realized the grave downfall of this diet: no bread, no pasta, no dessert, no sunshine, no happiness. I was suddenly living in food hell.

The worst part of all of this was the introduction of soy into my diet, especially tofu. Up to that point, all I knew of soy was soy sauce, which was harvested grasshopper spit in a shakable bottle. Tofu was worse than that. It tasted like the most horrific Jell-O ever imagined, made of smashed beans with a dash of gag.

Once, my mom tried to make a meal with tofu instead of meat. The result was a mutiny on her hands as us kids ransacked the house looking for any edible thing. After that she gave up on forcing her children to participate in the Atkins lunacy.

But eating healthy wasn’t the only painful thing I was subjected to when I was younger. Exercising was another dreaded thing.

I have never been very good at exercising. You see, exercising was not meant for a fat guy. It was meant for guys who are already in shape to show off their rippling muscles to all the girls at the gym. When a fat guy goes to the gym, everyone shifts to the other side of the room and girls ignore him or look at him in disgust. Tell me, what’s my motivation to work out now?

The most embarrassing time of exercise was in junior high gym class. In junior high I weighed about as much as I do now but minus all the muscle. I was a pasty white, blubbery kid. My maximum speed was about the same as a puma … in freeze frame.

And to make matters worse, I had a gym teacher who lived by the Gym Instructor Codex. The first commandment is to publicly humiliate fat kids, and I practically had “fat kid” tattooed on my forehead.

This gym instructor was a champion athlete from some Soviet block country who was obsessed with running. He would sit by the fence at the track and yell at me, “Oy ‘Awkins, run faster. You too slow. I swim the English Channel in faster time than you run 10 meters.”

I felt vindicated when he was later removed from teaching when it was rumored he didn’t actually have a teaching certificate.

Over time I did lose weight, but it wasn’t by any special method. I lost 45 pounds in nine months by simply cutting all excess sugar out of my diet and eating smaller portions at mealtimes.

So the moral of the story is, if you are going to eat healthy, find what works for you. Oh, and if you’re going to be the spokesperson for Subway, for goodness sake don’t let Peter Griffin, the world’s fattest man, replace you.

Seth Hawkins is a senior majoring in public relations. He is convinced the mark of the beast is a gym membership pass that hangs on key rings. Questions and comments can be sent to him at seth.h@aggiemail.usu.edu