(Based on true events of the author's life)

Day One


I’m gonna change my life. I don’t know how, but I will. Believe me - after everything I’ve been through, I need this more than anything else.

My name is Fat Boy. At least, that’s what everyone seems to call me. It’s not very pleasant, but hey, it’s a nickname. I’ve always been the Fat Boy at school. Always. I can’t remember a day when I wasn’t four sizes bigger than anyone. Heck, even in kindergarten I was wearing third grader clothes.

I never really thought about it much back then. Why should I have? I mean, there is no use trying to loose weight when you are in grade school. It used to be cool to be bigger than everyone else. ‘Cause I was a big boy. But now… it’s horrible going to school every day, tugging at my shirt so it wouldn’t cling desperately to my fat.

Sure, people made fun of me. They threw snide comments, menacing glances and horrible names at me. My favorite was Fat Boy. Thinking back, I thought it was kind of stupid the way that I got my name. It was gym. The teacher was talking to a student, and I was running the mile.

Of course, I was panting like a dog. My breath had completely escaped me, and I found myself gasping for air. My face was turning an alarming shade of scarlet. My chubs were flying through the air, dancing to the beat that my feet pounded to the ground. It was rather gross, but hey, I get used to it.

Anyway, my flubber was bouncing carelessly and behind me came two of those whatever-you-can-do-I-can-do-better jocks. They were laughing at my body and one of them yelled, “Run, Fat Boy, run!”

And so, I guess that’s how it all began.

My name is Fat Boy and this is my story.

For months I had been watching my weight increase and rise above the ‘overweight’ meter. I was terrified out of my mind. What was wrong with me? Was it just a stage like my parents thought it was? They told me every time that I brought up my weight, “It’s just a phase. Soon you’ll grow out of it.”

Sorry, Mom. I think it’s here to stay.

And so it’s there every morning, every night, and every meal. I notice it every day – and every day it seems to get larger. Was it a medical issue? I didn’t want to go to the doctors; every time that I went there, they weighed me, and I did not want my parents to know what I weighed.

I was beginning to feel really nervous like when you have one of those knots in your stomach that pulls tighter and tighter until you think you’re going to die. Yeah.

Gym class is right after lunch. I mean, you have no time to digest your food before you have to work it off again. Believe me, I’m sweating like a pig when the class finally ends – and the end of eternity. It’s the class that I always hate. I mean… shouldn’t it be an elective? If we don’t want to exercise then we don’t have to. It shouldn’t be required.

Schools are stupid that way.

In health today, we learned about proper nutrition. Trust me, I sank lower and lower in my seat, wishing the bell would ring. Calories. What a stupid invention. My teacher said that we should only take in as much of them as we can burn off. She handed out this packet that we were to fill out for the rest of the week. It made us count how many calories we ate a day.

I really didn’t want to come back to that class ever again.

But I’ve actually kept track. At dinner tonight, we had pizza. The hot and spicy aroma filled my lungs with joy as I plopped down and ate it. It was then that I saw my homework and – after dinner – I tipped the box over for the nutritional facts.

It turns out that one piece of pizza has about two
hundred calories – not to mention that I ate four slices. Eight hundred calories. Our teacher said that “normal” people’s diets should intake about two thousand.

In that one meal, I ate more than half of that.

I also included my soda can that I drank with my pizza – another one hundred and fifty calories.

I really don’t want to see how many calories I take in a day.


Day Two


I woke up this morning and ate a bowl of cereal. Well… two if you want to be all… scientific about it. So, the nutrition facts on the cereal box said that a serving (which I guessed was a full bowl of cereal) was a hundred a twenty calories. And that wasn’t even the milk, which made me feel bad because I had eaten two bowls – two hundred and forty calories – and that hadn’t even included the milk.

I thought, “Oh, screw the milk. It probably doesn’t count anyway.”

Calories added up rather quickly, as I noticed during lunch. There weren’t nutrition labels on everything, mind you. Just the milk carton. I had sat at the lunch table, guestimating how much my curly fries and my fried chicken had cost me.

It wasn’t looking too bright.

It was gym right after lunch, and we ran the whole period. It was a hot April day, and from the moment that I stepped outside, I knew that my pits were going to be soiled by the end of the class period. I remembered hesitantly making my way to the starting line. My teacher blew the whistle, and I started jogging.

Don’t get me wrong – I love the whole point of jogging. It gets your heart racing, your blood pumping. Calories supposedly fly right off of you, and you’re supposed to feel great afterwards.

My legs grew very weary after the first fifteen seconds. I mean, whose wouldn’t! About two fifty pound legs jostling around, and my poor bones had to keep myself upright. I feel sorry for the little guys.

And – true to my word – my pits were like an ocean. A huge, yellow, stinky ocean. I cursed myself for not bringing deodorant to school.

I went home after school that day – gasping for breath because I had missed the bus due to my English teacher not letting us out on time – and wrote down my estimated calorie intake: five hundred and fifty.

“Hey,” I thought to myself. “It’s not even dinner and I haven’t even reached the halfway point yet!”

So, after that uplifting thought, I dug out the old popcorn and fixed me a bag. I looked at the nutrition label and wrote down an extra three hundred calories.

Not bad. Eight hundred – not even halfway there!
I guess that it was then that I realized that I didn’t actually eat as bad as I thought I did. I had thought that my calories would reach up into the higher thousands – but I guess I was completely wrong.

And then dinner came along.

Let’s just say that I was obsessed with knowing exactly how many calories everything had – I was quite obnoxious really. My parents kept staring at me like I was some half minded loser. Since when did their son ever care about his health? Anyway, for dinner I consumed three big scoops of mashed potatoes, two smaller slabs of turkey – ‘cause I had learned that too much meat was bad for your health – a small spoonful of steamy corn, and lots of butter.

Hey, I can’t be perfect!

After much scrutinizing and an agonizing debate of how many calories everything had, I said, “Oh, screw it.”

I scribbled at the bottom of my worksheet – the one where we had to write how many calories we took in – the number two thousand.

“There. I was dead on. No more, no less,” I muttered.

See? I’m not that horrible of an eater. I eat vegetables – potatoes - and fruit – my cereal was Fruit Loops.

“Nah,” I said to myself later that night. “I can lose weight if I wanted to.” And I do want to. It’s just the matter of doing the diet. Thinking about it – as much fun as that sounds – doesn’t quite cut it.

I finished off the night with a thriller movie and large bowl of ice cream, ‘cause frankly, I deserved it.


Day Three


It’s just… not working out. This whole… ‘I’m gonna live better’ lifestyle. It’s impossible for me to keep up with it! I just… I don’ t know what to do.

Every night I write in this journal and every night I go to sleep in tears. I’ve just suddenly realized how horrible my life has been. Not necessarily just my eating habits, but also my entire life. I’m slowly destroying it, step by step. Think of it like a cookie. There are tons of ingredients to make a hot, steamy cookie. Each one of those ingredients is a part of my life.

For example, sugar could be my school. Stress, homework, and gym – it just all gets tossed in with some flour, which is my family. You have to beat them together – mixing and swirling – in order to add the rest of my life in: church, food and television.

After twisting the wooden spoon ruthlessly, you find that you’ve snapped it in half just as you would a small twig. Then you would sigh and grab another spoon to start mixing life. It’s just so frustrating that no matter what I do, the spoon always breaks.

Oh gosh. I just related my life to food.

Seriously, I need to get a life and quick.

There’s something stirring within me, and no, it’s not that breakable wooden spoon. I think that it’s God.

I believe in Him, I guess. Well… I go to church every week. I know that He’s up there… it’s just… He’s not down here with me. He’s supposed to help me, isn’t He? Whenever I pray, He’s supposed to answer me and give me all that I need.

Isn’t that the way that Heaven works? You pray and He gives? I don’t know anymore. Nothing is making sense. I need to rethink my life. I need to start over – clean the slate. I need to cut down on my eating. I need to exercise.

I need you. I need your help, whoever is reading this. Someday – whenever that may be – I would very much like to publish this and get the kids my age that are facing the same difficulties as me to read this. I know, deep within me that I’m not alone.

I’m not the only Fat Boy.

But I am alone for now. Please… God… you… whoever is reading this. Help me. I’ll try my best. I’ll eat right. I’ll try and work out. I know that it’s not going to be easy but there has to be some way for me to look like those models in the magazines. There has to be some way for me to be thin.

Look at that word. Thin. It’s much more pleasant than fat. ‘Cause when you’re fat, you become the Fat Boy.

Run, Fat Boy, Run, ‘cause you’re gonna need it.


Day Four

Oh, God, please tell me I’m not crazy. This is ridiculous! I think that my life is going to be changed because I listened to a radio talk show. That sounds so stupid, but it’s true. Last night, right after I had written that last entry, I turned on my radio like I always do. It’s sort of like my lullaby, but that in itself seems completely childish.

The talk show was on teen health. (How ironic!) The guest speaker was some pediatrician who specialized in healthy lifestyles. Talk shows bore me to death; I don’t even remember why I didn’t turn it off. I guess it was something that they said about obese teens.

The guest speaker said that if teens didn’t creative a healthy lifestyle now, they could become obese when they grow older, or they aren’t already. I’m not quite sure if I’m obese. I wonder if there is a certain weight that you have to reach in order to be classified. Anyway, they went on to list three tips for teens to lose weight and become healthier.

The first was take away soda. I was thinking, “Why not take away all of the crappy foods? Why just soda? She explained that soda was nothing but sugar, carbonated water, salt and caffeine. (“Then why do they make soda so dang good?”) Soda was among the number one leading foods that make teens become overweight.

I could relate – sorta. I drink a lot of soda. I don’t know why – it’s just the way my boat floats. I mean, seriously, who rather drink a glass of tasteless water when you could enjoy a nice Dr. Pepper? Come on! Soda tastes so much better.

The pediatrician went on to say that teens drink about thirty-two ounces of pop a day. That’s about two and a half cans a day. She clearly stated that in order to maintain a healthy lifestyle, we must limit ourselves down to one soda a week.

One soda a freaking week.

I think that I laughed when she said that. No way on earth was I gonna only drink one soda a week. That was crazy. I basically live off of that stuff. To take away that much pop would be hell.

The second step was to know that there were no ‘good’ foods and ‘bad’ foods. There were only unhealthy foods and healthy foods. The talk show host asked, “Why isn’t there any bad foods?”

The doctor replied saying, “Because nothing is bad. There are only unhealthy choices. We could go out to dinner every so often and make some unhealthy choices, but that doesn’t mean that the food that we eat is bad.”

It made sense – sorta.

The last tip made me roll my eyes: Get active!

That was the last thing I needed to hear over and over again. I know for certain that I’m not magically gonna change. It’s impossible. Even though I beg God every night for me to wake up the next morning and discover that I am thin, it’s not gonna happen.

Then why was it so freaking difficult for me to get up and run or something?

She said, “Teens must get at least sixty minutes of vigorous exercise a day. An example of that is running. It gets your heart rate up above the norm and it keeps it pumping.”

Too easily said, too hard done.

The radio show ended there. I rolled my eyes again and dug my head into my pillow. I bit my lip as hard as I could, wondering why I couldn’t be like everyone else. Weight was such an issue that I couldn’t even go out of my own room without getting the feeling that I was gonna get mocked.

It was becoming too much. I needed to do something. I know that I had said this a billion times before, but I actually need to do something about it.

Tomorrow, I remember compromising, I will not drink a single can of soda. I will eat fruits and veggies. I’ll try to drink water and I’ll run around the block.

Earlier this morning, I ate an apple for breakfast. My chest was so puffed out that day that I was sure that people thought I was growing breasts or something.

“Nah, I told them. “I ate an apple!”

Sure, I got those strange and idiotic glances like I always did, but I thought, “Screw them. What do they know? I’m on my way to lose weight.”

For lunch I chose to eat a salad. I’m not too big on anything green or healthy, but I picked it out from the lunch cart and grinned at the lunch lady as I paid. They gave me those stupid stares again, but I shrugged them off.

The moment I sat down to eat the salad, I smothered it with ranch dressing and furiously dug in. The apple just hadn’t cut it that morning. The salad tasted different than anything I had ever tasted, yet I couldn’t decide if I liked it or not.

After about the second mouthful, I was getting really itchy. It started on my arm and then slowly migrated up to my chest and I was scratching like no other. There was a girl sitting across from me, watching me pile the salad in. When she noticed something on my face she scrunched her face up and pointed at me.

“Ew! What’s that?”

I put my hand up to my cheek and it started to itch like crazy. So I itched it and the girl’s eyes grew wider.

“Dude, you have some kinda rash or something. It’s so gross looking!”

I found out today, after vomiting up my salad, that I was allergic to mushrooms. Apparently the little buggers had crept into my lunch and I ate them. My mom took me home early that day and I never wanted to eat another salad again.