Gut check

I’m trying something new. Bicycling to work. Fifteen miles round trip each day. Reducing my carbon footprint. The true motivation, though, is less altruistic. I don’t want to buy new shirts.

Over the past year or so I have added more than ten pounds of fat, most of it hanging around my gut. The excuses for growing my gut are plentiful but ultimately the cause is that I have consumed calories faster than my body can burn them. The result is I am outgrowing nearly my entire collection of button-up dress shirts I wear for work.

My five-year-old loves my fat gut and comments on it frequently. “Daddy has a big fat tummy,” she says when she snuggles against me and uses it as her pillow. My twelve-year-old is less impressed with my fat gut and she scowls and points whenever my shirt rides up a bit and exposes a portion of my midriff. She also freaks a little whenever I don’t put on a shirt, as if I’m planning to walk her to school in all my big-bare-bellied glory rather than grab a cup of coffee from the kitchen.

It’s not as if I don’t try to keep my gut from straining the confines of my shirts. I run several times a week. I follow the “Mediterranean diet,” meaning I fry everything in extra virgin olive oil. I sometimes substituted whiskey (one hundred calories per unit) for beer (one hundred and fifty calories per unit). But the cold, hard truth is that I can no longer comfortably wear most of my work shirts because I cannot comfortably suck in my gut for more than an hour or two at a time. So either I wear the same shirt to the office every day (the blue one with a generous cut and the mystery stain over the pocket), I buy new plus-sized shirts, or I do something about my gut.

The decision to do something about the gut is based on my fear that buying new shirts means a threshold will be crossed, that an irreversible event will have occurred. Today I'm buying new shirts instead of containing my gut and tomorrow I’m draped in a king-sized bed sheet eating potato chip and drinking beer on an oversized couch while workers remove an exterior wall from my living room so that I can get out of the house to pick up a case of extra virgin olive oil and a thirty-pack of Mirror Pond pale ale.

My new plan is now in its fourth week. There have been challenges to becoming a cyclist. First, I don’t own a bicycle. Or bicycle helmet. Or a pair of those black form-hugging Lycra cycling shorts with the big cushion in the buttocks region to protect riders from bicycle seats that are inexplicably designed to maximize pressure and discomfort on tender parts of my body that I generally don't discuss in polite company. But my wife, Carissa, has a spare bike she will let me ride – a clunky “hybrid” model that weighs about thirty-five pounds and is more mountain bike than speed machine. She has a fancy road bike she uses in triathlons that is super fast and light enough to hold up with one finger, but I'm not allowed to look at that one, much less let its narrow seat bruise my tender parts (Carissa also says I can’t wear her black form-hugging Lycra cycling shorts, but enough about our personal business). 

I'm up to riding to work three days a week and getting stronger on the hills. But I still feel like I don't know what I'm doing on a bike. I am still waiting for my first flat or my first head-first flight over the handlebars after braking suddenly to avoid leaving a tread mark on a pedestrian. I live a mile from an asphalt bike path that takes me to within a mile of my office, so I have only limited opportunities to lose a fight with an automobile. I have found, though, that taxis don't mind crowding and metro bus drivers aren't shy about honking. Yet the worst that has happened so far is forgetting to pack dress socks for work in my backpack and having to wear a pair of ankle-high yellow and red running socks with my work shoes and pants.

Finally, I can report some preliminary progress in fitting back into my shirts. My white shirt (the one with the small blue ink stain on the right sleeve near the cuff) and my blue shirt with stripes no longer come unbuttoned when I let my gut out. My goal is to be able to comfortably wear a different shirt for each day of the work week by Halloween. Still, there's a part of my that will miss the five-year-old hugging my gut and telling me how soft and cuddly it is.