chapter 7: fat and forty

By the time we hit forty (With a couple more cruise vacations contributing to the damage.) my weight had soared to well over 300 pounds and Carol, who was nudging 290, was not far behind. We were now as big or bigger than the largest of our overweight friends. At these sizes, a certain amount of embarrassment was unavoidable. Carol was the first to have to shyly request a larger sized chair at work, her shelving backside no longer able to squeeze into a standard seat. I didn't even have to ask. One morning I arrived at my desk to find an extra large chair in the place of the one I had been finding increasingly uncomfortable.

There were also other issues. In restaurants we now had to request a table because we could no longer fit into booths. We gradually purchased more sturdy furniture as our weight was proving to be just too much for our couch and chairs. We bought a king sized bed as we had grown too wide for the queen size bed we had slept in for so long. Our sizes also began to be a major factor in the kind of cars we bought and even the movie theaters we attended: we required theaters with seats that were extra large. Instead of trying to get a little more exercise, we went out of our way to get less. Anything that involved walking more than a short distance was out. It just took too much effort. We began eyeing chairs warily before gently sitting down. When you weigh over 300 pounds you definitely need something sturdy.

At this point, we each weighed more than our combined weights on our wedding day. We were fat, forty, and hadn't done a bit of exercise in years.

Perhaps it would have been easier to find the motivation to lose weight if one of us had stayed relatively slim. Maybe if I had been the only one who had gotten fat Carol could have gently shamed me into doing something about it ("Honey, don't you think it's time to cut back a little bit on the cheesecake?"). Many times, when I headed into the kitchen at 9 or 10 in the evening to get the second half of that Sara Lee Pound Cake, I would momentarily hesitate and consider doing without it. But then I would glance over at Carol, with her huge ass taking up more than half the couch and her chins quivering while she worked her way through yet another bag of Double Stuff Oreos, and think: "What the hell!"

We took another cruise to celebrate our twentieth wedding anniversary. By then we had gotten so big that we thought it wise, for the sake of comfort, to spend the extra money and purchase three seats on the plane instead of two. Though we pretended that the extra large stateroom we reserved was because of a major marriage milestone, the actual reason was that we were now too large to comfortably fit into a regular size cabin. I don't know if Carol noticed it, but we were easily the fattest passengers on the ship. That didn't stop us from making the most out of the excellent food, though. It seemed that we ate non-stop for three weeks, and by the end of the cruise couldn't fit into half the clothes we'd brought with us.

By this time, we had become the largest couple within our circle of friends. People we had once thought of as being "really fat", now weighed considerably less than we did.

Betty Jean and Bobby threw us a dinner party for our twentieth, stuffing us with so much food that eating everything that Betty Jean insisted we try was a challenge for even our oversize appetites.

"You mean you only had two pieces," Betty Jean asked. "Everybody brought something special for you and there are at least three more of these cakes that I want you to try." Naturally, we were sent home with an armload of leftover desserts.

As we were leaving, Betty Jean gave us a hug and beamed, "When you first moved here you were both such skinny little things, but look at the two of you now! We really built you up! I am so happy that everything here agreed with you!"

I shook hands with Bobby and took a good look at them both. There had been a time when Carol and I had thought they were both so fat. We couldn't imagine getting as big as they were. But now, not only were we larger than them, we were quite a bit larger. I easily had 35 or 40 pounds on Bobby, and as he was a few inches taller than me, it looked like even more than that. Betty Jean's cooking had put a good size belly on Bobby, but it took a distant second to the gut I now carried around. My belt was completely hidden by my drooping belly which hung down to just above my privates. It was supported by the thick, meaty rolls on my sides that joined the fat rolls on my back and under my arms. There was lots of flab hanging off my upper arms too, and all that fat pushed my arms about six inches away from my body, further accentuating the size of my belly. The 4X shirts I was now wearing (Which were just barely fitting me!) clung to my flabby man-boobs and I had widened in the hips and thighs considerably. My fat face now sat on a wide, thick neck. I had gone way beyond having a double chin. The fat had spread to cover my entire neck.

In short, I was a big fat guy.

When we had first moved down here, Betty Jean was about twice the size of Carol. Not any more. When the two of them stood together, Carol was clearly lots bigger all over than Betty Jean. Not only was Carol bigger up front, but she had that massive backside that dwarfed Betty Jean's own substantial rear. Carol was still pretty, but her face had become jowly and triple chinned. Imagine, if you can, a woman who had once weighed 130 pounds but who now had a build similar to the actress Chrissy Metz (But with a bigger rear!). That's my Carol.

Of course we had weighed ourselves. We always did when we were visiting Betty Jean and Bobby and we compared notes when we got home.

"I think they've lost some weight, Tommy," said Carol. "Do you think so?"

"I don't think so, Honey," I replied. "I think it just looks that way because now we're bigger than they are. I'm certainly bigger than Tommy."

"Did you get on their scale? How much do you weigh?"

"Oh boy! I thought I could avoid saying it out loud.......343."

"Honey! 343!" she said in mock seriousness. She slid her hand under the overhang of my belly and began hefting it up and down. "Your best friend did this to you, Honey, and her name is Sara Lee!"

"Okay, Okay! Stop teasing! What about you, "Miss Double Stuff'? Have you hit the big three-double 0?"

"Oh, I passed that a while ago," she said casually. "I'm 317."

Even the fact that we both now tipped the scales at over 300 pounds was not enough to get us talking about maybe cutting back, let alone the dreaded "D" word. We did what we had been doing for twenty years: we ignored it.

"I'll tell you one thing," Carol sighed. "That was the last time I am stepping on a scale for a long time. I do not want to know!"

Neither did I, and we didn't weigh ourselves for another three years; until this morning.

Remember, this is a cautionary tale. We didn't plan on gaining weight and had no idea when we were first married that we were destined to get fat. Then there was that "perfect storm" and it just ....happened. It was much easier not to think about it than to take action. We found it unimaginable to consider limiting or restricting what and how much we ate.

Though usually I never give it a thought, once in a while the fact that we've gotten so big really hits home. When buying clothes, of course, is one occasion, but also sometimes when we're out and I catch our reflections in a window or a mirror. At first, I wont recognize that it's us and I'll think, "Man! That guy is really fat! And look at that whale he's married to!" Then I'll sheepishly realize that I'm looking at me and Carol.

You can see it in other people's eyes as well. Especially little kids or thin people around your own age. They'll look at you and even though they're not saying anything, you know they're thinking about how fat we are.

At those times, almost with a sense of superiority, I say to myself: "Yeah, I know I'm fat and you're not, but I get to eat anything I want and you don't!" There's no question that Carol and I have always been willing to pay the price of our indulgence. Take one look at us and you'll know immediately that we prefer being fat to limiting what we eat.

The one thing you're probably wondering about is how our climb up the scale has affected our sex life. Well, this is a true story, and that subject is not anyone's business but our own. I will say that getting bigger has forced us to become more creative, and that's not a bad thing. Despite her size, I find Carol just as attractive as I did when she weighed 130 pounds.

Though neither of us has a fat fetish, there is something very sexy about my gut pressing into the firm softness of her flesh. Being fat is comforting and makes one feel safe and warm. I love sleeping with my arm hugging Carol and my hand tucked inside the fold of her belly apron, but that's as much as I'm going to tell you. If you want to know what it's like get yourself a fat wife.

So for three years we consciously avoided getting on a scale. Though we didn't know how much, we've been aware that we had definitely put on more weight. Clothes are always a dead giveaway, and recently my shirts and size 56 pants were no longer wearable sending me back to the Big & Tall shop for something more comfortable. Carol seems to be getting wider every year. She's gotten so wide, in fact, that she's unconsciously begun to walk through our bathroom door sideways.

Even so, we were certainly surprised by the numbers. My weight has jumped up to 364 pounds and Carol's has soared to 334. Since our wedding day twenty-three years ago, we have each gained over 200 pounds. From a combined weight of less than 300, years of overindulgence have left us weighing almost 700 pounds.
Something has to be done and we've come to a decision. We're going to have one last splurge on our next vacation then defini