Workin' Out

     Gene had always been a little overweight. He had been chubby as a kid and never quite grew out of it. People would always say that if you looked good you felt good. It wasn't that Gene didn't feel good, he was just sick of pulling at shirts that felt too tight and worrying that people could tell that his arm fat jiggled when he waved at people.

     He had tried diets and gym regiments before, but they would generally all end the same way. He would stick with them for a week or two and then realize that if he didn't have to worry about his weight then he would just find something else to be insecure about, its just who he was. So he would figure “What's the point?” and stop working out.

     Despite this he wanted to reach a goal that he had set for himself. Going to the gym seemed like a good one to start with so he convinced himself to do it again. He started going to the gym, determined to stick with it and accomplish something.

     And he was actually able to do it. They say that once you get past three weeks, you are over the hardest part. He was onto four and he was actually feeling better about himself. He still felt uncomfortable in tight shirts, but the exercise helped him clear his mind and he liked that.

     He even started changing his diet. He replaced all of his crappy snack food and macaroni and cheese with this with some better food: fruits, vegetables, stuff with bran in it.

     He did keep some of the snack food though. He liked to reward himself with it. The most important thing was portions. So now instead of eating a whole pizza, he would eat a few slices and save the rest for later.

     Between going to the gym and eating better, Gene really felt like he was losing weight and getting healthier. He would go to work, hit the gym on his way home after work, and have a nice balanced dinner when he got home.

     One night he got home and realized that he had stuck to this regiment for a whole month. When he got home from the gym he took a shower, had some dinner, and decided he should reward himself for sticking to his plan.

     He found a bag of tortilla chips. It was a big bag, meant to feed a family over the course of a week, twelve servings in a bag. Gene would normally finish one of these in a few nights and was excited about applying his new eating habits.

     The bag was perforated at the top and the bottom and had a flap on the back so it could be opened. Gene pulled at the top of the bag, and then at the bottom, but the perforated edges wouldn't give. He opened the flap on the back and tried to open it that way, but that also failed.

     Each time he tried to open the bag, he could feel his body shaking with effort. As he shook, so did all the fat that he realized he hadn't lost at all. Gene could feel his whole body jiggle with every pull. The longer he tried to open this family sized bag of chips, the worse he felt about the last four weeks.

     After a while, he gave up, grabbed a pair of scissors from his room and cut the bag open. He took the bag and sat in front of the TV still telling himself he was only going to eat some of them, but that voice got more and more quiet as Gene worked his way through the whole bag.