Scientific Breakthrough Connects Bad Hair to Obesity.

Over the past fifty years, pretty much since I popped the tag on my first Hostess pastry, I've been clutching a cold steel bar as it digs into my upper thigh meat. And once the carny released the lever, that thing's been locked on with no hope of escaping.

I've been an unwitting passenger on the body mass roller coaster. Having mentioned time and again in this forum my struggles with weight, I think I've finally broken through on the reason for my chronic teeter tottering between a stick bug and a blow pig. And heavens to Bertha, it's so simple.

Bad hair causes obesity. Boom.

Stick with me, here and I'll illustrate. Back in 1978, at age sixteen, I sported the feathered "butt cut"—parted hard down the center and feathered lightly to the sides like the down of a suckling chick (I just like that term even though birds don't suckle).

That's my mom on the right and my older brother on the left. This photograph portrays hair styles of the late 1970s. My mom's perm was a utilitarian option during the decade men and women alike.

My brother had recently been in a car accident and employed a utilitarian cut meant to cover the huge zipper down the top of his squash.

The accident, unfortunately, also robbed him permanently of any ability to smile for the camera gracefully.

Anyway, sorry, back to my point. My hair, while possibly a bit obnoxious if worn now, fell within the acceptable parameters of that era's bell-shaped curve. Hence, I was trim and healthy.

A few years later, my pate became a bit shorter and parted to the side, but still didn't make too bold of a statement. Hence, still slimmish and trimmish.

Pictured there is your humble bloggist pouring a nice Bartle's and James wine cooler to celebrate college graduation day. Apparently I also enjoyed really ugly ties and trying to look like a certain couch jumping Scientologist.












Once I ventured into the job market, I determined that the best look for my new career in fashion retail was, naturally, a mullet. But alas, as a consequence of this avant garde choice, my girth ventured into an heretofore unattained frontier.

It's hard to tell if this is actually me or a female fan whose license I found at the beer garden of a Dixie Chicks show.













Then things got a little freaky and my hypothesis veered of the rails a bit because I was thin during this period. I decided that the "business in the front, party in the back" statement should become repurposed to "all party, all the time."

My dad looks so proud standing next to Grateful Dead there. That may look like chicken but I'm sure ponytail boy probably talked him into grilling field roast drummets instead that afternoon.












A few years later, the hair got chopped—not completely, just enough to look ridiculous again. Naturally, this caused me to pack on the pounds like a giblet thief on Thanksgiving.

What's the deal with the sideburns? Holy shit. That's one fugly hipster sitting next to my bride.








Finally, after years of flailing in a sea of absurdity, I went short. And, wouldn't you know it, the fat fled faster than Karl Rove from a gathering of decent human beings.

That's my daughter a couple of years ago, just prior to her regimen of human growth hormone and argue-with-anything-you-say caplets.













So, yeah, I think I've got a fairly solid thesis here, no? Every time my 'do has vacationed in Crazy Town, my abdominal and moobular regions have expanded to Limbaugh-esque proportions.

Thank God I've finally figured this thing out. I was frighteningly close to dreadlocks.

Weight Watchers Works. Wait, What?

In case I haven't mentioned it, I'm fifty. Oh, I have mentioned it? How many times? Wow, sorry.

Anyway, after 18,417 days spent cruising down life's interstate, I can glance in the rear view mirror and see quite a few stretches where I wasn't exactly wearing a seat belt.

Safe sex analogy? I'm going to say no, since my dad reads this.

What I'm really getting at is, how often have you looked back at an event or entire time period in your life, slapped your forehead V8-style, and yelped, "What the hell was I thinking?"

The thing is, no matter how savvy and seasoned my old carcass grows, these OMG moments still occur, the most recent a mere month ago. But first, a few more dated examples:

How could I have allowed a girlfriend to convince me that popping my collar, wearing penny loafers with no socks and stylishly tying a sweater around my neck, even with Miami Vice sitting atop the Nielson ratings, was a solid decision?

Why did I promise the same emotionally rickety individual that, in the event of her untimely demise, I would personally pen her biography, so that everyone on our big blue marble could understand the calamity of a brilliant life cut short?

Since I'd always wanted to wear my hair in a ponytail, yet preferred short bangs to locks which cascaded over my eyes, why did I surmise that a mullet provided the best of both worlds? After testing this naturally-cultivated 'coon-skin cap look one afternoon at Safeway, my wife forbade me from ever venturing out again with such an abhorrent hair hat.

While slightly offended at the time, I thank you now, my bride, one thousand fold.

But no obscene behaviors, no loathsome practices, have reared their little, double-chinned prairie dog heads with more frequency than my eating escapades. Since I was old enough to pronounce the word "Caligula,", I've vacillated between moderation and all-out Homer Simpson-esque gluttony.

Eat an entire pizza?  Come on, challenge me, my man. Pint of ice cream? Easy, then I'll eat Ben and Jerry.

Today marks the end of four full weeks on "Weight Watchers Online For Men"(I can't really tell any difference from the regular Weight Watchers, other than the bold font on the homepage and how the words might be uttered by the dulcet baritone of James Earl Jones.).

And since it's now been a month, I've again had an opportunity to revisit my behavior prior to beginning this regimen which is more about sane eating than it is a gimmicky diet.

The concept is simple—keep track of everything you eat. It's similar to how accountants or lawyers record billable time, but without the social stigmas of repressed arsonists with mother issues or soulless sycophants who pray on baked daytime-TV-watching whiplash victims.

So unfair. I was an accountant, and my mother issues were minimal most days.

It's all about ownership. Everything you throw down your mineshaft, you report to James Earl Jones. The day before I started WW, I enjoyed a twelve-inch meatball sub with chipotle sauce (What the hell? Was I fourteen and going through a growth spurt?). It was delicious, no doubt, but if I'd introduced a bag of Sour Cream 'n' Onion Lays, that single meal would've devoured all my points for an entire day.

As with so many other areas of life, I'm just trying to be mindful. I'll still knock down a couple of beers or glasses of wine on the weekend, but when all my choices show up in digital splendor, I'll think twice about lining up another IPA.

So far, I've given birth to a fairly robust food baby—nine pounds down. My clothes are a little looser and when I look in the mirror, there's a little less fleshy overhang, but this train needs to keep on rolling for another twenty ell bees.

Then I can buy a smaller sweater to tie around my neck.

Fighting Big Food With a Plastic Knife.

When the consumer takes on the corporation, it shouldn't be too difficult to know who to root for, right?

It's like choosing between Rocky and the Soviet killing machine (played by a nice Swedish man who studied chemistry at Washington State University).

It's similar to picking between the 1980 USA hockey team and the Soviet killing machine (many of whose members were active duty military who had reserved double-occupancy foxholes at Disney World-Afghanistan following the Lake Placid Olympics).

It's akin to making a choice between a ragtag Afghan militia and the Soviet killing machine (the guys who weren't hockey players and had already been sent over).

The consumer climbs through the ropes and meets his corporate opponent mid-ring. The champ stifles a laugh, dwarfing his challenger by a foot and fifty pounds.

David would stand a better chance facing off against Goliath while wearing a beehive and raspberry jam cod piece.

But wait, who's that shadowy figure lining up just behind and to the left of the consumer, raptly absorbing instructions from the referee?

Aha...it's a lawyer.

Instantly, the oddsmakers reshuffle the deck and score the contest a tossup.

Are you sick of my metaphoric rambling yet? Okay, I'm done. Apparently, the new trend in consumer lawsuits, after reaping windfall damages from Big Tobacco, automakers and drug companies, has gravitated toward food manufacturers, also known as "Big Food."

PepsiCo, Heinz and General Mills have grown so heavy on the branch that not even a couple of phone books are necessary to reach their over-ripened fruit.

People are angry—angry that they're being bamboozled by false and misleading ingredients, such as "evaporated cane juice," rather than sugar. Yeah, that's a little sneaky. And I understand that no company favors listing "anal beaver secretions" over a nice word like "castoreum," but shouldn't we be made slightly more aware of how our friend the beaver makes vanilla stuff taste more vanilla-ish?

Then there's the "generalizing" of nutritional information, which has incited a lawsuit in California against ConAgra, makers of PAM cooking spray. Benignly listed as one of its ingredients is the word "propellant."

Seems friendly enough, until the components of propellant—petroleum gas, propane and butane—reveal that the blueberry muffins we scooped effortlessly out of the tin this morning could be used as fuel for our weed eater.

But then there's the other stuff people complain about.: foods that claim to be "healthy" or "natural," yet common sense would dictate otherwise. A 2009 lawsuit against the manufacturer of Cap'n Crunch with Crunch Berries was tossed out after the judge ruled that no one in their right mind would consider Crunch Berries some kind of fruit.

Hang on a second. Does that mean those green clovers in Lucky Charms aren't chlorophyl-rich superfoods which assuage protein-deficient anemia ? Are you telling me that BooBerry contains no antioxidant rich vitamin complexes?

Damn. I thought digging deep to choke down that third bowl of Fruit Loops would pay dividends with my urinary tract and and immune system.

So here's an idea—read the freaking label—not on the front, but the back. Where it says "nutritional information" in eighteen point Futura Bold, check out the fat grams, carbs, calories and serving size.

And just because they're called "Skinny Cows," you shouldn't eat three for breakfast.

That time I appeared on Oprah

Here we go again.

If I were ever lucky enough to appear on Oprah, and I wouldn't be, I could imagine her introducing me with something like, "You all know him or somebody like him. He's gained and lost enough weight to fill up my Chicago mansion with gooey stomach and chin lard. Well, today, we have him at the Harpo studios. Tim Haywood is heeeeeeeere!"

I'd walk in slowly from stage right, lugging a Radio Flyer wagon brimming with the equivalent of my most recent flab loss. I would drop the handle, leaving the disgusting display in the middle of the stage, stroll over to Oprah, and experience the charms of her loving embrace. We'd sit down on her L-shaped couch and get down to business.

Oprah: "So, first of all, welcome to the show. I could have had Harrison Ford on today, but my friend Gail talked me into this, since you and I seem to have the same problem with gaining weight, losing weight, gaining, losing, etc."

Me: "Well, Oprah (I can't believe I'm saying, "Well, Oprah"), a lot of us ride the weight roller coaster. Most people ride something you might find at the Western Washington Fair, but mine is Vegas-sized, with a couple of loop-the-loops. By the way, is Dr. Oz going to be here? If he is, I don't want a lecture, and I really don't want to see him with his shirt off. And what's with those scrubs? Is he performing prostate exams during commercial breaks?"

Oprah: "Don't worry about him, honey. He'd be nothing more than an HMO hack working at a strip mall clinic if it weren't for me.

So anyway, why can't you seem to control your weight?"

Me: "I've got an obsessive/compulsive personality, Oprah. Once I start a diet, I get a little manic about it. I can shed pounds in quick order, which irritates my wife to no end. I weigh myself every day, sometimes twice, and ruminate over everything I put into my body.

"I usually take off twenty to twenty-five pounds, maintain for about six months, and then maybe indulge myself for a weekend. Sometimes I get back on the wagon, but usually I say to hell with it, and slowly return to my gluttonous ways. You know what I mean, Oprah? That extra beer, that extra helping of risotto. But the worst temptation is the workplace, where treats abound and around three o'clock is the witching hour for sweet temptation—birthday cakes, cookies, a stray gummy worm on the carpet..."

Oprah: "I feel your pain. And by the way, you're welcome for my mentioning UGGs on my 'favorite things' show and singlehandedly making it your company's best-selling shoe."

Me: "Oh, yeah, thanks for that."

Oprah: "When we come back, we're going to have everyone look under their chairs, and whatever they find, Tim will eat. We'll be right back."

The preceding dramatization was intended solely for the self-motivational purposes of the author, as a tactic to lose some weight and prevent the purchase of clothing with elastic waistbands. 

Eat an entire bag of Oreos? Easy

The first time I tried it was fourth grade. My mom gently suggested that I give it a try, that a program existed for kids. "Really, mom? They have Weight Watchers for kids?"
"Sure," she assured me. "We just need to get you a doctor's note."
"So I'm going to go on a diet?"
"It's not a diet as much as it is a new way of eating the right foods," she continued. "And we're only doing it if you really want to and are determined to give it a shot."
"Okay, let's do it."
As we kick off the month of October, we're also slowly-but-surely immersing ourselves in the yearly season of indulgence, a three month eating fest. I can normally plan to slather on an average of five pounds during this period, which, in turn, conjures up memories of weight struggles past.
I'd been agonizing over my girth the majority of my young life. From the earliest of days, I have enjoyed a love-hate relationship with my murky overlord, the cocoa bean. As I've mentioned in earlier posts, I experienced a fair amount of teasing from other kids, both friends and enemies alike. Mostly, I just didn't like the way I looked and felt, and thus began a journey, which continues to this day, with sporadic rest stops for lard, malted beverages and high fructose corn syrup.
That first stab at weight loss occurred in 1972. Weight Watchers was still in its infancy as my mom and I tentatively entered the Auburn United Methodist Church, home of the Wednesday night WW meeting. The program's basic tenets held true even then: eat lots of fish and vegetables, but weigh everything first on this scale (which just happens to be for sale right here at the sign-in table, for only $9.95).
The woman, whose name I've long since forgotten, ushered me up to the scale.
"Okay, Timothy, let's measure and weigh you. Yes, go ahead and take your shoes off, and yes, the belt, too. No, not the pants. Timothy! Please put your pants back on. They don't weigh that much anyway. Let's see, you're four feet, eight inches tall, and you weigh...let me just keep sliding this thing...one hundred and sixteen pounds. We're going to set a goal weight for you of...90 pounds. That means you only have to lose 26 pounds. Good luck, Timothy. "
I wanted to get the hell out of there. A queue of established WW patrons waited mere inches from where this woman yelled out my initial weight as if she were auctioning me off. The word, "humiliated," would pretty much cover my emotion at the time. And if she called me "Timothy" again, I resolved to bring my fancy, new, food scale right down on her skinny, little, Weight-Watcher-alumni-club cranium. I sat down in the back row of folding chairs, awaiting the motivational speaker, while my mom waited in the hallway, reading a book. As the meeting room filled up, I realized that the person closest to my age was probably the newborn baby sleeping a few rows up. Everyone was a least 30, which may as well have been 107 when witnessed from my bespectacled, ten-year-old perspective.
After sitting through that initial meeting and quite a few more weekly gatherings, I had built a little momentum and confidence with this lifestyle change. I wore that first pair of pants to every meeting, and they became ever looser, so that they almost slipped off, this time involuntarily, when standing on the scale. Of course, I couldn't have accomplished anything without my mom's steadfast adherence to the program. If I had a nickel for each cantaloupe she sliced or each chicken breast from which she personally removed the skin, I 'd have...lots of nickels. She faithfully packed my school lunches every day; the pineapple tasted good, but oh, how I lusted for the school lunches of hamburger gravy over mashed potato buds.
After having lost about 20 pounds, I had become a bit of a novelty at the meetings, which were probably 80 percent housewife types. They were incredibly nice, constantly encouraging me to lose that last five pounds, which took a lot longer than I had planned.
But I did it. We did it, my mom and I.
I remember thinking, "I should probably wait a while to ask her about fixing these beaver teeth."