Crisis in the Waistland

Phonetically, the title of this post would suggest an adventure story about the Old West. However, there will be no depictions of cowboys and Indians.

I suppose I could have just as easily used "Battle of the Bulge" to rest in the title banner above, but that wouldn't be at all original.

Yep, you guessed it. I'm talking about girth control here.

Honey, what are you doing to the laundry? My pants shrunk!
I had been leaving the top button of some of my pants pants unsnapped, but that was hidden by my belt buckle. In the cooler weather I was wearing sweaters and sweater vests. During last summer I was wearing my shirts with the tails out.

Praise be to the inventor of those plastic button expanders!

Of course they shrunk!
I noticed recently that the front porch seemed to have settled a bit on the foundation. If that wasn't enough, I was having difficulty viewing the downstairs plumbing. Only by leaning slightly forward could I see the hose bib.

Honey, are you still cooking with trans fat?
It's kind of 'snuck' up on me ... kind of ...? Well, not really. I might as well be honest if only to myself. The indicators had been there, and while I was aware of them, I didn't give them much thought (or was reticent to admit it).

Reality reared its ugly head three weeks ago when my wife come in from shopping with a new pair of jeans for me. Not that I'm ungrateful or anything, but I was quick to note that she bought pants with a 36-inch waist when I wear 34s.

They must have the wrong size tag!
I couldn't believe it! I couldn't catch the top button! I had to employ the above mentioned and pictured button expander. They were tight.

Then two weeks ago she presented me with another pair of jeans - sized 38! It should come as no surprise that I said that they would be too big! Duh! They fit! They were a little loose, but they fit!

I have no intentions of looking like a basketball with arms and legs! So I've decided it's time to assess the situation.

My wife never wanted a bathroom scale in the house. As a result I hadn't weighed myself in a long time. I did know that last September I weighed 165 pounds! For a 60-year-old man standing at 5'10" that isn't too bad! Is it?

Is this scale accurate?
So the next day after she bought the '38s', I stepped on a scale at the home of one my clients. 191 pounds? The client confirmed the scale was indeed accurate.

Nine days later, this past Thursday, perched upon the scales of another client, I watched the numbers spin like the dials on a one-armed bandit. They came to rest on 196!

Some quick math reveals that I have gained 31 pounds since last September! In seven months, that figures that I have been packing on the poundage at the rate of a little more than 4 pounds a month.

Perhaps,Crisis in the Waistband is a more appropriate title for this post?

I'm not used to gaining weight. I don't know if that is an alarming rate or not.

But I had an alarming discovery this afternoon when I tackled my dresser drawers. I stripped naked from the waist down - hey, even my underwear is a layer! I looked at it this way, if I couldn't get into any of those pants sans the drawers, I wasn't going to get into them with them on either!

Jeans, dress and casual pants after pants came out the dresser drawer and jeans, dress and casuals went into a "no-way-no-how" pile. The "NWNH" pile was by far the largest with 15 strong. The "tight" pile had three pairs. The "button expander" pile had four pairs.

I spent all of my youth as a skinny beanpole. When I graduated from high school in 1966, I weighed 140 pounds soaking wet!

When I was discharged from the service in December of '71 and got married in May of '72, I tipped the scales at 150. From 1972 to last September - 37 years - I gained a whopping 15 pounds! In the last seven months I picked up 31!

Honey, where did you hide the potato chips?
There's no getting around it, I've become a sedentary individual - or more precisely I've become both a sedentary couch potato and a sedentary blogger.

I suppose the large bags of Utz potato chips I've become addicted to may have something to do with my bodily inflation. Perhaps maybe even the Reese's Fast Break candy bars ... the Cheetos ... the Klondike Neapolitan ice cream bars ... the Wendys Double Classic cheeseburgers ...

It couldn't possibly be the lack of exercise ...!

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