That’s Why You’re Fat
The internet makes you fat. You spend every day sitting—office chair, café bench, some basement—barely moving except to plug your phone in the computer or grab tissues when you’re having a minor stress breakdown, and you’d rather sleep than actually go outside and exercise, no matter what your calendar says you should be doing.
Food has to be fast. You’ve got a project that’s due, code that needs testing, someone you need to interview—probably via email because leaving your desk is basically impossible. So pizza, pasta, burgers—roll up to whichever place you trust, shove it in your face, back to work. The internet never stops. It doesn’t sleep.
This is happening to me right now. As I type, I’m literally shoving my stomach aside so I can fit fried chips in my mouth. And I’m too lazy to even leave the house to eat anymore. In the last two months I’ve ordered delivery so many times my loyalty points could rebuild a small nation. So tomorrow I just order again.
Then there are those rare days when I force myself to bike somewhere instead of transit, when I skip the double burger and fries for an actual goat cheese salad and water. All I remember the next morning is waking up at 4 AM puking in a fast food bathroom, screaming for bacon nuggets and a Whopper with extra patties. Make it a nine-piece of something fried while you’re at it. Goodbye.
And of course it’s not my fault. It’s TV. It’s advertising. It’s society. Not me. I’d be perfectly fine eating fruit and hand-raised chicken if corporate advertising didn’t spend billions telling me how boring that is. You’re buried in fast food ads everywhere. If I ever quit eating Colonel Sanders, he’d chase me through my nightmares in a giant cornfield. You assholes are the problem, not me.
Except that excuse is getting thin. Because I’m starting to notice something worse than getting sluggish and tired and foggy from all the garbage—the food doesn’t even taste good anymore. Burger King can rebrand their entire menu every six months and it tastes identical. Like burnt regret. Always. The delivery place drowns their pizza in so much grease they’ve probably sterilized half their employees just from the vapor. And I’d rather get deployed to a war zone than eat from those tourist-trap noodle places again.
You’re not supposed to fall apart like this working online. Fashion people manage it. Though I guess they survive on marriage proposals from middle-aged stalkers. Anyway.
The answer is obvious. I need to actually exercise. Bike for an hour without hacking up a lung. Sit outside with a book. Do something that isn’t the screen. Get away from this at least once a week. And remember: jerking off doesn’t count as exercise. This isn’t about quitting the internet and becoming a gym rat or moving to the countryside—it’s just accepting that you can’t hide behind a monitor forever before your body actually gives out. And maybe have sex again. With an actual person. More than once. So we end the year as something resembling a functioning human. But that starts tomorrow. I’ve still got McDonald’s coupons burning in my wallet.