My job makes me FAT

So nowadays, is being fat a weakness, a sin, or an illness?

I've always figured I get fat because I like to eat ten-cookie stacks of Strawberry Milkshake Oreos, entire jars of guacamole dip, towers of Texas toast.... You know, sufficient quantity of stuff that tastes good.

I have met skinny people who will eat one cookie and pretend that's all they want.

Liars.

It's impossible.

Just one celery stick - ok. That's do-able. But when food is laden with sugar and fat, a normal person will elbow aside his or her fellow beings and FEED. This natural, pure behavior is obvious before we are burdened with the expectations of society.

Put a cookie down between two hungry toddlers and watch what happens. Now try it with a piece of lettuce. After the initial taste, which will become a slobbery object of contention and which will be dropped in the dirt and trodden underfoot?

Over the last few years, I've been so pleased to discover my weight isn't actually due to gluttony. I'm fat because of viruses, genetics, screwy medical problems, my state of mind, drugs, because doctors lied to me, and other interesting causes.

Mainly, however, I blame my job. My profession requires that I hunker over a computer keyboard all day with my only movement being an occasional, full-body fear-twitch when the phone shrills in my ear. Since I've been working in this position for a year now, and since the position involves me not changing my position, I've gained 15 pounds. I have not gotten any taller. Just more round.

I've also discovered that the 50-something body does not retain fluidity after maintaining the same pose for several hours. Instead of unfolding gracefully from my chair, stretching, and bounding like a gazelle to the ladies room, I push back from the desk, straighten my legs and lurch upwards and sideways, staggering and scrabbling at the desktop to maintain my balance with the musical accompaniment of cascading CD's, pens, hand-sanitizer, and scissors. I limp to the ladies room. The return trip involves dragging myself up along the stair rail accompanied by upper body muscle strain and rotator cuff tears. When I went to the doc a few weeks ago with hip pain, she cheerfully told me I have congenital hip dysplasia - I thought only dogs got that. I never had hip weirdness before I took this job, congenital or not.

So last weekend, I bought a Sunbeam kitchen timer at Wal-Mart. It ticks like a cartoon bomb and has an old-fashioned alarm-clock clapper. Loud and scary as hell.

Every 58 minutes or so, I levitate out of the chair, startled and adrenilized, to reach for my lower extremities and attempt body twists. As my spine regains the ability to bend more than 30 degrees, I plan to add some tai chi and yoga, but no scrabbling about on the floor which has not been cleaned in the year I've worked here. My heart rate spikes sharply when that alarm goes off so I know my pulse rate is being elevated. Surely this much additional movement will encourage weight loss - unless....

Wonder if being frightened make you fat?