Unhappy me.

I don't really remember how we got on the subject, but while some friends and I were sitting around the fire on Halloween night, one of the females mentioned she had lost quite a bit of weight shortly before moving to MN. One of the other females asked what she had done to lose the weight, and from there I only tuned in sporadically so I'm in no position to pass on her weight loss secrets.

Sorry about that.

But at the end of their conversation, something was said that caught my attention and stuck with me. I recognized it to be a good "twisted logic" subject that I could share with you. Let me know if you agree with them or not.

The statement was worded something like this.
"If you're happy, you gain weight. You lose weight when you're not."

They (And by "they" I mean the females, for the other males shared the same blank-faced, glazed-over-eyes expression that I'm sure I was wearing) all seemed to agree with this statement.

Damn.

I've been losing weight for the last 3 or so years. And I've mistakenly been pleased with this, for I'd given credit for this loss of weight to the fact that I'd moved to a town that doesn't have a McDonald's. And here it turns out I'm unhappy!

And while I was sitting at a McDonald's one day, there was an unusually robust boy sitting at the adjacent table stuffing his mouth with fries and burgers while the unusually thin person who I'm guessing was his mom ate nothing, read the paper, and completely ignored him. I seriously think the kid may have weighed close to what I do and was probably about 10 years old.

It's things like this that cause my confusion. In the above scenario, I would have guessed the child to be quite unhappy and to be trying to fill the void, created by the lack of attention and affection from his mother, with food. I'll admit that I also mentally labelled her as a horse-shit mom who seemed to be neglecting her own child as if he was the burdensome byproduct and unwanted reminder of a bad relationship. Either way, I'm sure the kid has had a tough time of it since then and I'm hard pressed to believe that the unhappy (thin) kids have treated him nicely.

I'm a fast eater. I need to work on that. But I've been fortunate in that I can eat buffets whenever I please and it doesn't stay with me. (Get me on fast food for a good length of time and it's a different story.) So here again I'm back to my old thinking that it's not my current state of happiness that controls my weight so much as what I'm eating.

But then I come to work this week and a few of the daytime guys are sitting in the office and finishing off their Dairy Queen. On one of the cups, I see a picture of a female holding what we're supposed to believe is a Blizzard. She's got that cartoonish word bubble over her head, and in it she's saying something like, "When I'm unhappy I have a Blizzard. When I'm happy, I have two!"

So now I'm thinking that Dairy Queen has some really good marketing strategists that have most likely enlisted the help of those people who specialize in what goes on in our heads to promote the Blizzard product. Or possibly the females at my Halloween gathering eat at Dairy Queen too often and have been brainwashed by cup propaganda. But still, the fact that this same topic presented itself twice in the last week and by such completely different sources, and is the opposite of my own thinking, has caused me to dwell on the subject during my drive time.

All I know is the girl on the DQ cup appeared quite thin, and therefore must be seriously unhappy most of the time. I can eat 2 foot-long Subway sandwiches in a sitting (but choose not to unless there's a BOGOfree going on) and even I wouldn't tackle 2 Blizzards!

And Jared, the Subway fat-guy-turned-skinny, is now unhappy...if we look at this from my Halloween guests' point of view. I can understand his unhappiness. Hold the mayo, my @$$!

Still, I'd rather not think of any loss of weight as something I should be unhappy about, for apparently I'm already plenty unhappy as it is since I'm losing weight. I usually look forward to hopping on the scale for the DOT physicals. (Both jobs have me do this even though I actually move a truck in once about every other never.) It amuses me that somehow my diet is usually horrible the week prior to the physical and yet the number that comes back is lower than when I was last in.

So, what gives? Is it just a females weight that's controlled by their degree of happiness? But then, how does this apply to fashion? If thin people are unhappy, and larger people are happy, why is it that happy people are made to feel miserable because of their happiness as measured by weight? And, as a single guy, how does one view the weight/happiness ratio in seeking out someone that they can stand being in a car with for a few hours at a time while on drives to SoDak or the MN Renaissance Festival or The Mall of America or Nowhere in Particular, Iowa or to his non-blog updating sister's house in Nebraska?

Please share your thoughts. :)