One great indicator that my life is finally on the right track is actually very subtle. It’s something that is difficult to pick up on at first glance, but after years of not caring about my appearance, having low self-esteem, and weighing about 100 pounds more than I should, I’ve been able to notice the indirect ways that people react to me.

A few years ago, when my life was out of control, people were still nice to me. I was still awesome. I was really nice and funny and had a pretty good personality, so people weren’t really mean to me. However, I would still get The Look. That brief glance that was about 90% pity and 10% aversion. I was still pretty good at talking to women, but if I ended up talking for too long, or went off on a tangent, or got too close, I would end up getting the look, meaning, ‘alright you’re pretty nice, but I’ve reached my quota for you and do not want to look at your fat, sweaty face anymore.’ I eventually was pretty aware that the look was eminent, and once it arrived, I was already gone.

I think I need to revise the last paragraph. I was not good at talking to women. I could maintain a conversation for about five minutes. In my mind, these five minutes were going great, when in actuality, I was flailing my arms, screaming, and had really yellow teeth, which has nothing to do with my conversation style, but didn’t help, either. After five minutes I would either just stare at her nervously or walk away.

Now I still get the look, but it’s completely different, because I’m awesome now. People aren’t disgusted by me anymore. When I smile at a stranger and say, ‘hi’, they don’t squint their eyes and immediately start walking in the opposite direction despite the fact that they’re already five minutes late to see their dying grandmother. They smile and say, ‘hi’ back like I’m a goddamn normal person.

This isn’t just due to my weight loss. It’s a complete lifestyle and partial personality change. My mannerisms are even quite different. Of course, it is far better to be unique and not conform to what people respond favorably too. However, I am too weak-minded to not conform. I must be liked.

Over the past year-and-a-half, I have drastically altered my life. The most aesthetically noticeable aspect is my weight loss, as I have lost over eighty pounds. However, while I was fat, and during this entire process, I felt that someone or something celestial was working against me. Every time I hit a milestone, I seemed to face an equal and opposite force working against me.

Over the past few months, I’ve started jogging regularly. It’s really helped me feel better about myself, because, as a fat man, I could jog for about one minute before collapsing in a very public way on my treadmill that seemed to be struggling equally as hard to support me. Over the past month or so, my hip started hurting increasingly more every time I jogged or ran. I tend to ignore things I don’t like, so I pretended that none of this was happening. I went limping into work every day, and when people asked why I was limping, I told them that this was always how I walked, and then immediately collapsed. I thought nothing of it until, finally, after one workout, I couldn’t walk or lift my left leg for about twenty minutes. I went to the doctor soon after and was diagnosed with hip dysplasia. This means that, barring major surgery, I can never jog or run again, and will develop arthritis by the time I’m in my 50’s.

Now, this is really not bothering me that much. My OCD and anxiety tend to focus on little things that don’t matter at all. This is nothing. I have bigger things to worry about, like what position my towel is in when I hang it over the shower and violently jerking my head for no reason every time I think I’m developing a headache.

However, this is just another thing that seems to be working against my progress. It’s going to be hard to maintain my current weight without cardio. I know I could swim, but it’s getting cold outside, and even when using indoor pools, I dislike taking off my shirt in public. Also, I know I could ride bikes (stationary or real), but I don’t want to do that because I dislike doing that. Maybe I’ll try something like tapeworms or the Limb Whacker®.

There is a drawback to losing weight that is even worse than all of the positive attention, lack of heartburn, general overall wellness, self-control, ability to consistently sleep, a reason to wake up in the morning, an increase in energy, and a less-sensitive Pavlovian response telling my body to throw blunt objects at mirrors.

Losing weight also comes with the very real possibility that you will acquire crazy eyes. In photos, while large people may not like the way they look as much, they generally seem level-headed, and their eyes are often nice and human-like. Before I lost the weight, and after Facebook was invented, I noticed a trend among photographs of my friends. My larger friends all seemed relatively normal, while a lot of my thin friends looked absolutely crazy. I think I need to clarify that thin people do not have crazy eyes in real life. They only look crazy in pictures. This, of course, is not applicable to all people. But try to stay attuned to this when looking at pictures of people.

Actually, the prevalence of crazy eyes in photos of thin people seems to be higher in thin people that have lost a lot of weight. I can think of several examples of this off the top of my head, myself included. When I look at pictures of myself now, I think  ‘Wow, I look great. I’ve really come a long way.’ and then my eyes move up to my face and I think, ‘Gahhh what the hell is wrong with me? Good lord, give me some food.’ I bet at least five people that have never met me, but seen photos of me on Facebook or something think that I sleep in my bathroom and own 25 cats that are all named ‘Lucille’, without realizing that only half of that is true.

I’ve become what I hate the most. I hate crazy eyes. Once I realize that a friend has crazy eyes, it makes it very difficult to maintain the friendship. Maybe that’s why I have no friends. I hope I haven’t ruined your life with this theory of mine, but I haven’t, because you’re probably not reading this.

Ever since I’ve lost my ninety pounds over the past year, my routine has become completely different. That is, while before I lost the weight my fat ass lied moaning on the floor of my room in pain from all of the food that I had only managed to keep from coming back out of me by inhaling bottles of antacid tablets that also acted as food and could ironically only be contained by more bottles of antacid tablets, I now rise out of bed in the morning and do things that are considered normal, that I know are considered normal because I see people on TV and in the movies do the same things. I eat breakfast. I drive to work. I listen to traffic updates on the way to work to gauge my driving time and route. I use breath mints. I check my voicemail.

However, in the course of losing the weight and developing some sort of recognizable routine, my lingering OCD was kind enough to allow even my healthy habits to devolve into a pit of horribleness. Now, my routine is extremely regimented. I wake up every morning at the exact same time, to the minute. I use the same amount of swipes of deodorant under each arm. “Oh, that’s normal” you say? Are you saying that? Why are you talking to yourself while reading this at work? When I get into my car, the digital car-clock reading has to read 7:48 or earlier, or my day is ruined. I drive to the convenience store and buy three Nutri-Grain® bars and two orange juices. I then take my multivitamin and have to finish my breakfast by 7:56 or my day is shot, again. Okay, this really doesn’t sound all that bad really, you know, compared to writhing in pain on my floor in a pool of sweat and antacids, but it does get worse.

I guess life is better than it was one year ago. I have just enough money to buy the diet food that I hate. I am just presentable enough to women that they give me a double-take just before ignoring me, and my heartburn is just manageable enough to allow me to go to sleep at night easily enough, so I am just enough well-rested in the morning to force myself out of bed in just enough time to start my painfully self-regimented routine.

Though I have lost a considerable amount of weight over the last several months and am of average weight for my equally average height, my body still thinks that I am a fat man.

By that, I mean it is still curvy in all the wrong places. I inexplicably still have man-boobs. When I was at my heaviest, I also noticed that my stomach made a weird-shaped bulge right over my waist. My waist was regular sized, and my stomach was regular sized (for a ten-foot-tall man). It wasn’t just a fat man’s bulge. It is difficult to explain without photos, but I am not going to post a photo because you are so nice and innocent and there’s no reason for me to scar strangers for life. Also, I never took a picture of myself as a fat man. That was one decision I will take to my grave as the smartest thing I have or will have ever done.

Anyway, my body doesn’t know I’ve lost any weight at all. I can’t jog for more than three feet. I still get winded and sweaty whenever I eat more than a rice cake. Okay I’ve never eaten a rice cake. They have no smell, and I am suspicious of anything lacking in aroma. This is also why I never trusted scented candles.

Most importantly, though, that awkward bulge on my stomach is still there. I can’t really explain why, nor have I seen it on another person. I’m sure that if I actually went to the gym, I could work it off somehow, but I refuse to go. I’ve lost 74 pounds without having to exercise and am I damn sure not about to start now. Having said that, my weird stomach bulge remains. Thank goodness for T-shirts. My normal-sized hand would not be big enough to cover my stomach-sized stomach.

However, through the help of shirts, I have been able to sustain more dates than I was able to half a year ago. I now know more than ever that if a girl doesn’t like me, it’s now slightly more likely that she doesn’t like my personality. That is strangely comforting.

If you are looking to lose some weight, look no further.  If you have been packing on the carbs and saturated fat, all you need is an erosion of the mucous membrane caused in part by the corrosive action of the gastric juice.  In short, you need for your body to tear a hole in your stomach.  This is extremely painful, and makes eating even more painful.  Every mouthful of food will feel like you are eating the fire that engulfs Osama bin Laden. Soon, your appetite will be gone, and you will be able to shed roughly 15 pounds per week.  It happened to me, and it can happen to you, too!

A few weeks ago, I started experiencing weird sensations in my body.  I felt like I had a fever, I sweated profusely, and it was incredibly painful to eat.  After every bite, I experienced a tightening in my chest and a burning in my throat.  I looked up symptoms on my sister’s phone and convinced myself that I had an ulcer.  In the first week, I lost about ten pounds.  It turns out I didn’t have an ulcer, it was probably just acid in my body.  Though the pain is over, my smaller appetite remains.  I’m just not as excited about food anymore, which is amazing, because there was nothing more excitable to me than food just a month earlier.  I am losing roughly four to five pounds per week.

So, ask your doctor if you have an ulcer, and if not, ask how you can get one.  You won’t find this weight loss plan in any health publications because it is extremely unhealthy.  But who cares about health when you have abs! Abs!