In one year, I gained fifty pounds, and I'm glad of it!
Let me explain. Back when I was in high school, I was a rail-thin kid who somehow managed to stretch 145 pounds (max) onto a 6'2" frame. I'm sure I had other reasons for having a lousy self-image, but being this thin didn't help matters any. That it was a genetic thing (my father had been the same way, stretched on a 6'
4" frame) didn't matter, either.
The real problem was that I stayed that weight for a long time, just as my father had. Der Brucer and I had already met, twenty years ago, and I still weighed the same 145 pounds.
That I was smoking didn't help matters any. Der Brucer was smoking, too, however, just another of the miriad things we had in common.
Then came the time that I decided to quit smoking. I somehow managed to do it cold turkey, and was a total bitch for about a month. (I am normally only a partial bitch.
) Der Brucer quit smoking about a year later, but that's another story.
The weight gain started, of course. Since I no longer had the tobacco interfering with my tasting food, I became much more interested in eating (this was before I started cooking, by the way). The real test came a few months later, when I realized it was time to buy myself new pants, ones that fit. By that time, I had gained twenty-five pounds.
Those pants only lasted about six months before I outgrew them, too. Fortunately, this second re-wardrobing was the the last, sort of, as my weight stablilized, sort of. By the end of the year, I had gained fifty pounds. Put another way, I had increased my weight by a full third of what it had been before.
This took some getting used to. If I'd thought men joking about women's complaints about "water weight gain" to be crass and boorish before, I now had solid evidence of what it felt like. On the other hand, I was no longer that skinny twerp. My self-confidence began to build. I became mellower.
Remembering that my father had also been a smoker, I checked with him. Yes, he had also gained to his present weight after quitting smoking. Upon reflection, he quit smoking when he was about the same age as I. And he's much happier now than he remembers himself being before he quit and gained.
Let this be a lesson to those who smoke. You'll be happier if you don't.
