A young man stopped by my house Sunday afternoon, carrying a box of chocolate bars.

“Hello sir,” he began as soon as I opened the door. I was a little tired after a long weekend, so I can’t quote him exactly. I believe he said something like, “I am a nice kid who is raising money so I can do nice things for myself and/or for an affiliated charitable purpose. My personal favorite is the caramel bar.”

I smiled at him and gave him $5, enough to buy exactly five bars of chocolate.

My stomach gurgled. I had just returned from the mountains in glorious Ellijay, Ga. where I devoured:

–          One bag of chips.

–          A New York strip steak and a rib-eye.

–          Chicken wings.

–          Cookie butter. (The answer to, “Why is there an obesity epidemic in America?”)

–          Smores with gourmet marshmallows that had chocolate chip crumbly things in them. Mmm. Chocolate chip crumbly things.

–          Brussels sprouts, my one act of atonement

–          Chicken and Doritos casserole. (Also acceptable as the answer to, “Why is there an obesity epidemic in America?”)

–          Summer sausage and Havarti cheese.

–          A couple of grapes.

–          Baked Cheetos, which wasn’t an act of atonement. I just really like the baked kind.

–          Eggs and pancakes.

–          Omelet using the last piece of steak and all those other vegetables we intended to cook to offset all the things we actually cooked.

When I first moved to Atlanta, I lived over by Atlantic Station. I self-diagnosed my obesity when I went into one of the stores to buy a new pair of pants. As it turned out, no one with a waist size larger than 38 inches lives in Atlantic Station. The residents there enjoy a happy life, eating at the Which Wich and frolicking around the Astroturf while listening to Frank Sinatra music piping out of the trees. They lead obnoxiously healthy, relentlessly classy lives.

My inability to buy pants without the stretch waist band, as well as Michelle Obama’s various healthy eating initiatives, inspired me. I began the de-fat-assification process.

I’ll save you the boring, sweaty details. There’s no trick to losing weight. It’s kind of like quitting drinking. You either want to lose weight or you just like eating cake. If you like eating cake, then just own it. Eat the cake. Be the cake. Buy the stretch pants.

If you don’t, put down the fried burrito, put some Zeppelin on your cell phone and move around a lot. Your sweat is not a true measure of how much you have accomplished, at first. It is just your body cooling the melting fat, because your body has been convinced you were going to hibernate at any moment. You have to sweat and move constantly until you lose so much weight that you qualify for the home page of AJC.com.

I lost a good bit of weight – about 50 pounds – because of my don’t-be-a-fat-assitude. My wife wanted to murder me.

After losing weight for more than a year, I realized I might have gone too far. At first people said, “Wow, you look amazing. How did you lose so much weight?”

After a while, the admiration morphed into concern. “Damn, you sure have lost a lot of weight,” one friend said, sounding like he suspected an undiagnosed tumor.

So I decided I should modify my diet to include cronuts.

Glad I saved all my stretchy pants.