Having arrived now in St. Petersburg, FL for the third time this year, I have naturally made some friends down here, and was very happy to see several people again, and it seemed as though they were happy to see me too. One comment I have received from almost every person around is that I look really good. And not just in a “Hey, lookin’ good!” kind of way, but in a more specific “Have you been working out? You’ve lost weight! You look pretty ripped!” kind of way.
Now, I am certainly not going to argue with anyone about how awesome I look, except that, as far as I know, I look the same as I did before. My muscles seem the same sad size to me, and my stomach seems as large as ever. Now, we have two possibilities here. One is that I have actually lost weight and built up some muscle, and just not noticed. This is, I suppose, possible, on account of the giant baby I carry around every day, and it is often difficult to notice gradual changes when you are there every day with yourself. But the other possibility is that I am the same as I ever was, and people just used to think I was fat and weak.
To be fair here, I was fat and weak, and, to my knowledge, this is a trend that continues to the present day. However, if I have done nothing different, and somehow appear sleeker and more muscular, well, I want to know how I did it, so that I can do more of it and further my visual upgrade. So then the question is, did I look bad then, and now look better, or did I look good then, and now look way better? This bears further investigation.
Regardless of the reasoning behind it, it is nice to hear that I am looking halfway decent, and it does motivate me to actually lose weight and start changing my flab into muscle. Even though I don’t look that fat compared to many of my other fellow Americans, I would still like to be healthier. Many people seem to not know how fat they are, perhaps because they only use the comparison method of weight assessment. But that is a topic for another day. For now, I just need to look buff enough that nobody tries to kill me in any more restaurants.