What a Fat Tub of Shit

Chris Kenney
MDI Contributor

What a fat tub of shit…

That’s what I tell myself when looking at pictures of me from different times in my life. I don’t know if it’s because I hate that person or if saying it just makes me laugh a little while using it to compartmentalize and disassociate from him. I’m a 35-year-old man, soon to be 36. I’ve been a big kid my whole life.

My weight wasn’t always about eating or food. Rather, it became my safe place, my identity. I remember being pretty big at 12 years old; I was 5 foot 6 and 190 pounds.

I wasn’t a shapeless amoeba of a boy; I was what they would call in the 90s as “big boned.” I was active, played outside daily, and was into sports. I remember the jeans they would sell called “husky” jeans.

What great advertising: “Do you have the waist of a man but the legs of a child? Well, do we have the jeans for you!” Nothing like being a fat kid wearing jeans made for fat kids at school where kids make fun of fat kids. You heard that right—I got made fun of in elementary school for being bigger than everyone else. Now, I know everyone gets made fun of no matter what, whether you are too fat, too skinny, too pale, too dark, too tall, too short etc.

Kids are cruel they say, but I loved it. It just fit with my sense of humor. I would often think to myself, “I can make fun of myself way better than they can; I know me way better than they do.” I truly believe that’s where my sense of humor started. I believe it started as a defense mechanism to show them that they had no power over me. I’m sure it didn’t always show up as a positive thing in my life, but as a man in my mid-30s, I can’t tell you how useful a tool it is to be funny and to be able to deflect with a quick tongue.

Timing is everything in humor. 

I feel like a lot of men out there do this. I feel like, for whatever reason, we do it more than women do. Maybe it’s to avoid being vulnerable and show we can’t be bothered by something as trivial as an insecurity. It’s an interesting thought. As I sit here today, Im 6 foot and weigh about 240 pounds. Two years ago, I was the biggest I had ever been in my life at 285 pounds (what a fat tub of …).

I figured it was time for a change. I started working out, eating right, fell in love with a routine, and I got stronger, slimmer, and mentally happier. Now, when I look at myself in the mirror, I don’t say or think “what a fat tub of shit.”

But that self-deprecating humor remains as a part of me. I have a different take on self-deprecation than some people do. Some people look at it only as a way to distract, deflect, or not let people in on who you really are, but I also think of it as a way to connect with people because everyone has insecurities. My thought process is: “If I make fun of myself, you know I’m just another insecure human too, and then maybe you will poke fun at yourself too.”

All of a sudden, we are both laughing about things we may want to keep hidden and for people not to notice. That laughter and openness helps the “mask” come off a little. No one, not even the most beautiful man or woman in the world, is without the things they don’t love about themselves. I love knowing that those “things” can bring us together. I’ve changed my life from chubby kid to chubby man to slightly less chubby man. And because I have those stories I’ve related to thousands of people in my life. There’s power in that.

In a sense, this has all helped me be a little more humble, more relatable, and most important to my heart, easier to talk to and have a few laughs with. It has been a way to maybe distract yourself, even for a moment, from a hard day, week, or year. I’m not saying this is for everyone, but humor is my lifeblood.

There’s nothing that makes me feel better than putting a smile on someone’s face, then having them tell me their cheeks hurt and they feel like they just did an ab workout because I told them a story about when I was a fat kid. Because maybe, just maybe, in that moment, they forgot about their insecurities for one second and related to mine.