Fat and Fatter but Not Yet the Fattest

I feel a lot thinner today. Not that I've lost any weight, but I read in this morning's newspaper that Tennessee is tied with Alabama for the second fattest nation in the country. Whoo-hoo! Mississippians are still fatter, but not by much. The cool thing about being a citizen of Tennesseehowmuchyoucaneat is that you have to be really obese to feel fat at all. I mean your fellow citizens are at least as fat as you are, and most of them more so. The trick to feel thin is to stay in-state.

Which leads me to my new business idea: The Tennessee State Diet. You can eat all the butter-soaked grits and lard-flavored pork products you want. There is no calorie counting or measuring or portioning. All you have to do is move to Tennessee. I plan to partner with the Tennessee Chamber of Commerce and realtors across the state to promote people moving here. And I will work with fast food franchisees to create special welcome meals for people who make the move.

Once you move here all you have to do is walk (Walk! Who am I kidding. Drive, don't walk.) around and notice how much fatter most people are than you. Sure you're fat, too, but after awhile you start to feel thin. It's all relative. When I look at guys who wear size 32 jeans I feel really fat in my size 36 jeans. But when I see that most guys around here are wearing size 44 and above, I feel thin. Or, even better, when I see guys with 44 inch waists wearing size 32 inch pants with 12 inches of stomach hanging over their belts, I feel both thin and fit. So thin and fit that I just might drop by Burger King and Dairy Queen, our town's culinary royalty, for a snack.

Of course for the diet to work, you have to stay in-state. My frequent business trips to LA where everyone is starving her/himself to get into the movies will have to stop. And there is always the chance that I will eat so much that I will start to match or exceed the obese around me. But I have a solution for that--move to Mississippi.