Am I Asheville Fat?

 long time ago, in a city far, far away, a young woman accused me of being “Boulder Fat.” 

The city in question—if you haven’t guessed—was Boulder, Colorado, which I was visiting because my good friend from high school was in grad school there. The young woman in question was simply a random woman we met in a very trashy karaoke bar. She’d explained that since most of the men in Boulder make mountain biking, ultramarathons, or competitive ultra-frisbee their personalities, and are some variation on vegetarian/vegan, they have almost zero percent body fat and are mostly borderline tiny. At the time, I was probably 190 pounds on a 5’11 frame, and my body type has always been a variation of works-out-but-eats-and-drinks-carbs, so I was dubbed “Not like, fat, fat, but definitely Boulder fat,” something that comes up almost every time my friend and I reunite. 

In the ensuing years, I’ve put on a bit more weight—I like to think (and tell anyone who asks), that it’s “mostly muscle,” but know deep down that while some of it is muscle, the “mostly” is probably a bit inaccurate—and now sit at around 210 on the same 5’11 frame. And while Asheville is a hipster enclave full of men who like to eat farm-to-table and drink heavy-duty IPAs, it’s also a very slender city. People hike, mountain bike, there’s a ton of guys who are vegan/vegetarian variations, and in general—despite pretending otherwise—there is an air of superficiality in this very authentic, artistic, eclectic enclave. It’s not unlike Boulder that way (both are hubs of people who are mostly rich pretending to be mostly progressive while being very image-focused).

Earlier this year, I was visiting an unnamed watering hole (name withheld to protect those guilty of investing in shitty furniture) when, in attempting to simply sit at a picnic table, I crashed through the bench, splaying myself onto the ground, rendering myself momentarily humiliated, and asking myself a daunting question: Am I now Asheville fat? 

Now, to be honest, the Boulder fat girl wasn’t the first person I thought of when I crashed through that bench. It was my primary care doctor, who, a few months earlier, had the following conversation during a routine checkup. 

Doctor: “Do you want to lose any weight?”

Me: “I mean, I’m always wanting to lose 10 pounds, but it’s not like a top priority at the moment.”

Doctor: “Ok, well, maybe you should prioritize it a bit. You are, of course, morbidly obese.” 

I didn’t respond in the moment, I think, because I was taken aback, partially because of how casually he said it, and partially because he said it to begin with. Again, we’ve established that I’m not a twig, but I’ve never been accused of being obese, let alone morbidly, especially not by a medical professional. It also struck me because, weight aside, I think over the past two years I’ve probably felt the healthiest I’ve been in a long time, and 100% am in some of the best shape I’ve ever been in. 

I happened to have two good friends who are both in the medical field visiting the following weekend. I told them what happened, and both said that he was probably going on BMI, which they told me—and I already knew as a devoted Maintenance Phase fan—isn’t the best way to obtain any sort of medical diagnosis. As they pointed out, BMI doesn’t indicate anything about your diet, the intensity of you workouts, or the fat-to-muscle distribution. Still, we pulled up BMI charts, plugged in my stats, and found that I have a BMI of 31, which puts me at obese. To be morbidly obese, I’d have to have a BMI of 40, which at my height, would need a weight of 286 pounds (almost an 80-pound gain, in my case). For my BMI to register as “normal,” I’d need to have a BMI of 24, which would put me at 172 pounds, a weight I haven’t seen since my freshman year of college. 

The next time I saw my doctor, I brought up the morbidly obese comment, expressing what I’d just expressed to all of you, that I was taken aback and wished I’d said something then. He denied that he ever said it—which maybe he did forget —but I would bet big money and swear on my life it was said—and said my weight wasn’t a huge concern for him. He also apologized if I “interpreted” his ask if I wanted to lose weight as calling me morbidly obese. I didn’t push it, because it felt like a moot point, and this would be my last time seeing him. He was retiring. 

Two days later, I got a phone call from his receptionist. Apparently, when not face to face, he’d changed his tune. She said the doctor remained “very concerned” about my weight. She said that he advised me to go on a diet, and if I came in for my next routine checkup and hadn’t had luck losing any, I was a “great candidate” for…Ozempic.  

Now, I’m not sure what my doctor’s entire deal is—I have theories ranging frm the fact that some doctors are trying to push weight loss drugs to the fact that many gay men (including gay doctors like him) have deep seated body issues that they push onto others (and the fact that there are studies showing the doctors themselves are susceptible to bad body images)—but since he’s now retired, it had more or less become an out-of-sight, out-of-mind situation, especially since because when I brought this up to the doctor who replaced him, i was told that as is, my weight wasn’t something she felt was an issue, and that I certainly shouldn’t be on any sort of weight loss drug as upping my cardio and cleaning up my diet would probably do that trick, if it was something I even wanted to pursue. 

That all said, the day before I was set to leave Asheville for the holidays, I stopped at Whole Foods to get a quick grocery-storey sushi lunch. I purchased my sushi, went outside, and found a picnic table to sit at. I sat at said table…and crashed through the bench in front of a bunch of other Whole Foods lunchers.