Battle of the Bulge — By Tommy Purser

[EDITOR’S NOTE: The following column was written by me, your editor, almost 25 years ago. The subject was my battle with gaining weight. As if it’s anyone’s business, I got on the scales this morning and was happy to see that I weighed 198 lbs., down 12 pounds from a year ago. If you, dear reader, are anywhere close to being halfway decent at math, do the math. It’s startling. It’s hard to believe that, 20 years after penning the column below, I’m happy to report my recent weight loss. My late mother and late step-father, referred to below when they were still alive, would be astonished to see me today. Read on and enjoy.]
Regular readers of this column know I never hesitate to let folks know when I start losing the battle of the bulge.
For those who may have come in late, let me catch you up:
I moved to Hazlehurst 27 years ago, in June of 1973. At the time, I weighed a rather undernourished 145 pounds. When I moved to town, the good wife was pregnant with our second child. So she stayed back home until Tommy Jr. came into the world some four months after my arrival in Hazlehurst.
Four months of living without home cooked meals resulted in a loss down to 135 pounds.
Three years later, Dr. Sidney Johnson and a heart specialist in Savannah convinced me to quit smoking. Within three years, I was up to a rather bloated 185 pounds. Keep in mind here that I’m only 5’-7” tall.
After a few years of hauling all that weight around, I reactivated my life-style, started jogging regularly and lost 10-15 pounds, hovering around 170-175 for a number of years.
About three years ago, I stepped up my running pace and eventually got down to a slim 165 pounds, which suited me just fine. Unfortunately, I couldn’t figure out how to stop losing weight and I slipped on down to about 162 pounds somewhere around this time a year ago.
Well, that was a year ago.
A few minutes before last week’s Thanksgiving feast at my mother-in-law’s home in Waynesboro, I stepped on the scales in the bathroom. The digital scales lit up a bright 1-7-7.
“Couldn’t be,” I thought to myself. “They must be off.”
Back in the kitchen, I asked with some hesitation, “Those scales in the bathroom ….. they’re off a little bit, aren’t they?”
“No,” my brother-in-law replied. “They’re right.”
“They are, Daddy,” added my oldest. “I got on them last night.”
“That’s right.” said the good wife. “They were right on my weight.”
After that, my Thanksgiving day appetite took a hit. With a gut-bulging 15 pounds of added weight over the last 12 months, I was in no mood to eat. Much, anyway.
That evening on our way home, we detoured to Coopersville in Screven County for a visit with my mother. I hadn’t been in the house five minutes before she announced,
“Well, son, looks like you’ve put on some weight in your belly there.”
“I was fixing to say,” chimed in my step-dad, “it looks like he’s about six months pregnant.”
Okay, okay. Enough’s enough. I am now officially on a diet. But I didn’t start until Monday. I managed to eat fairly well over the weekend.
In fact, I got in late Friday night (traveled to Sandersville to watch Appling County in the state football playoffs) and rummaged around in the fridge when I got home.
What I came up with was a half dozen chicken wings and a left-over turkey leg.
Next day, I didn’t know whether to cluck and strut or gobble and show my tail feathers.