Losing Southern Weight

Losing weight is hard. Losing Southern Weight? That's a totally different challenge.

What exactly is Southern Weight, you may ask? Southern pounds are different from your typical pounds, and harder to part with, because every inch, every pound, every ounce of fat has a story and a fine memory associated with it.

See this pound over here, right on my buttocks? That's Momma's jelly-layered pound cake that she loves to make every Sunday. She makes it with homemade jelly from grapes grown right on the farm on that hundred-year-old grape arbor, you know.

Don’t tell anyone I showed you this, and I promise I’m not a weirdo or some kind of pervert, but see this pound here, right over my pubic region? (I believe the ladies call it a “fupa.”) Well, it exists because there was something called a “gravy boat” on the table for every holiday and many Sunday dinners when I was coming up. Sometimes when Momma and Granny weren’t looking, I would drink out of the gravy boat. I know now that it was bad manners, disgusting and unhealthy, but I’m not sorry.

See these pounds over here, that lap just enough over my belt that you can grab them with both hands? That's Granny, cooking everything from scratch and fried in lard and telling you to clean your plate, don’t let that food go to waste because there are starving people out there in this world, or you can't have any banana pudding for dessert.

See this double chin? In the South we take fresh, healthy vegetables, full of vitamins and antioxidants, dip them in corn meal and deep fry them to a golden brown. My Granny fried everything from squash and green tomatoes to green pumpkins and eggplant. On special occasions, she even fried the flower blossoms of the pumpkin plant and covered them with powdered sugar for dessert.

Granny would dig her red potatoes from the garden and make homemade French fries, serving them with hamburgers from our own farm-raised cows, topped with homemade dill pickles between slices of homemade bread. The only “store bought” item on the table was the bottle of ketchup.

The same woman taught us not to throw the little fish back into the swamp, because if you fried them little suckers crispy enough, you could eat the whole thing, bones and tail and all.

Granddaddy and Dad once picked a hatful of blackberries from the ditches on the way back from such a fishing trip, and Granny had a blackberry cake and a berry cobbler out the oven before they had the fish scaled and cleaned.

(Didn't I mention that every Southern pound had a story? You didn't believe me, did you?)

See these wide hips? That’s something called “hog head hash.” That's generation after generation of Southern men and women who knew how to live off the land, who butchered their own livestock and gathered together to fellowship and feast on the rich, fatty traditions like country-style sausage and homemade country hog pudding, made with rice and liver, the way our people have for more than a century.

See these man-boobs up here? That’s pork fat cooked down and fried to make something called “cracklings,” which are better than premarital sex and more sinful.

 From the moment I was born to a farming family in the South Carolina Lowcountry, my body and my cholesterol count never stood a chance.

Last I checked, I was over 50 years old and weighed 252 pounds, if you believe that lying, slanderous bathroom scale and its co-conspirator scale at the doctor’s office, and each of those pounds has a story, a memory, a reason for existing.

It's going to be hard to say goodbye, but the doctor and the wife say I must try.

More Southern challenges

An outside observer would think that rural, Southern people like I would find it quite easy to lose weight and live a healthy lifestyle, what with all the fresh air and countryside we have to roam around and exercise in. That outsider would be mistaken.

Oh, I have thought about taking up hiking or jogging. But where I come from, out in the rural countryside, it's not as easy as it sounds. I tried jogging down the paved road in front of my home, but it proved to be too much hassle.

"What in the heck are you doing?" my nosy, overalls-wearing neighbor (and father) asked. "Is something chasing you? If you got enough energy to go running down the road, then you've got enough energy to help me dig these postholes and mend the fences and cut some firewood and feed the chickens and..."

I tried jogging down the “Back 40,” through the cow pastures. But I kept stepping in “stuff” with my new running sneakers. And that one mean bull with the bad attitude kept chasing me, which is great for burning extra calories but very detrimental for my overall physical safety. And the female cows kept making snide comments the whole time: "Yeah, look at the fat dude run. He's out here exercising, but if he hadn't turned my sister, Bertha, into meatloaf last spring he wouldn't need to lose all that weight!”

Heifers! What do they know?

But every time I look in my wife's eyes, or hold my children close, I am reminded that now is the time to start making better decisions, cut back on the whiskey and the beer, eat better, be more active, and lead a healthier lifestyle. Yes, I am officially going on a diet and taking up exercise. Pray for me, dear reader.

Goodbye Southern Weight. Farewell, Southern Pounds. It's been nice knowing you, and I'm going to miss you.

But I’ll still have all your wonderful stories. I'll still have the memories.