A few days ago, I was trying to put on a T-shirt and couldn't manage it. Two years ago, Laura had tested her little sharp teeth on one of my T-shirts. After losing that battle, the T-shirt was left with four tiny holes, like a punched tram ticket. That morning, I was trying to figure out whether this was the perforated T-shirt or not. Due to my lack of imagination, I prefer buying the same T-shirt, in the same size, several times. Somehow, choosing what to wear that day becom

Over the past few days, I've spent some time on Threads. And by that, I mean I installed the app and ignored it. If I don't look at it, surely some social media elf will magically appear and create the connections I'm looking for. Right now, I'm completely dissatisfied with social media. There's nothing social about the media we consume. Everyone just posts bullshit, and everyone keeps bombarding you with useless crap that you don't even know how to avoid getting into your he

The direction is still right. The speed at which I’m getting there, however, is far too high. After years, decades, and centuries of being obese, I feel like I no longer have the patience to finally get rid of all these kilos. I was 20 the last time I was truly fit. After spending half your life as a whale, it’s hard to imagine a life outside the water. And now that I can see the ocean around me evaporating, I don’t know how to get rid of my whale fins. Compared to all the ot

I woke up this morning with just one thought. I want to keep writing. I don't know why. I'm not a writer. By every possible standard, there are many others who can be considered writers, but not me. I could say that I'm a storyteller. Writing has never been one of my strengths, but telling stories has. When I write to you, my readers, about my experiences, it somehow fills me with happiness. In order to describe and recreate in detail the feelings and emotions I experienced a

Another afternoon is passing by. In Colmar, the sun is still shining. I think this is the last day of summer. Laura has just come back from kindergarten, and Luca has just woken up. It is the perfect time for a picnic. And not just any picnic, but one under our tree. In case you are wondering how on earth we came to own a tree, I can explain it very simply. If you look on Google Maps at the courtyard in front of Colmar’s central library, the tree closest to the library is our

This morning, I woke up tired. I woke up tired and tried to gather my thoughts before taking Laura to kindergarten. Just before leaving the house, we had a little tantrum, as she was deeply unhappy about the fact that, although her mother had borrowed one hundred euros from her to pay for her dance classes at short notice, the one hundred and fifty euros she returned today were apparently not quite as good. We clearly need to work a little more on this whole businesswoman con

It feels like a lot and a little at the same time. Still, I am 11 kg lighter than when I started this race against the clock. Less, yes, but still enough to sink the Titanic. It probably would have been an even bigger disaster if there had been a few fat guys like me on board. Can you imagine how much space we would have taken up in the lifeboats? Would we have been discriminated against and traded? Five normal-weight people for two fat guys? Who would you save in that situat

In my latest posts, I have repeatedly talked about the healthcare system and the politics driving it. Today, I want to continue this discussion about our declining health with one simple question: why do we end up in this situation? Quite a few years ago, when I was still working as an anesthesiologist, I noticed that most of the cases we operated on at the hospital were cancers. Visceral surgery, thoracic surgery, oral and maxillofacial surgery, and gynecology were probably

This morning, I was reflecting on the role of healthcare systems around the world and, inevitably, on the fact that healthcare costs in general are rising. If we look at a semi-private healthcare system like Germany’s, we realize that these health insurance funds automatically need to make a profit, just like in America. And that makes me wonder why a constitutional right — the right to health, the right to healthcare — has to be mixed, if you will, with the need to make mone

177 kilograms. The days go by, life moves on, and fortunately my weight is starting to go down. Today was another full day. I can’t say that I did anything particularly important, but from the moment I woke up this morning until now, late in the evening, I haven’t stopped at all. One thing I notice happening more and more often is that I exercise more and more. Today I managed to walk for a total of 1.5 hours without feeling the exhaustion I used to feel. To be fair, I also s

I remember that when I was younger, everything — life itself — seemed much less complicated. It felt as though everything moved more slowly, and everyday worries simply didn’t exist. And I’m not talking about the time when I was a baby or when I was still in primary school. I’m talking about much more recent times, around 2009–2010, when I was in my early twenties. It seemed to me that political news, everything happening around me, was far less serious than it is now. In rec

It is Sunday evening, 6:42 p.m. Outside, it is slightly cloudy and relatively cold. I don’t think it is more than 17 degrees. I am sharing the couch with Luca, who is making faces and whining because he has a bit of a cold and is very tired. He hasn’t slept for a few hours now, and at this point he is behaving like a little brontosaurus. The fact that I suctioned the snot out of his nose did not exactly help with his peace and harmony. And now I can hear him and his mother tr

POULET BASQUAISE - French Basque Country - Slow-cooked chicken with tomatoes, peppers, onions and piment d'Espelette, served with crispy rosemary potatoes.

In my ongoing quest for better health lately, I have come to the conclusion that food has an important place. Or rather, that food plays a much bigger role than I wanted to accept. First of all, it feels like a stupid statement coming from a doctor, because it is something so obvious that any ten-year-old should know it, and yet we adults choose to ignore these simple lessons until we are forced to learn them all over again. For the last two weeks, I haven't been to Penny, Li

How many of you have seen The Hunger Games? How many of you have ever wondered what it would feel like to experience a hunger that never ends? Over the past week, I have gone through quite a few metabolic changes, mainly as a result of the physical activity I have been doing. Regular exercise seems to have an incredible ability to correct some of the bad habits our bodies have developed — even when that body happens to belong to a whale. One of the biggest changes I have noti

How is it we all know better what health means or what taking care of ourselves means, but in reality we fail? Do you remember a few weeks ago when I started moving and exercising? Somehow under the strain of the physical effort combined with the calorie deficit, I almost ended up in the hospital. My blood sugar played a trick on me and reminded me why you have to take care of yourself. As it seems, there is nothing serious, nothing that cannot be fixed, but the idea of “I’m

At the beginning of 2019, I started becoming interested in macroeconomics and business. I liked the thought of starting my own business, so I began looking for sources of information. Where do all of us look for information most easily? Exactly—YouTube. Today, it is the most accessible source we have. Somehow, that is where I came across a few entrepreneurs—or at least self-proclaimed entrepreneurs—who explained that you cannot build a business because you do not have all the

We all know the theory behind saving money, but most of us simply fail to do it. Some people are unable to save because they are just broke — the money simply isn't enough to get them from one month to the next. Others, however, earn enough that they could actually save something. And when I say "save something," I don't necessarily mean saving thousands of euros every month. In my mind, even managing to put one euro aside counts as saving. It may not seem like much, but the

One of the biggest realisations I have had in recent years is that financial education begins at home, not at school. You would be surprised by how many people earn enormous amounts of money and still end up broke because they never developed a vision for their future—or simply never learned how to manage their money. Why does society have such a complicated relationship with wealthy people? I am not talking about doctors, who may earn more than the average person but have no

Today I woke up and took two showers. I tried to wash the fat off, but it didn’t work. After that, I went for a run. Okay… I went for a walk. Okay! I went for a crawl. Considering that the streets of Salou, Spain, are on an incline, it probably would have been more efficient just to roll downhill. After fifteen minutes, I asked AI how many calories I had burned. It responded with approximately 80 calories, about 30 of which I would have burned anyway just by continuing to bre