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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 other times I’ve started losing weight, this time is different. Motivated by the intermittent episodes of feeling unwell that I experienced, predominantly at the beginning, my determination is still strong. Almost two months later and 12 kg down, nothing seems to have changed. Normally, on previous attempts, I would have lost momentum after 2–3 weeks and 5 to 7 kg lost.

This morning, I’m faced with another problem: I’m losing weight far too quickly. The healthy rate of 2–4 kg per month has been considerably exceeded. Apparently, this isn’t particularly healthy for the body. For a long time, I only thought about the belly flaps that can appear after losing weight too quickly. I tried to figure out how practical it would be to increase my muscle mass, but it’s a pointless exercise. First of all, the largest muscle groups are in the legs and upper torso, while I, shaped like an upside-down hourglass, have a floating ring around my belly. I can’t replace the fat there with muscle, not even if I buy it at the supermarket. So belly flaps are almost inevitable. Wouldn’t it be something if my skin hung off me so much that I could use those flaps to fly like a bird? That would be an extraordinary transformation: from an underwater whale into a flying bird.

So the rate at which I’m losing weight is critical if I want to remain a ground-based service or being. On top of that, apparently, many other changes take place at the microscopic cellular level when you lose weight too quickly. Although I’m a doctor, most of them were unknown to me because I had never been particularly interested. After all, who cares what happens in the liver if you lose weight too quickly? First of all, the phenomenon of losing weight too quickly is almost nonexistent. It’s like a one-way elevator: we all gain weight quickly, but we don’t lose it just as quickly, and if we do, it’s most often because of a malignant disease, so it’s the least of our worries.

Another problem with belly flaps is that when you lose weight too quickly, large amounts of fat are consumed from adipocytes as a source of energy. The free fatty acids released from adipocytes are transported to the liver, where they are subsequently metabolized. Large quantities of fatty acids can overwhelm the liver’s systems for breaking them down and lead to their accumulation in the liver. This can result in hepatic steatosis, or fatty liver, or an already existing condition may worsen. The entire process can potentially lead to liver damage, the formation of gallstones that may eventually require surgery, or liver fibrosis.

Although the liver’s systems have considerable redundancy and are rarely overwhelmed, there is clearly an advantage to losing weight slowly. Especially since we’re talking about physiology, both in vitro and in vivo. It’s one thing to talk about these chemical changes in the liver and quite another to be able to calculate and measure them precisely. Since we don’t know exactly where our bodies stand in this process, it’s preferable to give them the time they need.

For this reason, I’m trying to find the optimal balance between eating and losing weight. First of all, the physical activity and exercise I’m currently doing will remain unchanged: 30 minutes after every meal I have. If I want to skip a round of exercise, then I have to skip the meal. The only solution is to increase the amount of food I eat. But that’s going to be difficult.

Some time ago, I wouldn’t have had any problem with that. I would have volunteered to eat more. I would even have volunteered to eat for other people. Today, I can’t anymore! I’ve broken the machine! Last night I made hamburgers because I felt the need to eat more. I struggled to finish half of one. Half? Floppy Floppipson is going to be written all over me if I don’t manage to do something about this. Over the course of an hour, I struggled and managed to eat two hamburgers. I felt like a winner. Two! Without French fries, because I didn’t have any room left for those.

Throughout the entire meal, my body was fighting me. “Come on, one more bite! We don’t have enough calories!” I kept trying to reassure it… “Fuck off! I don’t want to!” Maybe this is my karma… first having to fight to eat everything, including the leg of the table, and then not being able to eat anything anymore. There must be something pathological about the sensation of hunger in us fatties. How else can you explain this sudden aversion to food when you’re full??? My brother was like that when he was little. I remember how, at the age of seven, once he was full at the table, he wouldn’t eat anything else. My parents had to be careful not to fill him up with soup, otherwise he wouldn’t eat the roast. For me, two years older than him, it was an incomprehensible spectacle… how could anyone refuse cake or chocolate just because they were full? Being full was never a good enough reason to refuse dessert. Back then, he was very skinny. In the meantime, I managed to explain to him what he was doing wrong, so he turned into a little whale too.

I know it probably sounds like constant grumbling, but it seems that fat people always have to suffer. I’ll leave you now… I need to concentrate on calculating my caloric requirements. Let’s see if I can manage to land at a rate of 2–4 kg per month. Floppy Floppinson sends his regards.