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ten ways to tell if you’re obese (11th way: you can’t read this title because each of your eyelids weighs 25 pounds)

This has nothing to do with anything – unlike most entries on this blog, which contribute with laser precision and stunning insight to a greater understanding of the human condition – but I was reading recently that some scientists are now choosing to capitalize the word Obesity.

They’re doing so in an effort to emphasize that Obesity represents a grave danger to humankind, just like Hepatitis or Cher. Also, the capital O kinda looks like an aerial view of Kirstie Alley.

(Meanwhile, other scientists have bigger problems: for instance, the scientists at Segway are still struggling to solve two chronic problems reported by owners of the high-tech scooters – the pointing and the laughing.)

Part of the challenge of reducing obesity was highlighted by a study that found that while a vast majority of Americans believe that most people in the United States are fat, only 40 per cent think that they themselves are overweight. So how do you encourage weight loss and a healthier lifestyle among those who either fail to accept or are too covered in fudge to accurately gauge their immensity?

It has often been said by researchers and doctors and anyone who sees me in my Klingon uniform that recognizing you have a problem is the first step toward solving it. It is in that spirit – the spirit of making me feel better about myself by selflessly helping others recognize their chronic failings – that this blog presents a helpful checklist of ten foolproof ways to tell for absolute certain that you are Obese:

1. Your knees keep crying.

2. When you return to the beach after a refreshing swim, concerned citizens push you back out toward open water.

3. People from the TV news keep filming you from the neck down.

4. You look at your driver’s license and the name says John Goodman.

5. An analysis of your DNA reveals that you share 96% of your genetic makeup with an Oreo.

6. When you go to the park, frisbees and baseballs keep getting caught in your gravitational field.

7. You make that snowsuit sound when you walk – only you’re not wearing a snowsuit… or any other clothes.

8. A team of courageous sherpas is in the third day of a death-defying ascent of your torso.

9. When you sit around the house, you really… make the house start slowly sinking into the earth.

10. Young children keep mistaking you for Santa Claus or Greenland.