My metabolism is very slow, but I didn't realize this till I was in my 20s and read up about it. As a kid I didn't eat much and was often told off for playing with my food. My brother, a year older, could eat four times as much as me and always remained skinny. When we were 10 Mum bought us two pairs of jeans and two pairs of shorts. He didn't like the jeans, and I hated the shorts, so we did a swap. I loved the jeans and wore them to school every day and, as I was a very active child. climbing trees. roughing and tumbling, crashing my bike at high speeds, they soon needed stitching and patching in places. By my 11th birthday my weight had climbed to 12 stones or about 170 pounds, and the jeans were very becoming tight. From about three weeks before school broke up for the summer I wore them in bed as it was too much trouble to pull them off and squeeze back into them next morning. I'm not sure if Mum realized this, as she never said, but she probably did, as I was the youngest of 6 boys and very little I ever did escaped her attention. On the day school broke up she pulled me to one side and told me I had to lose at least a couple of stones or about 30 pounds before going back to school in September. How I did it was up to me, but in order to encourage me she said that if I burst the jeans I was wearing she would not buy me a bigger pair. Uh-oh! I studied my reflection in the full-length mirror on the door of my wardrobe and pondered the problem. It was probably a touch of narcissism, but I thought I looked really cute! I loved the way my white T-shirt strained at every seam with my swollen nipples standing out. My fat was distributed evenly all over my body, so I didn't have a huge belly hanging over the waistband of my wash-faded light blue jeans. They were okay in the waist, but they were rock-hard tight everywhere else, and I loved the way my thighs bulged towards each other, pushing my knees further apart as they grew bigger. Mum often said that a problem was not a problem by definition unless it had a solution. If you find the solution the problem ceases to be a problem. At least, I think that was how she put it! But first, you had to define the actual problem. As I saw it, my problem was not that I needed to slim or lose weight. I loved being big and strong, and no one ever teased me about being fat. Instead, my problem was that I had to, somehow, prevent my jeans from bursting. The answer came to me in a flash of inspiration. One pair of jeans on its own burst too easily. Two pairs the same make and size worn together would be twice as strong. Three or four pairs worn together would be so strong they'd be impossible to burst! I still had the other three pairs in the bottom of my wardrobe . . . I stripped off the good pair I was wearing and set about squeezing myself into the other three pairs. I wrapped the bottoms of the first pair tightly round my ankles and pulled a pair of socks up over them, which prevented them riding up when I pulled on the next pair of jeans. When I put the good pair back on I pulled a pair of thick, white, woolen stockings over them. They were very tight, but I managed to stretch them up to my knees without any wrinkles. Over them I pulled on a polythene bag, securing them tightly with insulating tape. I squirted bath foam all over the insides of my rubber boots and put them on. They were extremely tight, but the foam bath stuff helped and I managed to push them up as high as they would go. while still sitting on the side of my bed, I folded the white stocking down to form a neat, white band just above the tops of the rubber boots, which made them look like motorcycle boots, or the boots pilots wore in WW2. They looked awesome and felt it, too. The sweat coming out of my legs and feet would be absorbed by the woolen stockings and it would evaporate out through the tops of my boots, and thus my legs and feet remained dry. At least, that was my theory, and it worked!
So far, I hadn't done up any of the zips or waistbands. I stood up, rolled the outer jeans down over my knees, followed by the third and second. I pulled the inner jeans up as high as they would go and secured the zip and waist button. Then I pulled up the others one by one, doing up the zips and waist buttons and the outer jeans, the good ones, were tighter than ever, but they felt awesome! I put on a few more T-shirts, some sweatshirts, and a sweater before squeezing myself into my black leather zip-front bomber jacket. Standing in front of the full-length mirror I studied my reflection again and felt a thrill of excitement course through my entire body. I didn't know then I was having an orgasm, but it felt wonderful. Mum was in the kitchen and when I told her I was going to the park, she looked me up and down and told me I looked really smart, but why on Earth was I wearing my rubber boots and leather jacket on such a warm day? I told her I thought that, maybe, I might lose a few pounds by wearing extra clothes. At that moment I didn't know the truth of my 11 year-old wisdom, but after a few days my jeans were feeling quite loose. I preferred them when they were really tight, so I stripped off, put on another few pairs of jeans and pants and squeezed into the four tight pairs again. Gradually, over a period of a few weeks, I added more layers till I was wearing a total of 15. I lost over 4 stones or 64 pounds within two months. When I went back to school in September my skinny brother and I looked like identical twins. My weight began to climb again and I pleaded with my parents to let me put all the weight back on so that I could enjoy losing it again next summer. They reluctantly agreed and by my 12th birthday I weighed over 16 stones or 225 pounds. I sweated off over 100 of that within two months and enjoyed every second of it. Since then, every time my weight climbed a stone or two I sweated it off again right away. When I got to know about metabolism I was able to control my weight by dieting. Nevertheless, I sometimes let my weight climb a few stones in order to enjoy sweating it off again. At one stage I deliberately put on a lot of weight by drinking gainer shake and eating massive meals, and I went up to just under 24 stones. I had been heading for a round 25, but when I noticed my heart beating faster than usual I knew I had to slim down right away. I stopped gaining immediately and went for long walks wearing four tracksuits which didn't overwork my heart. I gradually built the layers up to 15 and sweated off 8 stones or 110 pounds within a few months. Well, that's how I gained a lot and lost a lot in short amounts of time, and loved every second of it. Keep smiling!
