Stuff Fat Guys Can't Do #3 - Breathe

Inhale.  Exhale.  Repeat.  Most people rightfully take this for granted.  Not fat guys.  The heavier I am, the more conscious I am of my breathing.  I first noticed it... err... was first made aware of it by a young woman who lived on the same floor as me at my first college dorm.  A handful of newly-acquainted residents and I were somewhere crowded (party? small concert?  I dunno...) when Milena turned to me and requested that I stop breathing on her neck.  I was just standing there, the same as everyone else.  I didn't think I was breathing heavy - truthfully, I'm still not sure that I was - but I must have been releasing a jet stream of warm carbon dioxide directly onto her hairy neck.  I became very self-conscious and the harder I attempted to breathe more softly, the harder I started to breathe.  It's ingrained in my brain forever.  In any close quarters - elevators, concerts, the stretching room in The Haunted Mansion - I hold my breath as long as possible. If I need to exhale, I deflect it into my hand like I've just finished off a bag of Funyuns before a date.

Heavy breathing is fine when you're doing something where exertion is to be expected.  Run any distance and huffing-and-puffing is ok.  Picking up the keys you dropped, not so much.  Not-so-fat people just breathe.  Their heart rate doesn't skyrocket just by carrying in the mail.  But the tubbier among us know that doing anything can make you breathe heavier, and people are listening.  They can hear you breathe, and if you stand too close, they can feel it too.

If breathing when awake weren't tough enough, consider what happens when the porkers among us breathe at night - or rather don't breathe.  Sleep apnea.  It started with my wife complaining nightly that I snored.  I blamed it on my seasonal allergies.  That wasn't just an excuse at first.  I legitimately get really congested from April-June and again for a shorter time in the fall.  But my snoring was continuing past the allergy season.  I was snoring every night.

My own snoring would start to wake me because my snoring wasn't really snoring at all; it was apnea.  I'd wake up gasping for air.  I'd lie awake scared absolutely shitless that I was about to die.  I'd worry myself to the point of insomnia.  So I'd head downstairs and eat my worries away.  Nothing like a full belly with lots of milk and carbs to lull me back into a quasi-coma.

Once I fell back asleep it would happen again - only this time my mouth would be filled with vomit because all the food I ate sat in my belly, churned in my stomach acid and stressed open my esophageal sphincter.  The apnea would cause my insides to convulse and I'd be greeted with a cottage cheese-laden mouthful of vomit.  Ain't nothin' pleasant about choking and then not being able to breathe until you can bolt to the toilet to spew out your shame.

I think I'm out of the woods now with any serious sleep apnea, but if you see me tight-lipped and turning red in close quarters, encourage me to exhale.  I promise I wasn't eating Funyuns.