How to Kill Your Inner Fat Man: A Novel

 

The novel, or I should say novella, is on Amazon Kindle. The cost is a paltry $2.99. 

Here's a description of my book:

There is a Fat Man wreaking havoc inside former bodybuilding and Olympic weightlifting champion Jeff McMahon. The Fat Man delights in the fact that Jeff, a stout 245 pounds, is a domesticated connoisseur of angel hair pasta with pine nut pesto, triple-decker barbecued tri-tip sandwiches larded with smoked gouda and extra spicy horseradish, and strawberry-rhubarb pie drowning in vanilla bean gelato.

In spite of a nagging feeling that he could benefit from losing 40 pounds or so, Jeff’s Inner Fat Man assures the erudite Critical Thinking professor that this bloated middle-aged suburbanite is perfectly healthy, that he carries his extra weight well, and that his girth after all is mostly muscle from his hardcore kettlebell workouts.

But the Fat Man cannot quell an excruciating burning sensation in Jeff’s left foot that feels like a blowtorch. Nor can this Fat Man suppress Jeff’s memory of reading somewhere that such pain in one’s extremities is associated with obesity-related onset diabetes. But no matter. The Inner Fat Man uses his silver-tongued persuasive powers to help Jeff go into denial about his “minor foot irritation” and to impede Jeff from making the connection between his thick waist and his burning foot.

But then one evening at a Christmas party in the Los Angeles suburbs for his seven-year-old twin daughters, Jeff meets the lean, muscular Max Penfold, a former Navy SEAL and current executive chef for Future-Lodge, a tech company that makes solar-powered rocket ships, burglar-chasing drones, and other kinds of “disruptive” innovations. Upon hearing of Jeff’s burning foot, Max persuades Jeff to go on a Paleo diet, to depend on Max as his weight-loss mentor, and to chronicle his melting fat in a journal, which Jeff titles How to Kill Your Inner Fat Man.

Just as Arthur Dent was saved from the destruction of Planet Earth at the last moment in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Jeff McMahon is saved from his own fatness by his guide, Max Penfold. Adhering to the code of the Samurai warrior, Max steers Jeff on an Odyssey to Thinness, helps his friend reclaim his manhood, and helps Jeff conquer his Inner Fat Man, resulting in a loss of 50 pounds, a stunning metamorphosis that not only results in the end of Jeff’s burning foot and all his other diabetic symptoms, but helps Jeff make a radical departure from society’s false promises of unbridled consumer gratification and self-indulgence.

Just as Walter White from Breaking Bad was compelled to become “The Danger” to a world that had dismissed him as an irrelevance and a joke, Jeff McMahon is driven to become The Master of his insidious inner glutton, and he chronicles his triumph in a manifesto that is in turns funny, philosophical, and useful to those languishing under the weight of their own rapacious appetites.  

Comments

[Ed S.]

Congratulations on your book, Jeff! Writing it required as much focus and discipline as your weight loss regime did. It is a wonderful accomplishment. I look forward to reading it.

[Jeffrey McMahon]

Thanks, Ed, for the encouragement. So far 50 copies sold. Not on best-seller list yet.