How eating pizza, wearing sweatpants, and looking like hell can be liberating.

-By Pete Wells
-Photograph by Lisa Kereszi

What is so wrong with getting soft and sloppy? Whether your New Year's resolution was more time on the treadmill or more Twinkies, you can share your take in the comment section.

Photograph by Lisa Kereszi

The first time I got fat, I was 26. As often happens, it started with a girl, or, to be more accurate, it started with a girl who went away. I stopped sleeping. When I paid attention to people other than myself, which was almost never, I noticed that my friends were finding me hard to take. Only one thing in the world could temporarily drain the swamp of my self-pity: Cinnabon rolls. A franchise had opened near my office, and each morning I swung by for my fix of Indonesian cinnamon, margarine, sweet dough, and cream-cheese frosting. All my life I'd been able to eat whatever I wanted without showing it, but under a relentless assault of 730 calories and 24 grams of fat each day before I'd even had lunch, my metabolism buckled. Soon I was fastening my belt in a new hole. And then my trousers wouldn't button. None of these flashing lights penetrated the thick fog of my misery until the day I looked into a full-length mirror and saw John Goodman's ass.