We are beside ourselves.

It’s a widespread problem.

We have become a vast waistland.

Being overweight just snacks up on us.

We have ample parking.

Praise the lard. We’ve been supersized.

I read that 60 percent of us are overweight. Of course, those are just round figures.

According to those height and weight charts, we are overweight unless our shoe size is larger than our waist measurement.

We have gone from being 97-pound weaklings to being 297-pound weaklings.

We are big-boned. We miss work by calling in fat. It’s easy for our children to find shade. We’re nutritional overachievers. We are trying to grow into a size that will fit into a Hummer. We can stand on a bathroom scale and never feel like a loser. People have begun to wear safety helmets at buffets. When we have our shoes shined, we have to take the shoeshine guy’s word for it.

When we get in the bath, the water in the toilet rises. We become winded from picking our noses.

Airplanes are being refitted with seats to fit our seats.

The average airliner will soon seat only eight.

No wonder it costs $30,000 a year to send a kid to college. That’s just for pizza and midnight snacks.

Eating is the only exercise we get. That’s why the numbers on our bathroom scale are weigh off. Only one thin line separates FAT from EAT.

Women are better at watching what they eat. Men like to eat. We even like to watch others eat. It was ingrained in us as boys to be members of the clean plate club. We had to eat everything or otherwise the poor, starving children in China would be very disappointed in us.

We became young men capable of eating spaghetti with a shovel and putting a buffet restaurant near economic collapse in just one meal.

Restaurants post tributes to patrons who have eaten the most &8220;killer burgers.&8221; The rest of us mere mortals feel less than worthy when confronted with such gluttony. The epitome of competitive eating would have to be the 131-pound Japanese fellow who ate 50 hot dogs and buns in just 12 minutes. It takes me that long to microwave one hot dog.

Medical experts tell us that we need to lose 10 pounds each by 7 o’clock tomorrow morning or the entire state will be under water.

We are thick and tired of it.

The number one New Year’s Resolution made in this country is to lose weight.

When we weigh more than our refrigerator, we go on a diet. When our belly button produces an echo, we go on a diet.

Dieting has become a weigh of life. Dieting is the punishment we receive for exceeding the feed limit. A diet is our chief means of waist disposal.

We keep gaining on our diets. We can’t lose weight by talking about it. Our teeth need less exercise.

We threaten to go to great lengths to lessen our widths, but we don’t.

We drive around for 30 minutes to find a good parking spot for 15 minutes of shopping.

Hiking trails have escalators.

Why exercise when we have plastic surgeons?

It’d be easier for us to stay on a diet if gaining weight cost us money.

I may have a solution to this big problem. It’s a way that we could lose weight by being good Americans.

Our government is always looking for more money. It needs a lot of money to provide us with all of what we consider entitlements. The government needs to find new things to tax in order to raise the money. It’s not an easy job. Anything that is even remotely taxable is already being taxed.

Maybe the folks from the government who are here to help us should start taxing us by the pound?

I dislike giving the government new ways to take my money, but this might be a way to raise some money and cause us to lose a few excess pounds &045; all for the public good.

Put a tax on each pound.

It’s for our own good.

The more weight we carry, the shorter time we’re likely to carry it.

After all, obesity causes heart attacks and strokes, while high taxes cause heart attacks and strokes.

Never mind. It seemed like a good idea.

I guess if we really want to lose a few pounds, we’ll need to gamble in England.

(Hartland resident Al Batt writes a column for the Tribune each Wednesday and Sunday.)