Feeling fat: can you eat four In-N-Out double hamburgers?

I am 16 years old, 5’5”, and on the lower end of 110 pounds, give or take a couple of quarter-pounders. I have an exceptionally weak stomach, and I used to vomit prolifically at the slightest provocation. 

Yet, in spite of all this, in my freshman year I daringly decided to eat four In-N-Out double hamburgers for a journalism assignment (I was supposed to “check it out”), and I will never do it again.

In preparation for my journey through eight crisped buns made from slow-rising dough, raw, spicy onions, a forest of lettuce, a lake of In-N-Out secret sauce and a mountain of eight never-frozen beef patties, I ate a scanty breakfast and thus failed my Spanish quiz.

For lunch, I had asparagus, which, in all practicality, does not count as food. Fast-forward four hungry hours of low blood sugar, and the In-N-Out cashier takes my order.

“I’d like a double hamburger, onions and no tomatoes, no fries,” I said.

“OK, is that all?” the cashier asked.

“Yeah. I’d like four of those.”

The cashier did a double-take: Was this 10-year-old really ordering food twice the weight of his head and thrice the capacity of his stomach? Then, it seemed, he remembered his manners and suppressed his apparent amusement, assuming that the feast was for more people.

The first burger was easy, and delicious to the infinite degree. In-N-Out, needless to say, is amazing; the mere scent of the store is intoxicating. Number two was equally delicious, but not eaten with the same fervor. As the burger got smaller, I started feeling comfortably full. This is where I usually stop, belch, and start on my animal fries.

Instead, I burped satisfyingly but apprehensively, worried that I would fail my challenge and thus disgrace myself. I took a deep breath, drank some root beer (Jimmy Chestnut, San Jose’s world champion eater, recommends dousing food with liquid to make it go down easier) and bravely chomped on burger number three, hoping that my bravado would lead to an increased appetite.

It didn’t, and enemy number three took me a whopping 32 minutes to finish. Though I did not feel nauseous yet (that would come later), I was very full, and my expanding stomach exploded my belt. I felt fat, and I reveled in the novelty of my obesity.

Every bite of the final burger was a battle. I felt defeated, so halfway through, I took a bathroom break. It turns out this was what my thieving sister was waiting for. Without my imposing presence, she stealthy stole my half-burger and ate it, enraging me but also saving me from my impending failure.

In the end, I lost about two pounds from the experience, because I skipped dinner and my metabolism kicked into hyperdrive. This proves testament to my unusual weight situation: Eat all the junk food in the world and still never gain weight.

In fact, most champion eaters are skinny. Joey Chestnut, widely regarded as the greatest eater in the world, is six feet tall and 218 pounds. You can watch him chug a gallon of milk in 41 seconds on YouTube.

"When you're eating 20, 30, 40 hot dogs in very little time, it's hard to breathe,” Chestnut explained to Weird News. “That's one reason big guys sometimes have trouble at competitive eating.”

However, contrary to what I said earlier, eating four double hamburgers has actually incited more addiction for In-N-Out.

Writing this story was painful. Salivating over pictures of the burgers has been traumatizing.

So I guess I’ll have to do it again. You know, for closure.