Archive for March, 2011

Freezing 3-27-11

Being fat and sloppy is often the main topic of conversation with my friends; even when we are at a restaurant.  Listening to my friends talk about diet, one would believe them to be diet and weight loss experts.  No one couldn’t tell by looking at them though.  I eagerly listen to their diet theories with rapt attention, drinking in the wisdom of my buddies. 

Most of the diet talk centers on eliminating carbs and sugars from the diet.  They tell me that magical thinning that happens when we eliminate those items.  These things even I have heard about before.  Last Saturday night, I spent an hour in a car with three slob friends listening to their best current strategies for losing weight. 

Turns out that my friends, while not eating sugary, fried and high calorie foods, are at the cutting edge of the science of calorie loss, and stay up to date on scientific literature about the best weight loss theories.  They inform me that the best diet is cold water.  Not drinking it; but taking long showers in it.  I know real men take cold showers and Navy Seals do too, but I’m not stupid.  They can’t convince me to do that. 

Losing weight can be done in only 10 minutes a day twice a week they insist.  They presented a compelling case that the energy required while shivering in freezing water will cause me to lose weight.  This is what my buddies say and I believe them. 

Since I told them I wouldn’t take cold showers, they recomended I stand in a swimming pool and let the pounds roll off me.  That advice struck me as reasonable.  So, I’ll ask my neighbor if I can stand in his unheated pool for 10 minutes a couple times a week.  

I can picture myself in the pool, shivering and losing weight.  How easy!  I then imagine total strangers coming up to me and ask me how is it that I look so good.  I’ll beam with pride and smile.   I won’t tell them anything, I’ll keep my little secret to myself. 

Before I get started, I have to ask my friends how to get the courage to jump into and sit in someone’s freezing pool for 10 minutes.

Premeals and a Food Baby 3-25-11

I ate two dinners last night. I was with my wife’s family celebrating her cousin’s birthday. She has a great extended family. They are warm, stick together like family should and they like to celebrate at restaurants. 

My gripe is that unless we are at a buffet, (and we do find ourselves at buffets often) it takes an hour for her family to decide what to eat.  It shouldn’t be that complicated; I often wake up having dreamt of what I’m going to eat.  Top that off with their predelection for restaurants that have the slowest order time to table delivery ratio, and it can take two hours to get a piece of food into my craw.

Being fat in general, uncomfortable with being fat at a cramped table, and having limited social skills; sitting at a table without food for a long time doesn’t work for me.  So, I went outside and made some business calls (I should have ordered take out delivery sent to this slow serve restaurant). On my way out, I spoke to the waitress and pre-ordered my meal. I told her to bring my meal at the same time as the other meals.  By the way, I had sworn an oath to eat in moderation just that morning.   

I returned to the table after 20 minutes outside and my dinner was sitting at the table. The problem was that no one else had their meal, they had just finished ordering.   Imagine how rude I must have looked to everyone. I step outside for 20 minutes and my dinner is already there. 

Feeling like her family was looking at me like an anti-social idiot, I immediately told my wife that I would not touch my dinner and was waiting for the others to be served. My commitment to decency lasted no more than a minute. My wife told me it was OK to eat. I started with the broccoli, telling myself “I will only eat the broccoli, but not the other items.”  Then, the ahi tuna steak and mashed potatoes called my name.  Within minutes my plate was cleaned. Feeling shame doesn’t dampen my appetite. I thought it would, but it doesn’t.

Somehow, everyone else’s food was delivered shortly after that.  The site of new food set my appitite blazing again, so I started eyeballing my wife’s dinner.  She ate a few bites and didn’t like it.  She saw me stalking her food and offered it to me.  Great, I’ll eat that.  I called the waitress over and had her spend no less than five minutes frosting my pasta with grated parmesan cheese.  I cleaned my wife’s plate just like I did mine before. 

As we were leaving the party, my wife’s attractive young 30 something cousin leaned into me, looked at my gut, and said that she was planning to throw a shower for my food baby.  Which she said, based on my figure, would arrive any day.

First Ache 3-15-11

I can’t tell you how many times old people ( I don’t consider myself old) have told me about the aches and pains that come with age.  Those complaints and aches were for others, not for me.  In my mind I’m still an athlete and don’t get aches.  So it was a big “what the hell happened here?” moment when my right elbow started giving me big trouble.  I couldn’t tell you any reason why it hurt.  This strange discomfort came from nowhere.   

Granted, my elbow was tender and sore and might have healed if I left it alone, I didn’t leave it alone.  My neighbor, who’s a really nice guy, wanted to play tennis with me.  I shouldn’t have played and I even thought it might not be good for me to play, but I played a vigorous 45 minutes of tennis on a nearby court.  I wasn’t going to let some mystery ache boss me around, so I played like a pro.  I stopped playing at the 43 minute mark as my arm was swollen and my hand wasn’t working properly.  When I came home, my wife congratulated me for exploring the deepest reaches of idiocy.  I still have to work and earn a living for my family and I can’t do it from the hospital.

So with my arm on fire and my hand not responding to simple brain commands, I may have entered a new phase of mid life.  Good for me.

Reinjuring Myself. 3-11-11

I just destroyed my elbow trying to break open a large twist lollipop; the kind you get at Disneyland.  This delicious grape lollipop is too hard to risk breaking my teeth on, so I crack it apart with my hands before throwing  it in my mouth.  I’ve broken down plenty of these in the last few weeks and I’m good at it.

Problem is, I just destroyed my elbow while trying to save my teeth.  The elbow has been bothering me for a week now and was starting to get better until I just fought with, and lost my battle with the lollipop.   On the scales of epicurean pleasure, the throbbing pain in my elbow and my rapidly swelling arm isn’t worth the candy I just shoved in my mouth.  I now own this bit of wisdom.

I stopped working out after I wrote on how great I was beginning to feel a few weeks back, so the elbow injury wasn’t from working out.   If my wife knew that I injured my elbow by breaking candy into small easily scarfable pieces, she would break my other elbow.

It is funny how much candy eating goes on without her knowing about it.  None the less, the wife would still break me like a lollipop if she knew how much candy I was eating.

A Joy 3-10-11

I consider myself a world class candy connoisseur.  As such and as a member of the Fat and Sloppy Nation I’m duty bound to sample the new candies that come on the market.  This is something I do for humanity – I like to think.  Happy times come when I wander around and find a new type of candy.  It makes me feel like Columbus discovering America.

I have two type of candy favorites.  They are the colorful and jelly type.  A week back, while at a convention in Las Vegas, I found a new candy and have fallen in love with it in my mouth.  It is called Joys.  Joys is a candy bar with a red semi-solid jello filling covered with a thin layer of dark chocolate. The center has a fruity sort of raspberry taste and a perfect not too hard, not too soft consistency; its just right.  It comes dressed in a yellow wrapper.

I find true happiness when I eat them. For a brief few seconds, when its me and this raspberry covered chocolate bar, all my other senses step aside in honor of my mouth. Only the mouth exists. Worries disappear, time stops, the eighty-five bucks I just spent on nearly 100 candy bars doesn’t matter; I am transported to taste bud paradise.

I felt greedy, but I bought every Joy the store put out for public purchase.  I had to hide my stash from my family.  They don’t want me eating so much candy (what do they know?) and want to prevent me from enjoying my Joys.  I have been eating five of these candy bars a day.  I could eat more, but I don’t.  I like to consider myself a person with good self control.

On a side note, but possibly related to the Joy story, I almost fell off my chair onto the floor yesterday while I was tieing my shoe at work.  I couldn’t reach over my stomach and I lost my balance trying to reach for my shoe.