Thursday, March 20, 2014

I dream of a burger. Notice I didn’t say “burgers,” because the plural isn’t applicable here. There is one burger I have in mind: blue cheese, standard fixin’s, prime beef cooked medium, and crisp bacon. The bread would be just right, too. No weaksauce bun strained to the limits by condiments, sesame seeds barely clinging aboveboard. I’m thinking something with heft and texture, like a Telera roll or a pretzel bun, lightly grilled. And the fries! You’ve got to have ’em–steak-cut, obviously, dusted with Parmesan and accompanied by a small metal thing of ketchup.

It’s dishes like these, though, along with a cavalcade of cheesesteaks, nachos, and burritos, that have landed me in my current predicament. With seven pounds in the bag, I’m roughly at the halfway mark, and it’s a slog. Same trajectory, every day. Elliptical in the morning, eggs and a banana for breakfast, Chipotle bowl for lunch, soup for dinner, and always, always a gnawing hunger. What made today different was a stark acknowledgement of the choice: fat and happy, or svelte and miserable.

Certainly there are gradations, and I suppose the trick is to find the sweet spot, but at the moment, I kinda just want to rub Taco Bell all over my face, you know? Willfully going hungry in a land of plenty is a decidedly first-world problem, and as such, I’ve marshaled another first-world malady–the existence of too much television content–to deal with it. Suits, Walking Dead, Justified, House of Cards, Game of Thrones, Mad Men, 30 Rock, and who knows what else all demand attention, and I gladly trade one brand of gluttony for another.