Never have I loved so deeply something that hated me so emphatically: food. Mercifully, thankfully, I need it every day to survive, but this becomes more mockery than blessing whenever anything tastes good. You see, food that tastes good wants nothing more than to destroy me. Far be it from me to make sweeping blanket statements that wrongly criticize foods like the apple, the banana, the grape, foods that miraculously taste good and are good for you (A.KA. fruits) but you and I both know when given the choice between another piece of chocolate cake and an orange, the orange will rot before anyone gives it a second glance.
Foods that are just good for you are like the last kid picked for teams on the play ground; you know you can't play without the last man, but there is no way he'll be much more than the water boy. These kind of foods are almost better served if they were treated like medicine. We take medicine not because we enjoy the experience, but because we might die if we don't. Seriously, make the consumption of raw celery a doctor prescribed necessity. We could save thousands of dollars by NOT buying celery we're NOT going to eat.
Every once in a while though, foods that are good for you fight their way to center stage, almost exclusively when walking, breathing, and seeing your own feet become an issue. I have made valiant efforts in that direction many times, often as long as one week. The mocking is worst at these times; butter drenched, chocolate covered foods just laugh at me, and so I eat them to shut them up. Its a vicious cycle. Once the cycle is broken, it takes at least another two weeks to two years to be motivated enough for another healthy week of torture.
Case in point: for the last week and a half (new record), I have tried to lose weight with my wife so we don't cry out in anguish over what we see in the mirror anymore. After a giant day of eatery on Sunday, a pizza for dinner yesterday, and gorging ourselves at Winger's today, we're pretty much shot. When I say gorge ourselves, I mean gorge ourselves. The friends we went with today bought entree's bigger than my head, and I got endless fries and wings with an endless strawberry lemonade. None of us could stand up straight when we limped out of there.
Why do we do this? I've never learned that I should try staying within the threshold of pain when I eat. I asked this at the table today at lunch after we cleared out another bowl of popcorn in less than a minute.
The other side of the table came up with, "Well, there is thanksgiving..."
My response: "The way we eat, we have thanksgiving three times a week!"
Long story short, I know I'm not a bad guy, but I'm having the hardest time convincing food that I'm not. I don't see an end to this love hate relationship, either. Pray for me.
No comments:
Post a Comment