Day -1 (The Rules)

Those who have known me for a while will know that I am prone to odd dieting flights of fancy. For example, there was the time in college when a vegetarian friend suggested I wouldn’t last a week without meat. I am strangely competitive, in my fashion, and as such I took the challenge and bet that I could go six months as a vegetarian. Now, I didn’t want to lose my ability to eat meat, so I built in a caveat, that I would be allowed to eat meat once a month, which we called “Meat Day.” Oh, Meat Day was a marvelous time at Marlboro College, where I spent my time as an undergrad, and many others took to celebrating the occasion. Meat Day could take place on any day during the month – the only requirement being that it happen no less than thirty days from the proceeding Meat Day – however it always fell on Sunday, for the simple reason that Sunday is the day that colleges across this great nation see fit to place overflowing vats of bacon on buffet lines for all to enjoy, and I have never been one to balk at tradition.

            A typical Meat Day would consist of my waking, generally with a horrible hangover – and perhaps an equally awful coed – and after the fog of the night before cleared, and the realization that the day was to be filled with all kinds of dead animal products, I would trudge triumphantly towards, what could only be described as, my destiny. Others might already be there, waiting for me to encourage them to participate in this celebration of all that makes this magnificent country home to ever expanding waistlines, stomach cancers, bloat, farts with power that can only be measured by the megaton, and, of course, the fundamental belief that America is the greatest of all possible dreams. Anyone who cares to dispute such an assertion need only look at what the Canadians call bacon!

            This brunch would set the tone for the entire day, which would include the aforementioned bacon, but also piles of sausages, hamburgers, meat lover’s pizzas, and the obligatory steak to cap off the day.

            The other 29 days in a row of vegetarianism weren’t hard though. There are all kinds of things I love to eat that don’t include meat. I love potato chips, for example.

            I made a great point of telling vegetarians that, while I generally looked down upon their lifestyle choice, and considered them to be lesser people for it, it was ultimately easy. Which is when a vegan friend decided to up the ante on my antics.

            “You wouldn’t make it a week as Vegan though…”

            Challenge accepted. Same terms as before, with the once every thirty days caveat, and you know what? It wasn’t so bad. Yes, it was harder than being a vegetarian, but again, I handled it. The main thing that kept me going through this time was soy sauce. Anyone who knows Vegans and vegetarians will know these people love sauces and condiments. This is because their food is bland, boring, and has no depth or complexity, so anything to up the umami factor is always appreciated. I put soy sauce on everything, and as such I did just fine.

Also, I was not a strict Vegan, just for the record. I still wore leather, and at all the honey I cared to, which wasn’t much, but I upped my intake just to stick it in the face of those holier-than-thou Strict Vegans.

            Now Meat Day had become “Meat and Dairy Day,” and it was fun. It was good. People joined in. I made a mockery of things that serious people took seriously, and I was, in short, a total dick. On Meat and Dairy Day I’d walk into the dinning hall, with a parade of people, and pile plates high with bacon, and eat it with grease dripping down my chin in front of my Vegan and vegetarian friends, while laughing at them for being weak, panty waisted, wimps. I mean, some of these people are, to this day, my best friends. How much more of an asshole could I have been? Well, hindsight’s 20/20, and they know I got mine, because many of them were sitting there when another friend said, “Well, you wouldn’t make it a week as a macrobiotic.”

            “A Macro by what?”

            For the uninformed, macrobiotics is a diet that exposes eating things only from one’s own temperate zone, and all of these things should be whole foods. I mean, it’s a bit more complicated than that, but that’s the simplified version. What this means, is you can’t eat anything can’t grow where you live. The simple thought process on this is that that things grow where they grow to sustain life in those places, by providing exactly what humans need when they are living there. In Vermont one cannot eat oranges because oranges don’t grow in Vermont’s temperate zone. There is an exception made for rice. Wherever you are, you can eat rice. This is good, because as a macrobiotic that’s about all you eat.

            Further, processed or refined foods are excluded.

            I know what you’re thinking: “Well, that’s not a big deal, I don’t like American cheese anyway…”

            Go a little deeper, and understand that a refined food is anything that is not in its whole state. For example: refined sugars. Try to find anything that is premade in the United States that does not have sugar in it. There’s nothing. Not one single thing you can eat in this Country that does not have refined sugars in it. Ketchup? Sugar. Soy Sauce? Sugar. Fucking Bread? That’s right: Sugar. If you’re a macrobiotic you can pretty much eat rice, beans, and dirt. That’s it.

            Oh yea, try to find an alcoholic beverage that is not made from refined grains. There really aren’t any, with the exception of Woodchuck Cider. That may have changed as the beverage has become very popular and nationally available, but at the time it fit the criteria, so I drank a lot of it. A LOT.

            Two things happened: firstly, I lost 40 pounds in about three months; secondly, I was miserable.

            Also, I didn’t make it six months.

            What took me down? My mother. I went on a trip home to Richmond and she made me one of my favorite things in the world: split pea soup. She said, “I know you’re doing some kind of vegetarian weird diet, so I made you split pea soup.”

            I said, “Vegetarian Split Pea Soup?” Because I knew her recipe called for a ham bone, and she assured me it was vegetarian. I didn’t get into the nitty gritty of the sub genres of Veganism and macrobiotics, as there’s no way she would have understood these distinctions. Understand that this is a woman who I once made a vegetarian dinner for and she asked, “Where’s the meat,” and when I told her there wasn’t any, she got up from the table, left the house, and returned thirty minutes later, with a steak!

            Also, I really wanted that soup. It’s my favorite!

            So, I dipped my spoon into the piping hot bowl of green goodness, and brought a bite out that had pink shreds of meat hanging from it.

            “Mom! That’s ham! This is not vegetarian!”

            “Oh that? That’s just there for flavor.”

            I shit you not. This happened.

            The other thing that took me down was New Orleans.

            I mean, I could have written the incident with the split pea soup off as an anomaly, but there was no way I could justify two weeks of New Orleans, Alabama, and Mississippi travel as anything other than what it was: a complete breaking of my will.

            How, I ask you, could I resist all those wonderful Southern foods? Green Beans in the South have meat in them! There was nowhere to turn for safe haven, and I just broke down and went crazy on red beans and rice, pulled pork barbecue, gumbo, ya-ya, chicken etouffee.

            FRIED CHICKEN!

            Folks, if you don’t know this, fried chicken is all over the South. There are little gas stations, on little back roads, where you pull in and a grandmother is in the back making friend chicken. There’ll be a hand written sign that reads, “Best Fried Chicken in the County,” and who am I to argue with that? Who am I to turn my nose up at someone’s grandmother’s fried chicken? I was raised in the South to have good manners, and there’s no way I would be rude to an older lady with fried chicken.

            So, I didn’t make it with the macrobiotic thing, and I guess if I’m fair, I didn’t make it with the vegetarian or Vegan part of the bet either because I just kept upping the ante, and as such all three things were rolled into one.

           

*****

            That brings us to today.

            I’ve gotten mighty fat, and I know it’s because I eat huge late night meals, after drinking Bourbon whiskey, and since I’ve stopped cooking professionally I live a pretty sedentary life, but I didn’t realize it was as bad as it is until I saw my reflection in a window on the way into my office today. I wanted to blame it on a warp in the window, like some kind of carnival house of mirrors, as I have done in the past, but the truth is: I knew it all along.

            Perhaps I was primed for this wake up call by my wife who, just last night, mentioned my snoring has gotten really out of control. Also, she’s recently taken up going to the gym four days a week – God knows why, as she’s shockingly beautiful just the way she is – and I’ve been getting a lot of push back from her on some of the meals I make for the family. More often than not I cook at home just the way I would in a restaurant, which means lots of butter and huge portions. It’s nice to be married to a chef, and it’s nice to be a chef, but the truth is restaurant food is, for the most part, really bad for you.

            So, I’ve made a resolution: every day, for the next one hundred days, I’ll replace one meal with a salad. The salad can be any kind of salad I choose, and I will not be eating them with any regard to them being super healthy. I may have a big chef’s salad, with meats, cheeses, and blue cheese dressing. I reason that such a salad is still better for me than a whole meat lover’s pizza, or a cheeseburger and fries, or a double cut cowboy rib eye steak.

            Also, I must eat a salad every day.

            This means, if I don’t eat anything until four in the afternoon, I can’t then eat a four-pound burrito and rationalize that not eating lunch was the same thing as having a salad. Skipping a meal is not the same as eating something good for you, right? So, if I don’t eat anything all day, and I come to the end of the day, the choice is already made: it’s salad for supper.

            One last thing, and this doesn’t have to do with salads, but I’m going to ut out the soda and sweet drinks too. I’ll make an exception for ginger ale if it’s being used to make a Bourbon and Ginger, but other than that, no more sodas or sweet sport drinks. I mean fuck, what sports am I doing? Watching Game of Thrones and Mad Men is not a sport, so what the hell do I need with a Gatorade? So, those are gone too.

            You get it: I’m fat, but who cares, right? Well, I just went outside to do some of this writing in the nice early summer sun, and I started sweating. It’s 70 degrees for Christ’s sake! I’m up to a 44 waist. I drive a full size car, and the seats feel constraining. This has gotten totally out of control. Sure, I love bacon as much as the next person, and I don’t want to change my behaviors that much. I’m not suggesting I make a resolution to compete in next year’s Iron Man. Just a couple of nice reasonable changes.

            So, to summarize: I am a fat tub of shit; I love to eat, and don’t want to stop eating; I love to drink and don’t want to stop drinking; I am sedentary by nature; so I will endeavor to eat a salad every single day for the next one hundred days, and we’ll see what happens. I’ll write about it, because, you know, that’s what people do these days, and at least this is better than that stupid Three Hundred Sandwiches bullshit.

            Follow me on my journey.

Bam!