Day 7 - I Should Be Dead

Let’s just get this out of the way: I am a disgusting, awful, gross, slob of a man. I mean, I knew I was unhealthy, but I really had no idea how bad it was.

            I am seriously learning, and that was not the point of this, but it’s happening no matter how hard I try to keep my eyes shut.

            You’ll recall that the point here was not for me to get all health nutty but, rather to focus on what would happen if a person like myself just laid off one big meal a day, and replaced it with a salad. Not a complex in theory, and something I knew, and know, I can do.

            But then the haters started in with their, “Yea, that salads really bad for you,” and the laughing about how I think I can just put a steak on top of a salad and call that salad, which I never said. I did say that a big salad with steak – as in some sliced beef – on it would be much better for me than what I was eating, but that’s a whole different thing, but you know, everyone’s got a fucking opinion, and boy they were letting me know. Right in the middle of me trying to do something good for myself.

Still, I knew in my heart they were wrong.

I think their wrongness stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of how poorly I was eating. I think the vast majority of people I know could not conceive of the level of gross I have been willing to consume over the past few years. I mean I’ve always been a big eater, but I’m also a big guy. This is different from being a bad eater, and I am really seeing it. But, since you have no idea what I was eating, let me give you a little compare and contrast of today’s lunch.

I went to Friendly’s and ordered a turkey tip salad with avocado, bacon, and blue cheese dressing. The waiter asked me what I’d like to drink and I asked for water. I could see the disappointment in his eyes as I did so, but I’ve also cut out drinking soda – except when it’s ginger ale mixed with Bourbon – and I’ve yet to figure out what people who don’t drink soda drink when they drink something in a restaurant. For those who don’t know, a single guest to a waiter sucks, but one who orders a salad with water is the kiss of death. This kind of person paints an image of a person who is as cheap as cheap can be, and anyone in the business knows damn well this person’s going to go 10% on a tip.

If that.

Fuck him though. If he plays his cards right, and is a smart guy, he can flip me faster then a ninety pound cheerleader with a hankering for landing on the one hunk on the squad’s upstretched hand, and if he does it right, I’ll go 30%. Fuck, pull it off just the way I want and I’ll even shoot a sawbuck to the guy who makes my salad. I’m in the business, and I know how it works in the kitchen where no one ever gives you an ounce of credit. You don’t even have to talk to me. I know what I want when I sit down, and I don’t need any kind of spank and tickle. So yea, push me, rush me, get the food to me real quick, and I’ll get out of your way so you can bump yourself up in the rotation and pick up that eight top of drunk-in-the-middle-of-the-day college kids, and you’ll have picked up an easy extra ten bucks for doing sweet fuck all.

That salad, by the way, 850 calories.

Ahhh, but what would I have ordered?

I would have gone to Taco Bell, and I would have ordered the following items:

2 each: Big Beef Meximelts	240 Calories
1 each: Big Beef Burrito	240 Calories
1 each: Three Piece Extra Crunch Chicken Strips	290 Calories
2 each: Bacon Ranch Dipping Sauce	280 Calories
1 each: Pepsi – filled twice	760 Calories
Total Calorie Count:	1810

I would have eaten every, last, damned, bite, and would have loved every second of it.

          You see, I don’t eat like everyone else, and when I try to explain the one hundred salads plan, people don’t quite get how it could help me. Perhaps you now have a better understanding of what’s going on here.

          Hey, in case you didn’t quite grasp that chart above, look again at the calories from the freakin’ soda. Sure, I would have filled it up twice, but even if you have the willpower to just drink one, when there’s all that wonderful American free refill action going on just ten feet away, you’d have chugged down 380 calories from the soda alone. Put that shit in perspective: the soda has more calories than any single item I would have eaten. Ever had a big beef burrito? No? Well, look, they’re really big, and only represent 63% of the calories one gets from a large Pepsi. Get your head around that, and while you’re doing it, remember that, while a Big Beef Burrito is not a salad, it’s still got some nutrients in it. For example: it’s got 7 grams of fiber and 17 grams of protein. Sure, it’s also got a whopping, 1140 grams of sodium… Wait. DaFuq???

          No… No… I’m not making the sodium discussion a part of my life right now. I’m sure we’ll get into it in the next ninety or so days, but not now. I will say this; my heart doesn’t pound so loud it wakes me up at night anymore. So there’s that. 

          This has been eye opening to me, and I’ve learned something really important: I must have an amazing metabolism because most people couldn’t eat like that, every day, for five or so years, and still only be two hundred and eighty pounds. I should be a fucking five hundred pound monster. I should be one of those people the NYFD has to cut a hole in the apartment building’s exterior wall, and extract me with a goddamned forklift.

          Shit, I should be dead.