September 9, 2003
I am wandering through Safeway, holding one of those little plastic shopping baskets and hunting for dinner salad ingredients.
But I am not looking for any ol' salad ingredients; I am looking for fat-free salad ingredients. I pass the myriad of cheeses and let out a sigh. I pass the various deli meats that would be delicious in a salad, sighing yet again. I then walk through the bakery and spot a plethora of cakes and cream pies--on sale, of course--all of which look divine.
"Wait," you say. "I thought you were looking for salad ingredients."
I respond: "Where is it written down that you can't put cake in a salad?"
Whatever. In any case, I keep walking, all the way to the produce section, where I grab some lettuce, celery and tomatoes. They're all placed in my basket as my stomach growls, alerting me to the fact that all I have eaten today is one of those little, low-fat Subway sandwiches that dude Jared ate in an effort to lose several hundred pounds or something.
At this exact moment, I really hate Jared. I want to hurt Jared.
I am hungry. I am bitter. I am blessed with a job that doesn't provide much in the way of physical exercise -- I am an editor, meaning I sit at a computer and answer phone calls from lunatics all day. I am also blessed with a metabolism that makes me put on weight easily, and a gargantuan love of food.
I really want to hurt Jared, dammit.
As I make my way to the checkstand, passing several Safeway employees who are required to cheerfully greet me because I passed within seven square miles of them -- my disdain for Jared is temporarily redirected toward them instead, but I refrain from violence -- I ask myself silently, "Why in the hell am I doing this?"
The obvious answer is that I am a bit overweight. Not morbidly obese overweight, but enough overweight that it’s starting to get on my nerves. I am also going on a cruise next month to the Mexican Riviera, meaning I will be trapped on a ship with 2,000 other people. I fear some of these well-meaning folks will mistake me for some bloated, wayward sea creature and try to throw me overboard when I try to take off my shirt. My only consolation is that if they managed to actually throw me over the side -- no easy task -- at least fat floats.
For all these reasons, and the fact that most folks on cruises put on weight anyway (vacation+acres of free food+contained area with no exercise=blob people), I have decided I NEED to lose weight.
My stomach lets out a publicly audible growl as I get into the checkout line. Apparently because all the Safeway employees are busy lurking around the store, annoying the hell out of all the customers by greeting them every 24 seconds, only two checkstands are open. Thus, I get to wait in line longer, giving me a chance to drool over all the candy bars. Mmmm. Chocolate sounds good right now.
Jared needs to suffer.
After a while, I pay for my salad ingredients and walk out of the store. I try to psych myself up about my salad, but as the smell from the nearby McDonalds wafts over--mmmm, French fries--I realize that salad sucks.
This is a shame. I liked salad before I started dieting, and now, I have two thoughts: One, salad sucks, and two, Jared sucks.
I get in my car and head home. I flip on National Public Radio, and someone mentions the Atkins Diet. I seriously considered the diet, as the low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet has helped a ton (har!) of people lose weight. But after researching it, I decided not to go on the Atkins diet, because it seems dumb to be able to snork down fatty steaks while "dieting." Also, the fact that Dr. Atkins recently died from falling down doesn't sound so healthy to me, so I decided to just do the old-fashioned diet--eat smaller portions of healthier food.
I pull into my parking spot at my apartment complex and turn off the car. I grab the bag of vegetables and make my way toward my door. As I reach into my pocket for my keys, I watch the sunset. It snaps me out of my crankiness. Yeah, I am hungry. Yeah, I miss chocolate and, well, all foods outside of a rabbit's diet. But when I think of how I'll feel on that cruise, knowing that I accomplished my goal of losing some weight, I smile.
But that doesn't change the fact Jared is a bastard.
Jimmy Boegle is a fifth-generation on exile in Arizona who would kill for a Hershey's bar right now. Jimmy's column appears here Tuesdays, and he can be reached via e-mail at jiboegle@stanfordalumni.org.