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Off the Wagon

This is day 53 of dieting and I finally fell off the wagon.

I was doing so well up until this point.  There have been frustrating times.  Times when it would have been easy to bury my stress beneath a mound of flap jacks or in a giant bowl of chow mein.  Times when I could have given into the siren song of humus or the cold indulgence of ice cream.  I've stared awkwardly at fruit.  I've dreamt of chocolate lava cakes. But I had persevered until this evening.  And I have—or used to have, rather—twenty seven pounds to show for it.

Cumulative Weight Loss:


No one's perfect. I get that. It's just how I fell off the wagon that bothers me. I was pushed off by this guy:

"Little Caesar!?  Really?  The creepy little purveyor of bad pizza?"

I know.  What can I say?  He got me.  I didn't intend for it to happen. I can't believe it myself.  I've had so many opportunities to cheat.  So many better alternatives than a slice that makes it hard to determine where the crust ends and the cardboard box begins.

Don't get me wrong.  I love pizza.  Pizza has an elemental quality in my life.  I orient myself to pizza restaurants.  Need directions?  I'll can tell you how to get there based on the pizza restaurants you'll pass.  I'll eat pizza from anywhere.  The day before I started my diet, I had a slice of pizza at ten in the morning from the Flying J truck stop in Wells, Nevada.  It was good, because it was pizza.

Thelma used to have a quotation hanging on our refrigerator door.  "Life is like pizza.  Even when it's bad it's good."  And it's true, but a slice from Little Caesars is not worth the fall off the wagon.  Not when I've said "no" so faithfully to Alfy's or Zeke's or Tutta Bella or Brooklyn Brothers.  It's like saying no to a bunch of cute girls who want to take you to a school dance and then you show up anyway with your cousin.  Maybe she can dance, but it's your cousin.

See, even my metaphors are messed up after my fall.  Ordinarily, I would have come up with a witty pizza metaphor.  Tasty and germane.

How did it finally happen?  In a moment of thoughtlessness.  Braeden had four friends from school over this evening to watch movies and eat pizza.  When you're dealing with teenage boys (or Mark), quantity is more important than quality.  Thus Little Caesars.  Four large pizzas, four liters of soda, 16 breadsticks and I'm only out $30.  (Plus I can pick up Showering Rama at the Thai Place next door for Thelma's more refined palette.)  So, the pizza was just sitting there on the counter and without even thinking I picked up a slice and started to eat it.

Who knows how it will affect my diet?  There's probably some massive rearrangement of my body chemistry going on inside of me right now and I'm going to wake up 15 pounds heavier, one leg will be swollen and my bathroom towel will smell like pepperoni after I take a shower.  I'll have to detox with oat bran shooters and an intravenous drip of V8.

If that doesn't work and I'm back to a more robust and bruised figure, then perhaps I'll flee to the stage and resurrect myself as a Shakespearean actor.
Let me have men about me that are fat;
Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o' nights.
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look;
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.
(Julius Caesar, Act 1, Scene 2)
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Comments

Thelma said…
I love you. You make me laugh.

And you are an EXCELLENT writer.

(really)
October 1, 2011 at 8:08 AM
Olivia Cobian said…
You are hilarious, Adam! I hope the pizza didn't do too much damamge.
October 15, 2011 at 11:51 AM
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