Saturday, September 12, 2009

Weekend Crapup

Last night (Friday) after not eating a morsel all day I decided that I should allow myself one meal per week to mange my face off, and that meal should be Friday nights. So I went crazy with some Papa John's chickenstrips and breadsticks, to the tune of about 3300 calories. Fuck it, I thought, it's my new "grace meal," AND it's still about 2500 fewer calories than what I was pounding every day two weeks ago, so I felt bad but not terrible. I'll pick right back up tomorrow, I thought.

Until, as I was licking the chicken grease off my mitts, I realized I had forgotten one thing about Saturday: SHORT BUS'S BIRTHDAY!!!!! Fuck. As I wrote for the Fashion Herald a year ago, you can not make it out of a kid's birthday party alive if you're on a diet:
This past week did not end well, diet-wise. I was fine up through Thursday until about 7pm, eating right, working out, and no booze. Then I ran into a buddy of mine and raced through pops as if it was 1999, back when we were young and dumb and full of dreams. So not only was that day's healthy living ruined, but also Friday's, during which I spent all day crying and whining about how crappy I felt. OF COURSE I couldn't work out! OF COURSE I had to get some pizza!! I'm only human, people. A beautiful, sun-kissed human who seems to have been licked into existence by golden kittens and muscled thunderbolts of charisma and raw sinew, but a human nonetheless.

Not to worry, the next day I hunkered back down. Worked out like crazy, ate raw green beans and read the Ben Franklin biography I checked outta the library in 2002. A good day of clean living in anybody's book.

BUT. Of course the very next day I got hit with the Lex Luthor of the dieting man: the birthday party. Ugh. This past summer I had lost about 30 lbs in a month and was on my way to getting back to my high-school playing weight when I ran into my own birthday and...well, here I am 7 months later back at my pre-diet weight. And, of course, by 'back at my pre-diet weight,' I mean 'I'm trying to engineer a chicken that lays fried chicken skins from KFC.' Not good. And to make matters worse it was a 4 year-old's birthday party. It's not even an adult's birthday party where you can chew on some pretzel rods and then slip away while everyone else gets drunk. At a kid's party, you know you're gonna hafta clap and sing and eat some cake.

WHAT I WANTED TO WRITE HERE:
I tried to blend into the woodwork while chewing on some celery sticks and drinking bottled water, but when those big brown eyes looked up at me and said 'please Uncle Xmastime, please join my celebration by eating some birthday cake,' my resistance was broken down and I allowed a small piece of yellow cake (no icing!) to melt slightly in my mouth before washing it out with a bottle of Evian when she turned away - all followed by an almost ugly scene where I had to be convinced to be driven the 100 miles back to NYC, as opposed to walking back for the exercise.

WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED:
I got no idea whose party it is or who the f--k this kid is, I just knocked some lady over doing a 2 1/2 pike into the cake, my snout is buried 3 inches deep in icing and I have no idea where my shirt is. Shaking in Crisco-induced convulsions I am dragged into the back seat of a car, and I wake up hours later in my room to MASH reruns.

So 3 outta the last 4 days were complete disasters. My spirit, I will admit, is a tad broken. I look at the INC 33s hanging on my wall and I'm frustrated that the week didn't go as well as planned. Heartbroke. But I know the next week will go better. Hell, I reckon it can't get much worse. And whether, as I move along in my journey, I am slow to succeed or quick to fail, my own humanity is marked by Ben Franklin, who once famously said: 'any man who would give up freedom for security deserves neither, cuz I'm long, and I'm strong, and I'm down to get the friction on, so ladies, ladies, do you wanna roll in my Mercedes? Then turn around, stick it out, so even white boys got to shout, baby got back.'

Sigh. Fucking hell.

I'm okay, I've lost 10-15 pounds already, and I feel lighter. This was a blip. I'll recover.

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