Why couldn’t I just be born skinny?

Oh, that’s right – I was – but then I grew up, left my adolescent metabolism behind me, and it’s all been downhill from there, like a fat man chasing frantically after a runaway jelly donut…

…with caramel frosting…

…and chocolate sprinkles on top.

So I’ve put on a little extra weight over the last couple of years. It’s certainly not one of those things that I did by choice, like cutting my long hair of seven years or finally cleaning out that green, oozing mess that’s been lurking in the back of the refrigerator, but nonetheless – here I am, and now it’s time to deal with it. Of course, the trouble is that unlike out-of-style hair or fungal atrocities from beyond the freezer section of your local grocer, fat is one of those things that can’t exactly just be cut off on a brisk Thursday morning or swept into the trash only moments before the garbage men arrive to whisk it off to its new home deep within the center of the Earth. If weight loss was something that could simply be done on a whim, I’d have just done it this morning and opted to instead write this column about flying kites or reality television or something far less emotionally-painful than my own personal battle with overweight-ed-ness…

But ultimately that’s ok because if there’s one thing I like nearly as much as a heaping plate of sesame chicken with crab rangoon on the side, it’s sharing my flaws with my devoted readers for the greater collective good. If just one person out there reads this column and thinks, “Hey, maybe it’s time that I rolled up my sleeves and cleaned that disgusting, furry blob out of the fridge that the wife has been threatening to divorce me over…” then that’s good enough for me.

Now that said, my method of choice for attaining said weight loss is dieting, namely because it’s primarily the most non-physical method of reducing one’s circumference. Of course, despite being a lazy man’s way to weight loss, that’s pretty much where the ease ends because simply watching what you eat becomes a bit more difficult when it’s made clear that you not only have to watch, but in fact also use restraint during that process as well! It’s one thing to say that you’re going to be a little more conscious about your eating in an effort to wean yourself away from a repulsive, borderline cardiac arrest-ish physique, but it takes a whole ‘nother echelon of discipline to step away from the buffet line after only your fourth plate, especially when the waitress just brought out a fresh platter of crab legs and those little, Chinese donuts that are covered with sugar and somehow serve both positions as teriyaki chicken supplement and dessert feature equally well.

So to answer the question that you’ve all been dying to ask and bring you up to speed on my own latest diet craze, you should know that currently I’ve been fighting my latest battle with obesity for a couple of months now and, well, at this point I think it’s safe to say that I’m doing depressingly good. And by that I mean that while yes, those ridiculously high numbers on the scale are decreasing in somewhat of a reverse-jackpot-like fashion, all too often do I find my self pondering, “At what cost am I toning this Buddha-esque figure of mine???” Over the past months, many a snack-rifice have been made – I’ve passed on double chocolate fudge brownies around the office, I’ve chosen salad over pizza (an ethical dilemma, that certainly was!), and I’ve even gotten to the point where I find myself rationing out what non-healthy foods I do try to sneak by in an effort to ensure that the Doritos company doesn’t just up and go completely out of business on my behalf! Let me tell you, in a man’s life there is no act more humbling than watching oneself count out a serving size of precisely fourteen potato chips onto a plate where previously three heaping handfuls once stood…

“But it’s gotta be done…” I try to tell myself, whether I’m “enjoying” my delicious, non-fat, non-flavor yogurt for breakfast or sheepishly passing on that new hamburger joint that just opened where if you can eat their largest creation in 20 minutes, they’ll gladly foot the bill while you wait for the paramedics to arrive. If there’s one things I’ve learned thus far in this whole dieting process, it’s that the quicker you’re able to stop enjoying food and learn to embrace being miserably hungry all day long, the less likely you’ll have to spend the next summer at the beach constantly explaining that it’s not necessary for everyone to quickly roll you back into the sea before you dry up.

That’s really my goal, anyways – lose enough weight so as to not be mistaken for one of the largest mammals in the animal kingdom. Anything else is just gravy.

Mmmm, gravy…