Mind Over Platter

I guess I don't so much mind being old, as I mind being fat and old. ~Benjamin Franklin

My idea of a middle-aged spread used to be 40 acres in Wyoming. Not any more. It's not like I register on the richter scale everytime I plop out of bed, but let's just say I could stand to lose a few... um, dozen. It's time to diet, or better yet, change my diet, and finally come to grips with the fact that I'm no longer 20 years old, when I could lose weight just sitting on the couch for an extended period.

I have two major obstacles to overcome: pizza and subs. This is a significant challenge. I live in the "Bread Belt", on the East Coast of the US, where pushers deal mouth-watering, cheese-and-meat-laden, crusty breads on practically every corner. The cheesesteaks in Philadelphia, for example, are crack for the palette, and there's been many an occasion when I passed out on a park bench after taking one too many hits. There are plenty of placebos for sure - the chains manage to survive here, just like everywhere, on speedy service and mass advertising - but the natives know the good stuff hides in scruffy joints run by people with foreign accents - Italians, Greeks, or anyone from Jersey. Trying to give this up would be like living in the Bible Belt and trying to give up church. Maybe I can track down a carbohydrate treatment center, where I can wean myself down to a mere slice or two of New York pizza. Who am I kidding... this is going to have to be cold turkey (which makes a killer sub around these parts, by the way).

I'm not entirely new to the rigors of being on a diet, though. I did it once back in 6th grade, along with a raft of oversized classmates who were trying to make a weight limit to play parochial football. By some odd coincidence, we were all big kids, which I think was mostly an evolutionary survival response to the fact that our nuns were the size of NFL linemen. The chief of police of the city of Denver decided we needed a football team, and he'd be the coach, no doubt thinking that he'd rather deal with us sooner than later. So we starved ourselves for a few weeks, spent our leisure time running up and down the school stairs in plastic bags, and we all made weight. Except for "Moose", who was even bigger than a nun.

This time, I think I'll skip the plastic bags and running stairs, thank you. And the starvation part doesn't seem to have the same appeal anymore either. Moving to another part of the country where the cuisine is less tempting (Nebraska comes to mind) has some merit, but it's not very practical. No, it's time to face the mirror and make all the hard, reasonable, long-term dietary decisions that need to be made for a 50 year old body, and somehow muster the fortitude to stick with them.

Switching to broccoli pizza, however, is not gonna happen.