The Battle of the Bulge

Losing weight seems to be a never ending battle for me. I have a very symbiotic relationship with carbohydrates. I also have a sweet tooth that makes its presence known almost constantly. On top of that, I love, love, love to eat. Strike three, you're out! Loving to eat seems to have been with me almost since the beginning of my life. The first word most children learn is, "mama" or "dada", mine was, "ea, ea", my childish articulation of "eat, eat". Was the die cast or what?

My metabolism seems to have taken a Sabbatical, and isn't likely to return any time soon. I've heard that most of us think about sex frequently throughout day. If someone were to take the silver threads of my thoughts and transfer them to a pensieve like Dumbledore's in Harry Potter, they would likely find few if any erotic images. Instead there would be pictures of M&M's, Snickers, Rice Krispy Treats, Hagen Daz ice cream, prime rib, baby back ribs, chocolate covered gummy bears, boysenberry pie, Belgian waffles, Nutter Butters, stuffed Rock Cornish game hens, and the like swirling about.

Why does food have to taste so dad-gummed good? And why, when you want to drop some serious poundage, do you have to say, "Sayounara," to the things you love in favor of stuff that tastes like, well, crap? My mother did Weight Watchers when I was in my teens. She tried to convince me that cottage cheese spread on a piece of toast, sprinkled with sugar substitute constituted a Danish. I told her, "That's not a Danish, that's crap!" She came back with, "The starving children in China would love to eat this!" I then invited her to wrap it up and send it to them. I got smacked in the chops for mouthing off.

To accomplish the goal of becoming more svelte, there's nothing for it, I guess but to bite the bullet; diet and exercise. There's no easy way or cutting corners. You could always have by-pass surgery, or the Lap Band, but having either of those procedures is no Sunday School picnic, and there are no guarantees. The reedy little waifs with the sunken eyes in Calvin Klein adds, made me feel that starvation was my answer, so I thought I'd try anorexia. It worked really well till I got hungry. I was also a failure at bulimia because I always forgot to vomit after I ate. I used to eat a lot of raw hamburger (steak tartare, if you want to be pretentious), in the hopes that I'd get a tape worm. It all came back to diet and exercise! Da#*-it!

I know people will say, "You're Santa, you're supposed to fat!" Fat, yes maybe, but perhaps not a Rose Parade float with a butt the size of a small continent. So I guess the Jolly Old Elf is just going to have to put down the Chips Ahoy, and bite the 'ol bullet. Someone pass me the Splenda and some cottage cheese!

Anyhow, that's how Santa sees it!