I Could Just Die(t)

With the start of the school year, I’m trying to be more conscious of what we’re buying at the grocery store. I want to try and keep healthy options available for my sons’ lunches and, thus, encourage them to eat better.

On the other hand, I’m holding myself to no such standard.

When I’m at work, I eat bad and use the excuse of not having much to choose from but crap (delicious crap). But on my days off I take it to a whole other level. My days off often fall on a weekday. Even without that trusty excuse of limited selection, I still eat garbage because nobody’s watching.

I already eat like an eight-year-old, routinely enjoying Frosted Flakes and Corn Pops (when Cookie Crisp isn’t available) with my sons, but without their prying eyes scanning my every move, looking for an example to follow, my eating spirals downward to fulfill the most base of my dietary desires. Breakfast consists of coffee and whatever item from the cookie and pastry family is to be found in our cabinets (that’s been Nutter Butters the past few days). Lunch is often an assortment of chips, any available dips (guacamole if I’m lucky) and whatever chocolate I manage to scrounge up, washed down with a beer or two. Every now and then, I’ll get the hankering for a salami or peanut butter and jelly sandwich (though never together, eww, but still with beer…yum). Regardless, I sit eating my selection and looking around to see who might witness all this like a ravenous squirrel worried someone may try to steal his acorn.

Come dinnertime, my raging appetite for fat is usually curbed because I’m back in the line of sight of my sons. Shame forces discretion. I routinely wash my face before picking them up so that they won’t smell the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups or Pringles on my face during after school hugs and kisses.

Occasionally, however, the monster in my stomach will come out even then, mocking me for trying to keep it under wraps now after letting it gorge itself and gain strength all day. We’ll take them out for dinner and my intentions to order a grilled chicken sandwich with no mayo fall siege to my instinct to try the new breaded steak sandwich with red sauce and mozzarella that was so appetizingly advertised in handwritten bold black magic marker on the door as we walked in. Hold the sweet peppers because those are technically vegetables. Bah, vegetables!

The pictures of the value meals at McDonalds are the bane of my healthy eating. As I pull into the drive through thinking salad the enlarged photo of the double quarter pounder places me in its greasy trance and tricks me into ordering it (without cheese, though, got to watch that figure).

If I ever want to see my belt again, I might want to start eating healthier. If not for my sake, then at least for my kids so they see a good example from their father. Then again, maybe if I keep eating terribly they will eventually be so repelled by how grotesquely obese I have become that they will eat better. It’s like that “scared straight” program where they take kids into prisons and show them what bad behavior leads to. My sitting at the table with them may be enough to remind them to choose the veggies over the fries.

Son (either of them): “I’ll take the BLT.”

Waitress: “That comes with a side. Fries or salad?”

Son: “I’ll take the f…”

His Old Man (scratching stomach as a gurgling noise works its way upward through esophagus): “BBBUUUUURRRPPP!”

Son (shuddering): “Salad. Dressing on the side, please.”