Dieting? Forget About It

I don’t like to talk about this, but I suffer from a rare eating disorder called “amnesiatic bulemia.” I binge, then forget to purge.

My affliction often comes over me at buffets or all you can eat spaghetti church dinners. There was a recent incident involving a sweet cornbread and chili cook off, but it is still too painful to talk about.

My condition has a lot to do with why my doctor tells me I am thirty pounds overweight. My wife, Marianne, has other theories on the subject, but she is not a psychologist so what does she know? Worse, she sides with the dieticians my doctor sends me to from time to time.

I have gone to a few good dieticians, but mostly I get saddled with a snarky, one-hundred pound girl who never had an appetite in her life. “Hello. I’m Mindy”, she’ll say, talking through her perky little nose. “I eat three scoops of air a day, plus half a bagel.”

You never hear of a dietician that started out at 250 pounds, worked her way down to 120 and kept it off. They are all born naturally thin and place judgement on people who aren’t. It’s like a six-foot nine guy talking down to a dwarf because he has trouble dunking.

It is also against the dietician’s code of conduct to recommend food you can actually afford. A true dietician can’t pronounce “affordable.” If something doesn’t cost more per gram than cocaine, you will be told it is not good for you. Of course, she would tell you cocaine isn’t good for you, either. There’s too many calories in it.

“Eat fish,” she’ll tell you.

“You mean I can eat bream and bass and catfish?” you say.

Turning up her snark-o-meter control to full snarkiness, she says, “We recommend halibut and swordfish.”

“What about mackerel, tilapia or white fish?” you ask, naming some of the more affordable store-bought fish.

“Only if it has been injected with gold.”

“Eat vegetables,” she’ll tell you. “For instance, kale is a very good source of iron.” So is a lead pipe, which is what I would rather be beaten with than eat kale. Kale tastes like they haven’t washed off the pesticides yet. You don’t even need pesticides for kale. It tastes so bad, bugs won’t eat it. That is, bugs that aren’t going to a dietician.

The worst thing about dieticians is they tell me I only have myself to blame, which shows how little they know. To them I ask:

Did I invent tater tots with shredded cheese and ranch dressing? I think not.

I don’t recall being there at the Peanut M&M development meetings. You can’t hold that one against me.

Is it my fault Farmboys Barbecue in Chapin, South Carolina smokes the best ribs in the continental United States, if not the world, and is only a few miles down the road? Hardly. I had nothing to do with their restaurant location. I certainly can’t insist they move it now that they’ve gone through all the trouble and expense of putting it there. What kind of person would that make me? A thinner person, perhaps, but that is just the sacrifice I have to make.

I could go on and on, but I need to stop and think a while. I just now finished an entire bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken and I feel like there’s something I’m forgetting to do.