Dietary Tactics: From Electroshock to Chloroform

Time for a show of hands. How many of you began this year with a resolution that sounded something like this?

"This year, seriously, for real, I'm GOING to get in shape and eat better. I mean it. For real this time."

Don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about. Each year this resolution gets just a little bit longer with the addition of more emphatics, as if throwing in another "for real" and "seriously" makes it a more concrete vow.

So far this year I'm not doing too badly (it may be because I upped the ante with this resolution and even threw in a "no backsies" this year). I've been a pillar of strength, a maven of whole foods, and calorie counter extraordinaire... Provided that I am exposed to no temptation whatsoever, that is. Temptation - delicious chocolates on someone's desk, the smell of pizza baking, suddenly remembering that box of cookie mix in the cabinet... Well, that's where it all falls apart.

You see, my ability to resist junk food can be represented as an inverse function of my proximity to junk food. I'd even place a pretty big bet involving limbs and other appendages on the notion that this is true for the majority of the dieting population. No amount of Healthy Choice, Lean Cuisine, or protein smoothies in our shopping cart can protect us from the fact that the checkout line is secretly a candy bar ambush waiting to happen.

And you know exactly what I mean on this one - how many times have we finally grabbed that Butterfinger and thrown it on the belt in a hasty rush of embarrassment JUST before the last item was scanned? And that look on the cashier's face as they hand it to you after scanning, asking "Would you like to keep this in your purse?" Which is, of course, a question that is very difficult to answer with a mouth full of Butterfinger.

Another terrible danger for me is the BOGO sale. BOGOS just provide me with the opportunity to justify buying multiples of something that I try to make a once weekly treat in this way: "Well, I'm going to buy at least 4 per month, anyway, right? So it only makes sense for me to go ahead and buy 4 and reduce 50% of the cost, right?"

Right. This logic recently led to the following scenario: Freschetta Brick Oven pizzas are our weekly Date Night treat and tradition. Following the above logic, in week 1 I buy 4 Brick Ovens on a rare BOGO sale at Publix and by week 2 I was down 4 Brick Ovens and SOL on the pizza front by the next Date night.

Nothing says love like a pizza heart

Now, armed with the full knowledge of my weaknesses, it's beginning to look like drastic measures are in order. Conventional methods of dieting (ie, simply not eating crap) don't appear to be enough by a long shot. So to augment my dieting regime I'm going to institute a series of new tactics in the fight against temptation.

1.      Time-locking Freezer. This one is aimed primarily at my pizza fixation. From now on, all Freschetta Brick Ovens and other frozen temptations will go directly into a freezer that can only be accessed once per week. In the event of a violent craving and break-down of self control, any attempts to bypass the locking mechanism will result in a moderate to severe electrical shock.

2.      Convenience Store Blinders. This applies to grocery store checkouts as well. The blinders must be put on immediately prior to entering any establishment that likes to keep enticing junk food displays in the periphery of the checkout counter or, in extreme cases, on the counter itself. It works for racehorses, and I’m at least smarter than your average mare. Right?

3.      The Dieter’s Select Menu. Petition local restaurants to maintain a menu for dieters. This menu will steer them directly to only the healthiest selections by describing non-healthy foods in terms of nutritional and chemical content rather than the mouth-watering adjectives that tend to talk us out of the Garden Salad and into the ¾ lb Cowboy Burger with two slices of melted cheese, crispy golden fried onions, and delectable special sauce. On the Dieter’s Select Menu, that burger just became a Cowboy Slab of Fatty Low-grade Cow Meat with Arteriosclerosis and Possible Heart Failure.

And in the event that all of these ideas fail...

4.      Big Scary Enforcers. Hire a team of ex-paramilitary soldiers of fortune to act as full-time body guards. And since no one wants to appear pretentious enough to carry around an entourage of body guards, this mission will have to be undercover and black ops. You’ll never see them until you go to take that bite of cheesecake, or start putting that money in the vending machine... and when you wake up, just consider the headache leftover from the chloroform a good tradeoff for the fatty calories from which they just saved you.

The Terror of the Untoasted Sub

It's not often that I get to blog about fast food experiences (actually, it's a first) but my Quizno's experience from yesterday wasn't singular which makes it even funnier to me now.

First, let me preface this by saying that I have a total hang-up about eating in public. Watching (and hearing sometimes, yuck) the multitudes of bad table manners, messy eaters, and "see-food" enthusiasts totally kills my appetite, so far be it from me to join the messy masses and get crumbs on my face while enjoying my small classic italian on white. Those "Mmm, mmm, toasty" subs fall apart at every bite leaving it's sated consumer with crumbles all over the place.

So, to solve this problem I always order an (inserted dramatic tension building music here) untoasted sub. When doing this in an establishment famous for its toasted subs I apparently throw a wrench into the machine and cause the entire line to break down into pandemonium. This is how it usually goes:

I innocently approach the counter and place my order (small untoasted italian) causing the prep station man's eyes to widen in fear. "Untoasted? Are you sure?" After assuring him that I am indeed strong enough to handle this decision he turns to another co-worker for support and begins piling the soft bread with the care of a nuclear technician handling an explosive device. I watch his obvious internal turmoil while he walks past the oven without passing the sub through and hands it to the next man on the line for fresh veggies. Now the Veggie Man looks at the Meat Man like he's an idiot and heads toward the front of the oven to toast the sub. Meat Man sees this and stops him behind the oven and in hushed tones quickly discuss my unorthodox order and Veggie Man obligingly returns to his station with my still untoasted sub looking a bit shaken. I decide to give the poor guy a break and just get a little lettuce and vinegar and I even think about asking him to toast the pickles to make him feel better. My untoasted small classic italian is now a completed work of art and I follow Veggie Man to the register where he passes the sub to the cashier, making sure he knows it's an untoasted italian because that apparently makes all the difference in the price. Oh wait, no it doesn't.

And thus ends my reign of terror at Quizno's... until the next time. Same sub-time, same sub-channel.