Cheesefry Nation: Facing The Drop
Everything sounds good over a plate of bacon cheese fries.
Their gooey, salty deliciousness breaks your spirit faster than anything this side of Jack Daniels. Soon you'll agree to anything. You find yourself saying "Sure -- let's get healthy! Let's lose ten pounds in ten weeks! And blog about it so complete strangers can watch our fat, pathetic attempts to resist Chinese takeout and double Whoppers with cheese!"
And that is, more or less, the way it happened with Amanda and me. Drunk on fat and nitrates, we vowed to clean up our act. But unlike many a late night drunken promise, this is one I intend to keep.
Not for Amanda -- though I trust she'll mock me mercilessly if I fail. Not for my health -- though I'd certainly like to walk a few flights of stairs without wheezing. No, I'm doing it because of The Drop.
The Drop is what tailors call the difference, in inches, between the size of your suit jacket and the size of the pants that come with it. It's generally six inches.
I wear a 42 regular jacket, so the pants are a 36 waist. That used to be no problem -- in fact, when I bought my first suit I had to have them take the waist in two inches. But then a few months ago, as I was trying on a new suit, I realized the zipper...wasn't quite going to make it.
The tailor got this awful look -- the kind you give a child whose ice cream has just fallen off its cone onto a warm sidewalk. You feel for him - but you know he's learned something important: life is not always fair.
Also, he's fat and probably shouldn't be eating ice cream.
All right -- that's just the lesson I was learning.
I now had a 38 inch waist on a 6'1'' frame -- not a pretty picture, particularly when you're desperately trying to close your pants in front a tailor. I could ask him to take the waist out -- but two inches was pushing it and this wasn't his fault anyway. It was mine.
I should have seen it coming. There were plenty of signs - my exhaustion, insomnia, dehydration and climbing cholesterol count. But my health didn't shock me into action. Only my vanity could do that.
There was a time -- years ago and dimly remembered -- when I was in pretty great shape. I was boxing, lifting weights, running five miles a day. I wasn't eating right, even then -- but it hardly mattered. I was 18, my body was a fat burning machine and I could bench press my own body weight.
I'm now 25 and every day brings me closer to 30 than 20. I have bills to pay, an office job to pay them with and the closest I get to a boxing match is chasing a plate of hot wings with a pint of beer as I watch on pay per view. I'm eating the same way I always have -- like pork and MSG are actual food groups -- but I'm not working any of it off. Consequence: I am now much more likely to be mistaken for Uncle Fester than Vin Diesel.
So Amanda and I are doing something about it -- taking the Get Healthy Guilford Challenge and launching a blog to chart our progress. In our typical fat, lazy fashion we're doing it a week late -- but I'm still determined to lose ten pounds in ten weeks. And, hopefully, a few inches off my waist. Those pants aren't getting any bigger.