Cut Off The Tongue To Spite The Waist

I've been steadily gaining weight since high school, interrupted with a brief weight-loss period in 04 when I was half-assedly trying to train for a half marathon. But despite this, I would hear others remark to me on occasion that I looked like I had lost weight. I accepted the comments graciously, but I always felt that, more often than not, saying that it looked like I had lost weight was a hollow, vacant compliment. I guess it's better than saying "wow, it looks like you've gained some baldness" or "hey, looks like you still can't see without optical assistance" or "hey, it looks like you finally got rid of that caterpillar-looking goatee", but even then, no compliment was better than trying to tell me that I've lost weight when I haven't.

Since September, I've had several opportunities to see people I haven't seen in a long time. I saw most of my good friends back in October, and in December I've become acquainted with a couple of friends I haven't seen in months. Not once did I hear someone ask me if I've lost weight. It's because I haven't. But you really know you're packing on the weight when people don't even try to lie and compliment you about the weight you haven't lost.

I assume that each January there are probably thousands upon thousands of people that make a New Year's Resolution to finally lose weight. "This is the year!" they all say, as if the stroke of midnight, January 1st, 2007, they'll be magically blessed with the motivation to exercise 3x a week and the will power to stay away from pizza and coke and beer and burgers and chocolate. I've done this before too. I've tried it all. I've tried to challenge myself to abstaining from some particular food for X amount of days . I've tried any number of self-developed exercise schedules. I've even tried linking my fitness to the affection of a woman. None of that works. So I've decided what I need to do to lose weight:

I need to have my tastebuds surgically removed.

It's the only way. I need to stop deriving so much pleasure from foods I eat. If I can't taste the difference between a bag of carrots or two slices of pizza, then it doesn't really matter what I eat, right? It's not that the food I eat is unhealthy, it's that I love unhealthy food, and I love it because it tastes good. Yeah, salads and fruits and chicken, that all tastes good, but pizza tastes good, pad see yew tastes good, turkey & bacon stuffed croissants taste good, Coke tastes good. How am I supposed to eat healthy when there's so much good food just begging to be eaten?

But that's also undoubtedly an expensive, and probably painful surgery. It'll take years to save up that kind of money, and I doubt it's covered by my health insurance.

I could use sandpaper I guess. Or an emory board. Or some Brillo. Maybe a Mach 4 razor? I don't know if I've got the stones to do that.

Ugh......Fine! I'll start eating healthy. But I'm NOT gonna like it.