I recently received a promotion at work, and one of the benefits of said promotion was eligibility for long-term disability insurance. As I've never had anything like that before, it was a very nice bonus for a job allegedly well done. So I filled out the necessary paperwork, mailed it in, and called it a day.
I then got a response in the mail from the insurance company, telling me I'd been turned down. Because of my weight. I didn't know weight factored into disability insurance. It makes sense that it would factor into life insurance with the increased health risks, but getting turned down for disability insurance at only 27 didn't make much sense to me. Apparently, my big fat ass is going to slip on a twinkie wrapper causing me to break my neck.
At any rate, since I'm now so fat that it's causing serious repercussions for me, my wife and I decided it was time to start eating better. I'm not going to use the D word because that's what you call it when a chick does it and I'm entirely too manly to stoop to using that word to describe my current eating situation, or lack thereof, because let me tell you, I'm not eating very much and it sucks. You know how every sit-com ever filmed always has that one episode where the fat guy all of a sudden realizes it's time to lose weight and they bitch and moan about how awful it is? Yeah, the real thing is much worse.
First of all, there's the snacks. One thing that usually stalls people trying to lose weight is the temptation to snack. They eat less, so they're more hungry, so they tend to snack because when you're only eating light snacks here and there you don't think it adds up and it makes it harder to lose weight. So my wife got the idea to get lots of "healthy" snacks. Lite this, low-fat that, low-cal the other. And that's another thing. Why is the word "light" spelled "lite" when used to describe healthier foods? Is it because you aren't eating real food so they figure they probably shouldn't use a real word to describe it? I don't know, but whatever the reason, it's annoying. And these "lite" snacks are even more annoying on two fronts. They're annoying because they're shitty, and they're annoying because they come in these little pre-portioned packages so you don't eat very many at a time. So instead of slowly wading through an entire package of Oreo's, I'm quickly inhaling these little packs of 5-6 tasteless crackers that are painted to look like Oreo's. It's very depressing. It's like picking up a donut that looks really good, only to bite into it and find it filled with ketchup instead of jelly.
Then there's the dessert. On the rare occasions I actually eat anything you could call dessert, it's mediocre imitations of dessert such as frozen yogurt and low-fat cookies. But more often, dessert is more like it was when I used to eat at my Grandma's house when I was a kid. She'd tell me and my brother to clean our plates and we could have dessert, so we'd finish whatever it was that we didn't want to eat, only to have Grandma present a bowl of peaches. Yeah, try getting psyched over that.
But the most difficult part of the whole ordeal has to be the food I'm eating at meals. Actually, food is probably the wrong word. It's not food, it's the stuff that food eats. Instead of red meat (food), I'm getting fish, turkey, and vegetables (the stuff that food eats). I've never been more hungry in my life. All I want to eat is:
But all I'm getting is:
It's so depressing. And all the imitation food made with pretend food isn't really helping. Like the turkey Joe's (think sloppy Joe's minus the flavor and the effect of making you feel like you've actually eaten something). And the turkey burgers. And the turkey dogs. And all this other wannabe food parading as my dinner.
Even the drinks I'm getting aren't really drinks. Instead of pop, I'm getting iced tea. And instead of beer I'm getting flavored water. That's right, flavored water. I didn't even know they made such ridiculous bullshit. Fucking flavored water. That's like flavored air. What the hell is the point?