Last summer—let’s see that would be the summer of 2006—anyway last summer in June still just after we returned from burying WB back in SC I clocked in at 202 pounds. That was the most I have ever weighed. I guess it was all that Southern cuisine and all the emotional stuff surrounding WB’s death so I was just sort of eating a lot in general. 202 is not so bad for a guy who is six foot. There are six footers in the NFL who weigh more than that. But of course, they are all muscle.
But my additional weight was not muscle. It was fat and fat in my case does not distribute itself evenly but collects right around my middle. What they call trunk weight, because it’s on your trunk I guess. Trunk weight is not good weight. Men tend to get it; women can weigh more because it tends to be evenly distributed. But truck weight is apparently bad for the heart, not to mention the lower back.
I didn’t like the look of it and before going to SC I had to buy some fat pant jeans at Costco for teaching. For the first time since I don’t know when I couldn’t get into my traditional size 32 jeans. Also since I cannot control my smoking, I do whatever else I can to increase my changes of surviving a few years. That’s one reason I exercise daily, in addition to the exercise jump starting my brain. So when I looked down at the scale and saw 202 I decided to do something.
I did not—and I emphasize that—go on a diet. Diets are a crock. You lose weight and then you gain it back, and usually more. Though some diets seem to work. I know people who have done very well with Weight Watchers. I decided to change my diet and to do it gradually. So I started cutting back on meat.
But I can say without shame or embarrassment that I love meat. I mean, it’s true love. In fact, when I ate meat—say a pork chop—first I would eat my salad because I always eat a salad since I can’t stand vegetables, and then I would eat a load of carbohydrates (mounds of rice) and I would save my piece of meat for last as a kind of desert. In fact if I could order a pork chop for desert, I would.
I had noticed this tendency to save the piece of meat for desert so as part of changing my diet; I decided to integrate the eating of the meat right along with the eating of the other stuff. Man, this was tough, and I still have trouble doing it. But having a piece of meat for desert is not a good idea calorie-wise. In addition to integrating the eating of meat into the eating of other stuff, I decided to cut back on the eating thereof as much as possible. Which led to strange meat cravings.
I am at the grocery store, and I suddenly have an urge to buy a package of chicken livers. Man, I have not had chicken livers since I don’t know when. And they are easy to cook. You just roll them in flour with some salt and pepper and then fling the whole mess into a frying pan with hot oil, and bingo in a couple of minutes you have a mess of chicken livers.
For desert. Damn, mouth-watering good.
