Day 37: Superman Fallen

It was bound to happen, I have been defeated.  That is right, I am no longer Superman.  I was brought into the presence of kryptonite and, like Lex Luther beating up the real Superman with his pinky finger, I was nearly slayed by a 1.5 square inch piece of ice cream cake.  It was my kryptonite.  That's right, after going 36.75 days without any real amount of sugar (I have probably had traces here and there--EVERYTHING seems to have some sugar in it), I was defeated by my daughter's ice cream cake.  The streak is over.  I didn't report it to you last night, when it actually happened, because I was embarrassed and saddened.  This morning, though, I woke up and thought, "I cannot tell a lie.  I cannot live a lie."  And so I resolved to tell the world of my failure.

Honestly, 36 days is not that long of a streak.  Joe DiMaggio had a 56-game hitting streak.  Cal Ripken, Jr. played in 2,632 consecutive baseball games.  And do you remember that guy Alexei Karelin?  He is the Greco-Roman wrestler who won for 13 years straight until the Sydney Olympics.  That is when that fellow from Afton, Wyoming, whose name now slips my mind, beat him in an amazing battle involving nothing but sweat, brute strength, and spandex.  (Of course, I am not sure what any of us expected, the guy from Wyoming wrestled cows as a boy and lived in a town that boasts the world's largest elkhorn arch--an elkhorn arch, I might add, that I have seen and driven under more than once.)  Anyway, it only took sugar 36 days to get me. 

I have been thinking about my own streaks in life, and I could really only come up with one.  Until I started this diet, I think I had a streak of 10,220 days of eating sugar.  Yes, that is approximately 28 years of sugar intake.  I have no idea what it has done to my innards in addition to helping me gain substantial amounts of weight.  I will say this, though, it is not a streak to be proud of.

I told my wife last night that I was a little disappointed with myself, and she offered no sympathy.  Here is a snippet from our conversation:

          EMILY:  Well, maybe you will learn your lesson.

          ME:  You know, I could use a little support here and "maybe you will learn your lesson" isn't very
          supportive.

          EMILY:  Okay.  What did you want me to say?  "You totally blew it?" or "Don't worry, it will
          be okay?" 

          ME:  Well, I would have preferred the latter.

          EMILY:  Don't worry, it will be okay.

Emily's reassurance was not very reassuring.  Don't get me wrong, she is my biggest advocate, but she keeps thinking of this process as a "growing experience," whatever that means. 

Anyway, I have decided that I need a strategy for future events such as birthdays, and I thought I would share my ideas with everyone.  First, next time my wife makes French onion soup, macaroni and cheese, and buys an ice cream cake, if I am really hungry, I should just decide that it is okay to eat one of them.  I think this would satiate my guilt after the fact.  (By the way, did you know that French onion soup without the bread and without the cheese is just onion soup?  I can attest that onion soup is not very good.)  This is a lifestyle change, and life is flexible to allow a mistake now and then, so long as it is a controlled mistake.

Second, when I am given the choice of French onion Soup, macaroni and cheese, and ice cream cake, I will not choose the high sugar food, which made me totally sick and sluggish.  Seriously, I was sick to my stomach all night.  Of course, I have no idea if this is a real effect of the sugar, or if it was some kind of psychosomatic episode.  Either way, it was very real to me and I now have a new found fear of sugar (okay, I really don't).  The really sad thing is that I only ate about 1.5 square inches of cake.  I have never eaten that little cake in my whole life.

Third, I will remember how much harder I will have to work the next day to burn off all those extra calories.  I tried to look up how bad the piece of ice cream cake I ate was, and it was so bad that Baskin-Robbins (where Emily got the cake) did not even list the nutritional information.  I guess they figure anyone stupid enough to eat a piece of ice cream cake probably could care less about how many carbohydrates or fats they are taking in.  I don't know how much time I will have to spend on a treadmill after that tiny bit of cake, but I am not excited about finding out. 

So that is the plan.  I have no idea how it will work tomorrow, when it is Elsie's birthday.  Or Friday, when it is my birthday, but we will see.  Man this is hard.  Honestly, I can't tell you how many times I have just thought:  I am done.  I am heading to Five Guys to get a burger, and I am going to wash it down with an ice cold Coke.  But despite the threat, I haven't acted on it.  Mistakes?  Of course they will happen.  In the past, a mistake would have led to complete failure.  But today, for some reason, it hasn't led to failure.  Today, for some reason, I know I can do this.