It might have been one of those peripheral glances in the mirror that triggered it all. A profile view of the belly region, captured and framed on the closet door mirror in all of its gelatinous glory. A thought materialized, ‘this should be covered with a shirt’. A second thought followed, ‘something must be done about this’. A third thought, uttered aloud, half-statement half-query “Babe, we need to join a gym”.
Nevertheless, the spark was created. The call to action was sounded. The maybe we should alter our eating habits before we commit to the gym thang became the *ahem* more sensible course of action. Something had to be done. We headed to the grocery store post haste. Produce was bought on sight and in bulk. The grocery basket was the fruits and veggies equivalent of a Benetton ad. Our conversation home was a tactical one; construction of meal plans, future exercise regimens and next leveling this ‘rebirth of sexy’.
But the heady moments of inspiration never consider the all too real mundanities of execution. Soccer practice, science projects, drivers ed classes, or just plain laziness exhaustion all have ways of getting in the way. Like the McDonald’s bags that make their way to the back seat, so do our well intentioned meal plans. Our poor vegetable bin might as well have been the subarctic chill of Siberia, where our perishables were sentenced to perish.
And perish they did. Discolored, deflated, and downy, they probably festered in their own nutrients and vitamins before they got all gooey in the bag. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way though, we were supposed to get on that good ELijah Muhammad and learn how to eat to live as opposed to live to eat. Maybe we should just buy canned vegetables. At least when we don’t eat those we can give them to a food bank.
