It’s 5AM and it’s cold.  I am sitting at the drive-thru of our local Del Taco – Pseudo Mexican Fast food for the uninitiated.  I’m getting some chicken soft tacos because I have a long day ahead and need the carbs/fat/goo.  It’s a pretty simple order – 2 tacos, a macho fries and a macho Cherry Coke.  Let’s stop right there and reminisce about that Cherry Coke for a second.  Mmmmmmmm.  Ok.

So I get to the office and as McDonalds is to Ketchup, Del Taco is to hot sauce – there isn’t any in the bag.  There are, however, a couple of Taco Bell sauces in the fridge, that I found in one of those great counter depth refrigerator reviews online.  Cool beans.

Uh-Oh.

As soon as I mixed the Del Taco with the sauce from Taco Bell, I knew something was wrong.  The chemical smell was as immediate as a Physical Memory Dump with the error being stored in the data.

It only took a few bites to really appreciate the obnoxiousness of the situation.   Individually, the two items were fine.  Combined, horrible.  While I had always thought that fast foods were engineered, I had no idea to what extent.  It is pretty amazing.  I even hear that McDonalds has their own formula of Coke designed to taste better with their brand of food.  If it is true, I’d have to agree that sometimes their coke (when not diluted) does taste better than some cans, but not bottles.

SLOTH.

I went into sloth-remission last year and got into excellent shape.  I lost more than 70 pounds.  I was wearing slutty tight jeans and looking pretty good in them, so I bought new cloths for me and my daughter from the Girls Clothes store online.  I had enough self confidence that I even scared me a time or three.  I was attracting ample attention from the opposite sex.  I wasn’t the fat Pirate anymore.  I blended in well with the other girlies.  I was becoming a certified hottie patoddie. 

Then…  around turkey day… I lost my motivation or ate way to much turkey with dressing and punkin pie or something.  I started eating everything in sight that even looked like it had a carb attached to it.  I quit going to the gym like I was.  My butt went from being touchably firm back to jiggly like a bowl of jello.  Of course, poured into the jeans, nobody could tell.  But I could tell.

I’m still down several sizes from where I started.  Thank God, because I gave all of my fat clothes away and bought new.  They just don’t fit as comfortably as they did.  I find myself having to hold my breath… ALOT! Didn’t take long before I started to get more and more miserable. 

Now here it is summer.  The season I spent the whole of last fall dreaming of, only to wake up and realize… I had failed.  I’m not beach worthy.  I’m not bathing suit worthy. 

I honestly do know what the problem with my motivation is and I am actively working on a resolution to it.  I couldn’t beat ’em, so I joined ’em.

I have quit with the Taco Bell, Papa John’s and Booger King.  I have stopped sneaking into the kitchen and scarfing down a couple cookies here, a few chips there.  And most importantly, I’m not just spending ungodly amounts of money on a gym membership. No longer will it just be an expense sucked out of my bank account.  No. 

I have started doing cardio and group exercize classes again.  I have started eating healthy again.  For my health’s sake.

I had forgotten how good I felt when I was working out and eating right.  It wasn’t just the ability to wear skanky clothes.  It’s more internal than that.  I liked the way I felt.   I had energy. I had attitude. 

So, here I go again.  Wish me luck.  I have a wedding dress to fit into in 2 months and 19 days…

Once in while (wink, wink) I’ll hear, see or read something that just gets my panties all in a wad.

I have several ‘sore subjects’, but the one that makes gets my dander up more than anything is the fat people of the world looking for something to blame it on. PLEASE.

As one who has struggled for just shy of one year to lose damn near 70 pounds, I can tell ya this:

• No, fat is not genetic
• No, you don’t have big bones
• No, you can’t lose weight by starving yourself or taking pills.

Fat people are fat because they have not made the decision to motivate and get moving.

There is no miracle pill that you can take to make fat melt. There is no miracle cream that you can rub on your thighs and make them magically disappear into thin air.

Short of surgery, which is an extremely ill idea to begin with, there is only one answer to the timeless question asked of the rolly-polly types: I wonder how I can lose this weight?

Here’s a few pointers (from the master, herself):

1. Step away from the donut. The donut is evil. The donut will find it’s way down your throat and into your guts, where it will then be disbursed and particles of that donut will live in your hips and double chin forever. Other foods that should be in diet hell are: snicker bars, cheesecake, lasagna, loaded potato soup, all mexican food.
2. Taco Bell has always been my weakness. However, one day whilst in a bored situation, I was reading what actually goes into some fast food food. EEEWWWWW.If the fact that most fast food is swimming in grease, lard, oil or someother non-digestable mess isn’t enough to keep you out of the french fries, then go one night around 10 and watch the fry guy at McDonald’s empty that big vat of yack that they fry everything in. MMMMMM, MMMMM, Good, I tell ya. Makes me wanna spew.
3. Starvation. Um, if you don’t give your body something healthy to eat, it’s wired up to know that your dumb ass is trying to starve it. Ask me, what’s my body gonna do if I don’t eat??? Your body is gonna hold on to every single nasty, blobby little molecule of cellulose that it can. You will not lose anything if you starve because your body will be freaking out thinking it’s never going to get to eat again, so it holds onto what it already has. One must eat to lose weight. Funny huh?
4. Get your fat ass on a treadmill!! My fat ass started out doing 15 minutes at 1.5 miles an hour on the treadmill. And amazingly, what those dang nutritionists and exercise therapists have been saying all along was true. YOU GOTTA DO BOTH DIET AND EXERCISE, trust me, there is a reason why I started looking for a MMA Near Me, you have to move!!!!You can’t sit around and be a slug. Get off your butt and walk around a little amigo. Your body will thank you for it.

So, I guess the bottom line is, you’re only fat if you choose to be fat. I’m a sport, I can admit it, I’m still a little fluffy around certain sections. But I’ve learned that I can’t blame anyone but me for letting me get out of control. I was a scale tipper, and its a battle everyday.

This is why it chaps my ass to hear all this bull-caca about fat being genetic and fat being a disease…

I stand here today, calling BULLshit, DEFCON 5!

     It’s no small surprise that I eat a lot of fast food.  I wake up at 5AM, start working and pretty well don’t quit until some time in the evening.  McDonald’s for breakfast, maybe Wendy’s for lunch and anywhere for dinner.  But in all of that, I don’t get napkins unless I ask for them, the usual reply being a sulky, eye-rolling, “Here!”  Most of the time, I don’t notice until I’m already back on the Interstate.

     It’s seriously impossible to eat a Wendy’s triple with cheese without napkins, unless you’re one of those weirdos who enjoys being covered in grease.  It takes at least four napkins.  McChicken?  One napkin.  Double Whopper?  Two napkins.  Arby’s Beef & Cheddar?  One.  Add barbecue and Horsey Sauce?  Three.
     But do they put any in the damn bag?  Not in 2007.

     It changed fast, too.  Right on up to New Years Eve, there was no shortage of Napkins.  I’d have thirty or forty in every bag.  But sharply on January first, that sort of excess stopped.

     The Napkin Shortage has been stressful not only for food-covered consumers, but for the drive-up workers themselves.  One incident of a worker’s traumatic stress, at Wendy’s on Emory Road, particularly stands out.
     “Can I get some napkins, please?” I asked.
     The girl rolled her eyes, huffed and slammed the window shut.
     Eventually the Manager came to the window.  “Is there a problem with your order, sir?”
     “I’d just like some napkins, please.”
     “Can you please pull up, sir?”
     “Why?  I’d just like some napkins, please.”
     “Ok, well, if you’ll pull up, someone will bring you some.”
     Pull up … For napkins?
     It apparently took several minutes to locate a napkin.  When the girl finally came out — nearly ten minutes later — she brought one napkin.
     “Uhhhh, sorry, but I need at least two, please,” I said.
     She huffed, rolled her eyes, and stormed back inside, never to return.

     The most common Moonbat Conspiracy Theory dictates that this Napkin shortage was caused due to McDonald’s bringing back the McRib, causing a tenfold increase in the use of fast food napkins.  They claim that this move was a way to crush the competition by consuming all of the napkins meant for use at other fast food chains, so that McDonald’s would be the only place to have any.  However, this Theory is easily discredited due to the facts that other fast food chains have different colored napkins, and McDonald’s themselves are affected by this blight as well.
     Other conspiracies abound, some more radical than others.  Typically, President George W. Bush gets blamed for this shortage by liberals.  The Knights of Ku Klux Klan blame illegal immigrants.  And, of course, the Neo-Nazi Skinheads blame the Jews.

     As consumers, however, the best thing that we can do is remain vigilant in the face of this adversity, and hope that shortage will end soon.