The Candy Calendar

Aaaaiiiieeeee! It's the day after Halloween and there's candy everywhere! Heeeeellllp!

When I moved out here to Californ-eye-ay, I promptly gained about fifteen pounds. After all, I'd never had a car before, so in Boston and Chicago I walked everywhere; now suddenly I became one of those SoCal drive-around-the-corner types. Plus, age does what it does, and that robust metabolism that used to just burn weight whether I exercised or not slowly became less effective, something I could could keep in check in Chicago because I belonged to a health club across the street from where I worked. But here, I couldn't afford a health club and the weight practically leaped onto me. It was a bit like standing on a scale and watching as the dial just kept moving.

The weight gain seemed to stabilize at fifteen-plus, and then with a little bit of effort I dropped five--but there it stayed, for a long while. Until a couple months ago, when I watched Morgan Spurlock's Super Size Me and had a little bit of a freak-out. I went into the kitchen and did a little basic math: looked at everything I had eaten on just that one day, how many calories, how many grams of fat, etc. Made a few adjustments, mostly simple things like removing potato chips from my diet, that sort of thing--taking the absolute worst parts of what I ate, losing them, but not trying to fundamentally alter the diet itself. I had no inclination to go vegetarian or anything like that; I just wanted to see if little steps could produce measurable gains.

They did. Slowly slowly, pounds began to slip away. From week to week there was little difference when I got on the scale; but over the course of the past several months, I realized I had lost five pounds, then seven, then ten--I was back to my pre-Los Angeles weight. My belt was two notches tighter. I didn't feel so damned self-conscious about certain types of clothing. This, of course, made me ambitious: could I perhaps keep the trend going? Why, if I could lose another fifteen pounds, that would put me back at college weight! Wouldn't that be great?

But it's the day after Halloween, and everyone with excess candy is leaving it out in places where I can, you know, see it. I mean, what's a fella to do in the face of such endless temptation? Exercise some impulse control? Oh, please!

It's interesting, though--after a couple of those tiny M&M's packs, I began to feel a sugar buzz rushing up on me. Used to be I could pound back M&M's for hours; now I'm really feeling them. That, I think, is probably a very good thing; if anything is to help me master that particular impulse, feeling sick after too much candy can only be to my benefit.

But geez--Christmas is coming up, and that's when vendors start sending boxes of candy and donuts and cookies and things. Aaaaiiieeee!