Welcome to 30 for 30, a photo-a-day series in which I reminisce and cringe at the pivotal moments of my thirties as I go gently and quietly into the dying light of my 40th birthday. Today’s rather boring entry is just a photo of some whey protein and a shake, but even just looking at it, my lips recall the chalky, vaguely chocolatey taste. I remember…
I remember exactly where I was sitting when I realized I had gotten fat. The year was 2009. The place was the couch. The thing in my hand was a pint of ice cream. I decided then and there that I didn’t want to be fat anymore, and I was going to do something about it, right after I finished the ice cream.
By the time 2010 started, I was halfway through my first round of P90X and doing my best to follow the dietary guidelines. Over those many months, I learned some hard truths about life:
- Healthy food doesn’t taste good
- Eating food that tastes good will kill you
- You’ll never be happy again
Tony Horton had some pretty strict rules about what I could and couldn’t eat, so every morning I would find myself eating eggs and legumes. Or spinach and egg. Or legumes and more legumes. My only vice in those days were these sugar-enriched whey protein shakes.
They were my oasis in a desert full of crap food. And, as the ultimate irony, they were crap themselves.
I hated eating healthy.
I would go so far as to say I was traumatized by it. Here I was, thirty years old, and already my life was over. I saw a future of healthy eating stretch out ahead of me, and because I was eating healthy, I was probably going to live longer, which only depressed me more.
The suffering was absolute.
