Nighttime Eating Is the Only Thing Keeping Me From Six-Pack Abs
Well... and just regular eating.
I’ve been trying to lose 10 pounds for the last five years. Most people have some degree of insecurity about their physical appearance; whenever we get dressed to go out, we will try to convince ourselves that our outfits flatter our figures by gravitating toward our mirrors and posing in positions that would be objectively absurd in any other social context. And body insecurities are all relative. I might be the goal weight of some guys who just want to be built like a bag of potato chips. However, I’m convinced that after I was shot out of my mother’s womb, she cradled me in her arms and whispered into my ears, “You’ll need to get out of the stroller and be more active.”
There is no straight male support group for losing weight—Reddit isn’t very nice and my friends just laugh at me. Outside any Lululemon is a hoard of women in yoga pants telling each other that they’re queens and that weight is just a number and they could easily slip into a smaller, more aspirational waistline and let green juice take care of the rest. If a woman is alone in the woods and says she is fat, a manifest group immediately appears. If a man was alone in the woods and told himself he was fat, their friend would pop out from behind a tree and say, “… and you got titties!”
It also doesn’t help matters that wellness nuts engage in exhausting/brave acts of personal corniness and look objectively ridiculous. The people who carry around 40 oz. water bottles around the office along with packets of AG1 and will say, you gotta hydrate, and gut health is crucial to your well-being, which is passive-aggressive for, you fat piece of shit … I’m better than you! As someone who drinks roughly a gallon of water a day in relatively normal-sized containers, I can only assume a purchase this depraved is the result of deep personal trauma, and the Stanley Cup was a more cost-effective option than therapy. The people hauling these metal jugs around are still fretting over that time they called their boss “mom” in an email and accidentally CC’d All Staff, or that magical first date that went off the rails after they tried to pinch off a stealth fart and a little crouton plopped out.
The prospect of losing weight is shockingly grim because I know what to eat, but I am unable and unwilling to do it consistently. I would also argue it’s because of wokeism. But last month, my girlfriend and I watched the “You Are What You Eat” documentary on Netflix, and the horrors of factory farming combined with the empirical data behind plant-based diets as the obvious healthy life choice convinced her to halfheartedly convert to the religion of vegetarianism. I have also embarked on the lackadaisical transition to eat like a rabbit, which has somewhat pleased her vegetarian friend who hectors me whenever I eat a veal parm sandwich in front of her, but it’s easy to rationalize this choice because the flavor is in the animal cruelty. I do feel marginally better since shaking up my diet, but I refuse to quit pepperoni pizza.
Also, it is worth noting that anyone can retroactively rationalize any meal into a health-conscious choice:
After pizza: “It was thin crust!”
After a milkshake: “Dairy’s good for you!”
Chicken tendies: “Hey, it’s protein!”
Bottle of red wine: “If one glass a day is recommended for heart health, imagine what a whole bottle can do!”
Snorting a line of Adderall: “I needed to focus on my FitBit stats!”
Trader Joe’s lasagna pie cookie cake: “The label says ‘All Natural!’”
My true kryptonite, however, is nighttime eating. While I’m binging some show on my MacBook, I’ll sneak downstairs at 11 PM to make a little charcuterie board of whatever’s in the fridge and/or pantry. It will be a hair-brained combo of sun-dried tomato Triscuts, a dollop of roasted red pepper hummus, a slice of Havarti cheese, half-pound of prosciutto and salami, pickles, graham crackers, white cheddar Cheeze-Its, marshmallows, Sour Patch Kids, and snickerdoodles. I’ll bring it upstairs to my bed like I’m a waitress at the Sonic drive-in. Then, I’ll look in the mirror and try to convince myself that this is just a little snack. I repeat this process five more times throughout the night.
I didn’t realize it was an addiction until I stayed with my parents for a few months during the pandemic. Before I reach the kitchen, I’d sneak around the house like a mouse because there is nothing more embarrassing than being caught in the middle of a late-night snack by someone who isn’t a nighttime eater. But once I swing open the double panel doors and see a neatly assembled shelf of leftovers, produce, and snacks, I’ll rummage through that shit like it’s January 6. I’m like the wannabe right-wing influencers wandering through the Capitol Building—rocking a Viking hat, armed with a lacrosse stick and ready to drop a deuce on Nancy Pelosi’s desk—on a vigilant search for onion dip and Pecca Romano cheese. In the middle of this glorious excursion, my mom will emerge from the shadows of a darkened hallway with a look of scornful judgment on her face as I stand frozen in the glow of my fridge. I immediately think to myself, This fucking bitch!! And then I realize that I’m saying this about my mother.
She begins interrogating me with questions I don’t have an answer to:
Why didn’t you eat dinner?
You were sitting across the table from me.
Why didn’t you eat enough?
You didn’t make enough!
Why don’t you work on controlling your eating patterns?
I swear to God, I will have child services here in 10 minutes! (I was 29 at the time.)
Oddly enough, I don’t succumb to the nighttime hankering to grub whenever I smoke weed because my anxiety kicks in and I get incredibly self-conscious about what I eat or just my general dietary habits. After I sling back 12 Coors Lights, however, I will shamelessly gorge on an entire 16” pizza in 20 minutes. Now that I’m less of a night owl, my nighttime eating habits don’t come with a side of blacking-back-in embarrassment, like eating a makeshift meatball sub and then remembering that I unironically said the word splendiferous to a woman at the bar before telling her I could pull off capris. My drunk munchies descended to a point where I would walk through McDonald’s drive-thrus pretending to be a Ford F-150 just to get a few of those dollar menu cheeseburgers—not even for a Big Mac. I’d be flopping around and flailing my arms like I have cerebral palsy to trigger sensors that I wasn’t sure even existed, and then I puffed up my chest to appear large on the camera. I would yell into the speaker to make it seem like I’m talking from a vehicle. The employees probably thought I was a crackhead in a bumfight. I soon realized that this was a point in my life that marked an unsustainable pace of degeneracy and scumbaggery—no one walks through a drive-thru in a suit and tie to get a sausage egg McMuffin before they get a promotion.
All of this is to say that regardless of this level of introspection, I went to see Anthony Jeselnik perform his Bones and All routine at Massey Hall on Saturday, and after, I walked a few blocks to grab a bacon cheeseburger from an A&W. But with the lettuce and tomato, it was basically a salad. It was also 11 PM.
Tates chocolate chip cookies at night are my 10 lbs 🙄
Great laugh out loud piece.
Loved it.