Well, my highly anticipated monthly cheat day was today. And it was not worth it. In fact, it just might have been the Worst. Cheat. Day. Ever.

I can hear you asking: “Awww… what’s wrong, honky? didn’t enjoy eating all that food?”

It’s definitely a stupid problem to have. Once a month I plan to let myself off the leash and eat whatever I want, no limits. Cheat day! For the past couple of times, my cheat day has been planned for the fifth day of the month. Well, that’s out the window now. But I get ahead of myself. Let me recap the day, and explain myself.

My Two Breakfasts

I started the day off “right,” not by cheating, but by getting ready to work out. Pre-WOD, I had a small version of my favorite quick Paleo-Zone breakfast: smoked salmon and banana. No complaints about that! I always feel like a champ when I eat that way.

The trouble started with my second breakfast, the first meal of my cheat day.

For my second breakfast I had been having all sorts of visions of salty, fatty, gooey, sticky, starchy love. Sweet potato pancakes at Tupelo Honey. The breakfast croissant at Sunny Point. I wanted to have a breakfast that included forbidden cheese, bread, and sugar, and I wanted quality.

But no! It was a work-day and I had limited time between workout and my first class. So instead of searching out the best off-limits breakfast I could afford, I did something truly American, truly Southern. I went for fast food. I went for the best fast-food breakfast option which was closest to my house and my normal commute to school: Bojangles Chicken and Biscuits.

Determined to do something extreme, or even Epic as a facebook acquaintance suggested was appropriate on an occasion like this, I ordered two breakfast sandwiches (the steak biscuit, with egg, and the bacon, egg and cheese biscuit), AND a small order of two Bo’berry biscuits (blueberry biscuits soaked in sugary frosting).

Now, in the past, I have truly enjoyed Bojangles. Not that I ever regarded it as anything other than what it is: fast food. It is like all industrial-scale, institutional fast food. What I had never noticed before was how truly awful this food is! I’ve been dining on a “flexible-Paleo-Zone” dietary plan for many months. I mostly eat clean as a whistle: portion control, natural foods, whole foods, minimally processed foods, the works.

As I began to eat these Bojangles foodertainment items, all I could taste was chemical crap. The biscuits were salty bricks of paste, tasting every bit of their ingredients: sodium bicarbonate mixed into dough of cheap flour and white grease. This was especially true of the Bo’berry biscuits, which were slightly undercooked and cheap tasting; in no way do I suspect that the “blueberries” are real; the most authentic ingredient in there was the sugar in the frosting. The meat on the “steak” (chicken fried) sandwich was so highly processed I could tell it was mostly fat, and it had a lemony taste, a result no doubt of the ammonia that is used to prevent e-coli infections in ground beef. The only things resembling real food here were the eggs on the steak, and the eggs and bacon on the bacon egg and cheese biscuit; but the gooey processed American cheese on that biscuit literally has the mouth-feel of plastic.

Like a crazy fool I stuffed down all this food. According to the nutrition information published on the Bojangles website, this particular breakfast had 1700 calories, including 43 grams of protein, 121 grams of fat, and 122 grams of carbohydrates.

After that meal, I should not have eaten again. I should have just licked my wounds, waited for my hormones to resettle, and gotten over my desire to cheat. Maybe do better next month. But even though my stomach and intestines felt bloated, and uncomfortable, I still had visions. Visions of forbidden foods. So I ate more food. Oh did I ever!

Lunch: The Dining Hall at School

The next meal was actually far worse than the first, if you can imagine. It being a Monday, I was trapped at school all day. I was starting to realize that having your cheat day on a work-day is probably a bad idea. With only a one hour period between classes, at 1:00 pm, I had almost nowhere to go for lunch. Very limited options. And among them, I chose badly.

About 4 hours after I had finished the Bo’berry biscuits, I decided to visit the Pittman Dining Hall at Mars Hill College, where I work.

I have mostly been denying myself meals at Pittman for the past 9 months, and have benefited enormously from this. During that period, I have lost 40 lbs and gained back my health and self-respect. So this was a… pick your cliché: trip down memory lane, a visit to an old flame, a return to the scene of the crime.

In the old days, I would go to Pittman and indulge myself in whatever they had on offer. Telling myself, “it’s not so bad, really.” But today. Today, I felt as though the scales had fallen from my eyes.

Aside from the salad bar, which didn’t interest me today, nothing on offer at Pittman was in a “natural” state. On one side: hamburgers, hot-dogs, and “rib-meat” pressed sandwich patties, along with the usual array of buns, crinkle cut fries, mashed potatoes, etc. On the other side: stuffed giant shells, meat sauce, buns, various allegedly vegetable casseroles. Then there was pizza, a chili and nacho bar, and the dessert cart.

Although everything was permitted, nothing appealed. I took a bowl of chili, forbidden because of the beans in it, and topped it with cheddar cheese. That at least looked reliable. I also took some round corn tortilla chips, which turned out to be extremely stale. That was no surprise. But it got me thinking about the fact that the students have to endure this sub-par fare on a daily basis. I took an ugly slice of sausage and pepperoni pizza, a few french fries, a brownie, a little brown cookie bar. And I sat down.

Taking a bite or two from the pizza-slice, I realized that this soggy piece of junk was entirely false from its top to its bottom, a simulacrum of a classic Italian-American dish, this triangle of rubberized processed cheese and meat and uncooked dough was unformed matter masquerading as food. I threw it down. I choked down a couple of soggy dense tongue-heavy french fries, already cold on my plate. Then pushed them aside. I ate the chili. Then I took a bite of my brownie. Duncan Hines himself would have been embarrassed by this black mix of chemical impostors. The taste of aluminum baking salts was its most prominent note, besides sugar. Definitely not chocolate, egg, butter, and flour! I wonder: were any of those ingredients actually present? I could not force myself to continue investigating it. The little blondie was an equal disappointment.

To save this trip to the dining hall from complete disaster, I sampled the banana cream pudding. This at least, I reasoned, would be true to its inner nature. And indeed, it was passable. It seemed to have real whipped cream on its top, it contained slices of actual banana, and that old reliable industrial cookie, generic Nilla Wafers. And the pudding was not bad for artificial banana flavored goo.

Dinner at a Local Chain Restaurant: Papas N’ Beer

By the end of lunch I had, I see now by looking back at the damage recorded on my food journal, equaled or exceeded my usual average daily calorie intake, with about 2800 calories before 2:00 pm. For you Zone heads, let the record show that these calories comprised about 13 blocks of protein, 56 blocks of fat, and 27 blocks of carbs. I went so far out of the Zone that my head was spinning, my eyes were having difficulty focusing. My innards felt stretched and strained, as if I was a holiday goose being prepared for a diabolical feast.

My cheat day had become not a glorious occasion of wanton self-indulgence, but a perverted exercise in self-discipline. For I did not stop. But I forced myself to proceed with this ill-planned misadventure in all-too-American “cuisine.”

After running some afternoon errands and “working up an appetite,” like hundreds of other residents of Asheville did this evening, I took my family to a local chain restaurant called “Papas and Beer,” which serves big platters of pseudo-Mexican food, giant steins of beer, and boasts decent tortilla chips and a self-serve salsa bar.

Did we have fun among the obese and soon-to-be-obese diners at Papas and Beer? I cannot say so.

For me, the most amazing moment of the evening came when the waiter delivered our entrees on platters the size of garbage can lids. The food, regardless of the substance from which it was made, had a uniform beige to brown color. Not an antioxidant, not a color from mother nature’s rich palate anywhere in sight. Gazing down at the huge portions, and the bland offal on those plates, it occurred to me that real the miracle of the American diet is that anyone survives past 40 by eating it.

My two and a half year old daughter mostly ignored her french-fries and chicken strips. What can I deduce from this? Perhaps that her taste buds have yet to be corrupted by American foods. My wife picked at her food.

And I, well, nobody has ever accused me of being a lightweight eater. I wolfed everything down, leaving only a pile of rice on my plate.

The chips were good. But does anyone need 4 oz. of corn chips? I don’t think so. After all, a 4 oz. portion of typical corn chips has 28g of fat and 72g of carbs. Check please!

The queso sauce was absolutely foul. As it cooled, it began to return to the state it had before it was heated up for us; was this its way of reminding us that processed “cheeses” like generic white Velveeta do not deserve the sobriquet “dairy product”?

My carne asada steak was passable. The refried beans were probably decent. I no longer crave them, the way I once did, when I was a more enthusiastic consumer of “Mexican” food. And the white rice, colored reddish brown by an industrial spice package, was an uninspired salty starch heap. Nobody needs to prove anything by eating such fare!

Aftermath…

My stomach hurt so bad after this meal that I just wanted the pain to go away. But who can wait? I knew that I wanted dessert as well.

It was then that I remembered, or realized, how I had once become so fat. I used to “enjoy” that feeling of bloated fullness. In fact, it was what told me I had enjoyed a “good” meal. But there had been nothing good in any of the food I had eaten today. Perhaps, a few nutrients here and there: in salsa, in beans, in bacon, in steak. But mostly, I had gone out in search of food, and been served industrialized food product instead. Bait and switch!

Was this what my fellow diners felt tonight? Is this how Americans regularly eat? Possibly. But not likely. People eat more moderately than I had. They pace themselves more. And they get used to the huge portions. As their waistlines expand, their stomachs and intestines expand along with them. So my discomfort was the discomfort of the wild man, or the expatriate, having been served the unfamiliar food of “civilization” after a long absence. My reaction should be the normal reaction (except for the extreme quantities I had eaten exaggerated the experience for me) but everybody else is inured to the diet.

… And Dessert

Not do deny myself (as if!) a full dining experience of the day, I took a late evening walk to the Dripolator coffee shop, and picked up a piece of Peanut Butter Cream Pie. And I served myself a scoop or two (about 1/2 pint) of fine Green and Black’s organic vanilla ice cream.

Finally, I felt as though something I ate was good. Sugar is poison, no doubt. But the ingredients in these dishes were quality. And they were prepared with love. So, even though it hurt, I swallowed the love down, while watching an episode of Battlestar Galactica.

Analysis

I will cherish the lessons I learned on this day. It was the worst cheat day ever, but it was an amazing tour of the decrepit state of the American diet. If you want to, in this country you can completely avoid eating anything real, or healthy, or true. When you leave your mother’s arms, you can leave nutrition and health behind and never look back. If you want to. God help us.

From now on, I am going to abandon my “cheat day on the 5th day of the month” plan, and move it to the first Saturday of the Month. I can cook myself higher quality cheat meals, and take the time to seek out purveyors of quality poison. A pact with myself.

Final tally for the day: 5363 calories (approximately), 13% protein, 51% fat, 36% carbohydrates.