I love eating and believe that food is one of the great pleasures of this material existence (right up there with sleep and sex). Fortunately, I am blessed with a metabolism and genes that tend to shape my body toward a lean muscularity, making me one of those people capable of eating and eating without much weight gain. I have proven this in the past by devouring entire blocks of cheddar cheese in a day or two and whole packages of Oreo's in one sitting (I possess, or am possessed by, an infamous sweet tooth) with little or no increase in mass.

So why does Sarah think that I have an eating disorder*!? Because I often eat nothing or next to it during week/work days and I tend to fret about calorie and fat counts when I do eat. Monday through Wednesday of this week, for instance, I have ingested, during the day, naught but a cup of coffee (highly sugared), a single Nature Valley chewy granola bar (140 calories) and an 8 oz. can of Dole pineapple chunks (60 calories). I always eat a healthy and typically delicious (when prepared by Sarah) evening meal, however, as well as frequent deserts of one sort or another (did I mention my notorious sweet tooth?).

I haven't weighed myself in a while but I would guess that I am somewhere between 185 and 195 pounds. At about 6'1" in height, I suppose this weight is normal but when I look in the mirror I only see the places where I am rounder than once I was. My washboard stomach is long gone and the area commonly known as "love handles" has definitely become more grippable around my waist. This rounding off can no doubt be attributed to the aging process - as I approach 36 years of age it is to be expected, I suppose, that my teenage body will eventually fade into a middle aged one (I started losing my hair to male pattern baldness when I was 22 but that is another story).

I certainly do not want to remain 18, or even 25, forever. But I also refuse to surrender to the middle age spread. Of course, as I'm sure Sarah will argue, this obsession with fat grams etc. began in my mid twenties and some years before middle age loomed.

Is this an eating disorder? As I have noted before, Sarah is usually dead on with her diagnostic abilities but I don't feel disordered and wonder if this is not a mental issue so much as a physical one. Perhaps I simply don't need more than one meal a day. As I write this (1/30/03 @ 3:15 p.m.) I have eaten nothing solid all day but drunk only one cup of coffee and a can of KMX energy drink. I do not feel hungry and, at the moment at least, little will power is needed to avoid snacking.

Perhaps I am mentally ill, however, as it was the article linked below (from a recent issue of the Bay Area's Wave Magazine), about the pro anorexia movement (yes, that's right, the pro anorexia movement), that rekindled my fear of calories.

The Skeleton Crew

*! EDIT (2/1/03): Discussing this post with Sarah, I was mortified to learn that I am guilty of misquoting her in the text above. She does not believe that I suffer from an eating disorder as I indicated. Rather she stated that I am "mentally ill", sometimes more so than others, in regards to food. The term "eating disorder" is, apparently, an artifact of my tiny mind. Could it be I used the words "eating disorder" in an unconscious effort to attract hits on the term "eating disorder" to this blog?