Confessions: Vanity Over Gluttony

It feels like a while since I last confessed. Sure, confession isn’t a part of my religious heritage. But I’ve long held that Jews are culturally very similar to Catholics. We’ve got strong family ties, a deep love of food, and a penetrating sense of guilt.

There’s some old story about growing up in Brooklyn on the border of Italian and Jewish immigrant neighborhoods, and some young Jewish boy thinking the Italians were just the Jews with better food.

Anyway, my tradition here on the blog is to publicly confess something when I’ve done something worth feeling guilty about. Actually, I’m not quite sure that what follows exactly fits into that framework. Mostly because I’m not entirely convinced that all of the seven deadly sins are entirely evil.

Lately, I’ve been feeling like a bit of a glutton. But here’s what a lot of people may not realize. I’ll never fully succumb to Gluttony, largely because the sin of Vanity will hold me back.

After college, I saw some pictures of myself, and I was horrified. “Why didn’t anyone tell me I had grown a belly?” For some reason, I was never quite able to see it myself as it was growing. But there it was in the pictures. A round little pot belly, which likely came from all the beer I was drinking. Although it could have also been from the late night cheesesteaks.

Ooh. Late night cheesesteaks were the best. But maybe not quite as good as those super early morning bacon egg and cheese hoagies. The fine folks of Philly really know how to live.

Anyhow, the nightly beer drinking eventually stopped, I adopted more of a walking lifestyle, and my belly flattened out a bit. It’s been a long time since college, but I still technically wear the same sized pants as I did back then. Granted, I think part of that is that clothing manufacturers have taken some liberties over the year with the accuracy of their sizing.

The grim reality is that I were going to be custom fitted for a pair of slacks, I might not like the reading on the tailor’s measuring tape. That said, it’s taken me a long time, but I’m quite comfortable with my body these days. At least, I’m comfortable with it as it is now.

The thing that keeps me in my 34” waist pants is sheer vanity. I refuse to buy larger clothes. So every morning I get on the scale, and if I see a bad trend, I shut down the bad eating habits. There are no starvation diets in the Fussy household. But sweets are out. Extra fats are out. Reasonable portion sizes are in. Seconds are out. Fried foods are out. Booze is out. Water is in.

And this new cruelty continues until I right the ship.

After all the Chanukah feasting, the warning signs are going off. I’ve weighed in north of 190, and I’m finding it hard to be moderate. Once you grow accustomed to eating badly, it can be a real challenge to dial it back slowly. So even after Chanukah ended, I went and had a deep fried buffalo burger at Swifty’s. Then today I had the beef short rib poutine at The City Beer Hall. Tonight I’ll have pizza, wings, and mozzarella sticks at Tavern Time. Egads!

But after tonight, that’s it.

My goal will be to be good until Christmas. That’s when I’ll be down in Pennsylvania and eating my winter allotment of scrapple, kielbasa, and a heap of other locally made meats from the village butcher.

Presumably, I’ll need to do some corrections when I return from those celebrations as well. Because, dammit, I’m not buying new pants.