Category: Banned From Mars

Anyone who knows me knows that I am a Crossfit fanatic. I train 5 days a week and compete any chance I get. Do I win? Well no. I don’t do terrible but I definitely don’t do as well as I see myself doing in my head. In my head I beat everyone; in reality I manage to not come in last. My problem is my diet. After nearly a year of trying to prove my coach wrong when it comes to the correlation between healthy eating and better results I’ve come to the conclusion that I suppose he may be on to something. Every so often my gym does a nutrition challenge and because I’ve always believed I could somehow defy the laws of anything that has to do with being healthy I opted out of all of them, until now. We’re starting one this coming Monday, May 9th and I’m going to try it, primarily because our summer competitions start at the beginning of June and I would like to do better than “well at least I didn’t come in last”. I also didn’t think it would be that hard because it’s not like I eat McDonald’s for breakfast, lunch and dinner – my eating habits aren’t so bad that I can’t substitute something with a vegetable.

Then I got the packet that detailed the rules, the points scale, and the foods we’re allowed to eat. Here’s how it works: you earn points in 6 categories – Nutrition, Exercise, Mobility, Hydration, Sleep and a Daily Challenge. Whoever earns the most points at the end of the 6 weeks wins money, and possibly a new body. Each category is worth 5 points and, obviously, you deduct points for not doing what’s required of each category. Exercise isn’t a problem, I’m at the gym everyday already. Mobility won’t be a problem either, it’s just stretching for 10 minutes a day. Easy. I drink shit tons of water a day so Hydration won’t get me. The Daily Challenge is things that they’ll ask us to do like meditate or make eye contact with a stranger, I think I can manage that. Then we get to the Sleep category. I’m usually in bed by about 10pm, but my insomnia wakes me up at midnight and then again at around 3am, so I need to get specifics on how that works because we’re supposed to get 7 straight hours and my brain doesn’t agree. Then there’s Nutrition. The whole reason I’m doing this is to clean up my diet for these competitions but it wasn’t until I actually saw the list of what we’re allowed to eat that I realized 2 things: 1) I eat like shit, and 2) I’m probably going to starve to death. The list of things I can eat is the exact opposite of what I eat/like to eat. I’m practically crying just thinking about Monday.

Before I go into what I can eat let me just explain my thought process when it comes to food. I don’t eat incredibly terrible, just like I don’t do too terrible in my competitions. But I love to eat and when the weekend comes around my food conscience goes completely out the window I eat whatever the hell I want with the mentality that Monday starts a new week of eating better. Eating better for me means protein, a vegetable, and then mac and cheese or something else delicious. In my head it counterbalances the protein and vegetable, so it cancels everything out and it’s like I didn’t eat at all. Brilliant, huh? Well apparently it doesn’t work like that.

This Monday really DOES mean the start of not just one week of eating better, but 6 weeks. Weekends included. 6 whole weeks. 6 weeks of no mac and cheese. 6 weeks of no mashed potatoes. 6 weeks of no soda. I’m not even much of a soda drinker but now that I can’t drink it I would like all the soda. I can’t have cheese which is basically a condiment in our household. No ice cream, no french fries, no cake, no chips, no anything that tastes like happiness. Wait! I haven’t gotten to the worst part. I can’t. Drink. Beer. No beer. Not one drop. That cool, refreshing beverage that serves as the best way to kick off a weekend will soon be a distant memory. I can drink wine but that’s not beer. No beer. I’m getting sadder and sadder.

Here’s what I can eat: things that stink, things that would taste better if they were fried, things that sound like I might be allergic to them, things that don’t sound like food, and for some reason I’m allowed butter and pork rinds. If I want something sweet I can eat fruit in the morning or I can have honey, but the list doesn’t have anything I can put honey on so it looks like I’ll have to drink it out of the bottle similar to an alcoholic who drinks mouthwash when they’ve run out of alcohol.

Now here’s the REALLY fun part: I have to do this unofficially (which means even if I make it I win nothing) because the program requires that you download Whatsapp and use it to post about the Daily Challenge or something. I’m not downloading that. I didn’t even know what it was until my coach explained it to me. Based on his explanation it’s my understanding that it works as sort of a private group message only you don’t have to get the notifications, you’re just bombarded with a million posts whenever you check it. I hate group text messages and when I get roped into one it makes me want my Nokia back, so I’m not going to use an app that makes me have to participate in text messaging’s worst feature. I get that I’m being a 5-year-old about the whole thing but that’s just one more app that I have to waste time staring at and I’m not interested. Besides, if that thing allows for more than 140 characters then the group is going to be real annoyed when they log on and find that rather than posting a simple message I have typed out a blog-like post that goes on for hours about how this diet is slowly killing me inside. Instead I’ll just share that on here with all of you, my tens of readers.

This nutrition challenge is supposed to be the start of a complete lifestyle change; I’ll be lucky if I make it a week. So at no point will this blog turn into a health and fitness blog. You won’t find healthy, delicious recipes here. You won’t read about any life altering epiphanies I’ve had, and if you do they’re coming from a state of delirium and I should probably seek medical treatment. And I hope you’re not looking for inspirational quotes to help you get through your own lifestyle change journey because if you are you need to stop reading and get on Instagram where you’ll find those horrendous profiles that share nothing but positive, babbling nonsense that are created by people who are one post away from a complete mental breakdown.

If you are, however, looking for something that serves as reinforcement that you’re not the only one suffering from the affliction known as “diet”, then you’ve come to the right place. Let’s complain and take this journey together. My goal is to write a weekly update and also make it through the first day. So stay tuned to find out how deep into a diet you have to be to completely lose your mind. Enjoy your weekend!

One day I would love to be considered/work as a comedic writer, but since I’m better at telling a story in person I figured a blog would be a great way to develop my skills, or some skills. As a kid I loved getting a laugh out of people and learned early on that my niche was sarcasm. I also learned that people don’t necessarily like when sarcasm is directed towards them or when they’re the subject of my stories.

In addition to telling stories and jokes I enjoyed listening to others who shared my interest in making people laugh. I wanted to learn about different types of humor, different ways to tell a story, all of it. I tried to surround myself with people who I found hilarious, as well as religiously watched Comic View and George Lopez so I could compare jokes with my fellow funny friend, Jade. D.L. Hughely taught me to say what I was thinking, high school taught me that this approach comes with ass-kicking threats and exclusion. A lot of my jokes/stories made me pretty unpopular which propelled me into a phase where I would only tell stories that happened to me or family members that I thought were funny but didn’t contain any negativity about anyone in the story – I pretty much sold out. Luckily I still had my hilarious best friend, Ileen, to bounce my mean jokes/stories off of.

Well, a week into this phase I had already had it. Positive funny things don’t really happen to me or people I know and being nice just didn’t come naturally to me (and still doesn’t). Eventually my well ran dry and I had nothing to offer; no stories, no jokes, fucking nothing. I needed material and I was getting desperate so I started to go through stories in my head that I’d heard and believed I could make more funny. After finally deciding on one it was time to get back to my one woman show. While standing around with a couple of girls I somehow managed to segue the conversation to a starting point for my story.

As I began I thought, “if I can really sell this maybe this can be my new thing: taking stories and making them better!”

The story was about standing at Hollywood Video (R.I.P.) and watching some guy driving super slow trying to impress in his Impala and his hubcap popped off and rolled away, which took away from his coolness.

It was actually a pretty ridiculous story now that I think about it. Not ridiculous in that it never could’ve happened, I mean ridiculous as in who cares and also why did I care. I told the story and waited for the roaring laughter, which was extremely presumptuous of me because I couldn’t even remember if I had laughed when I heard the story. As a matter of fact I couldn’t remember where I heard it. Until…..

 

When I saw their faces it hit me. It was their story. I had just told a story to the people it actually happened to, only my version included more exaggerated gestures and a hilarious reaction from the driver. But when you’re re-telling someone else’s story and trying to pass it off as your own they catch on pretty quick. One of the girls finally chimed in and said “uh, are you sure that happened to you because that exact same thing happened to me?” I was caught and what followed was a blur of awkward. I do remember that my excuses ranged from “what a coinkydink!” to “maybe we were both there and didn’t see each other!” Each excuse sounded more stupid than the last. The girls knew I was full of shit and laughter ensued.

After that I immediately went back to my sarcasm/shit talking stories and jokes. I figured being unpopular for my jokes was way better than being unpopular for copyright infringement, a valuable lesson to learn at 14.

So let that be a lesson to you kids, and the Fat Jewish. Don’t steal stories, or jokes, or memes and act like you created them so people think you’re funny because you’re not and need to give credit to the people who are ACTUALLY RESPONSIBLE for the memes/jokes/stories. Listen, just don’t steal, OK? It makes you a colossal dick.

Years after I graduated high school and moved away from my shame I, ironically, found myself in a runaway hubcap situation. I witnessed it for real and everything. In the early 2000s the show “Pimp My Ride” tricked people into thinking that all you needed to do to make your beat-up old car cool was fill it with bullshit from Best Buy and Spencer’s. And if I remember correctly the show helped launch the era of the Spinners, the wheels that double spun while in motion. Now the wheels, I’m told, were extremely expensive and I think could put you under hyptnosis if stared at too long. The price didn’t keep people away because I remember a cheaper version I call Fpinners making an appearance not long after the real ones. The difference between Spinners and Fpinners was rather than spin inside, the Fpinners had a smaller piece of hubcap that stuck out and spun outside of the wheel. It was like 2 hubcaps stacked on top of each other. Those wheels were straight out of the Thunderdome and I think should’ve been illegal. One day I was driving down the highway when I noticed an older model car and its Fpinners approaching in the lane to the right of me at a high rate of speed. I guess Fpinners top out at a certain speed because one of theirs popped off and rolled into oncoming traffic. I don’t know if you’ve seen these things but when separated the outside piece basically turns into a landmine for tires. Luckily the wheel wasn’t anywhere near me but through my rear view mirror I did get to see a couple of cars dodge it like the banana peel in Mario Kart. I don’t know if that piece of hubacp got anyone but I do know that I was so traumatized by my fake story fiasco that I didn’t want to tell anyone about my real encounter with a hubcap because I thought it would be like the boy who cried wolf, only I’d be ripped apart by humans. No thanks. So there you go kids, don’t steal.