Days off hazardous to your waistline

At least once or twice a year, you're likely to read a newspaper article or see a TV report on some poor person who has gained an enormous amount of weight. Getting the person out of the house becomes a major project that involves ambulance personnel, firefighters, police and the Army Corps of Engineers.

I used to wonder how anybody could eat his or her way into such a situation. However, I gradually came to realize that this was possible. All it took was spending vacation days at home.

If I stayed home year-round, I would gain so much weight that they would probably have to put hinges on my roof to get me out.

If you walk into a bookstore, you will discover that approximately half of the books are cookbooks and the rest have to do with dieting.

Some celebrities have even written diet books to tell you how you can lose all the weight you gained by cooking and eating the recipes contained in their cookbooks.

I'm not saying that my eating habits are good enough that I would ever be tempted to write a book on what to cook or how to diet, but most of the time my diet is at least fair to middling. That is because I spend most of my waking hours at work and not at home.

On work days, I generally eat breakfast around 6:30 a.m., lunch about 12:30 p.m. and my evening meal around 6:30p.m. When meal time approaches, I'm not so ravenously hungry that the centerpiece is in danger of becoming an appetizer. I can even manage to avoid eating much between meals. When somebody brings in some leftover brownies or slightly stale cake, I usually do not resist the temptation.

However, I either eat the baked goods as quickly as I can or I take little bites. I figure if I eat rapidly enough, I might ingest the calories before my system has the time to count them.

The rationale behind the tiny bites procedure is just as irrational. If I eat as few calories as possible with each bite, I might be able to slip them past the digestive system, which instantly changes anything that tastes good into body fat.

Except for the occasional piece of chocolate or empty-calorie snack, I manage to stick to eating at six-hour intervals - when I'm working. Home is a different story altogether.

When I have a vacation and my wife Jo Ann doesn't, I sleep in to 7 a.m. or so. That means I don't eat until close to 8 a.m. Since lunchtime is around 1 p.m., that means I only have to wait five hours instead of six for my next meal.

The problem is that I can't seem to wait nearly that long before I eat again. This is partly due to hunger and primarily due to procrastination.

For example, suppose the deadline for this column is fast approaching. I don't want to disappoint all the readers whose parrots and canaries would be upset if my column was not at the bottom of their cage.

This sense of responsibility may get me to the computer keyboard, but my skill at procrastination makes sure I don't do anything productive for very long.

When I run out of time-wasting activities to do while sitting at the computer keyboard, I figure it's about time for me to take a field trip downstairs to the kitchen.

I'm not really hungry, so there is no reason why I shouldn't sneak a peek into the cupboard just to make sure everything is where I left it and take a look in the fridge to check that the little light still works.

Well, as long as I'm there, I figure I might as well grab a couple of crackers or chips, or sample something cool from the refrigerator. With my hunger and curiosity satisfied, I venture back upstairs to the computer - temporarily.

At work, I don't mind going six hours between meals. At home, I don't make it 60 minutes before I get the urge to fill up on empty calories.

Part of my motivation is to goof off from what I am supposed to be writing or doing, but a desire to nosh on snacks also plays a major role.

I sometimes feel like a cow that spends its day doing nothing but grazing. The only difference is that the grass the cow chews is a heck of a lot more nutritious than the stuff I usually eat.

This is pretty much the routine for the days when I'm the only one at home. It makes me concerned about what will happen when I eventually retire.

If I spend my days eating, my AAA card will be more important than my AARP membership, because I will become so big that I will have to be towed everywhere I go.

(Kozlowski, a freelance writer from Mount Carmel, composes "Walt's Way" for each Sunday edition.)

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