Salad

I was eating salads every day at the height of my male anorexia. I thought that salads were this kind of calorie-free bulk. On the back of the monster lawn-and-leaf-bag-sized baby greens package it says that one serving has fifteen calories and there are only five servings per bag. With things like that they inflate the serving size so it looks like you get more vitamin A and shit; not like chips where a vending machine bag of Doritos has enough servings to last a family for a year.

So I was eating big salads, but I stopped losing weight. And this is because I was putting two tablespoons of dressing on there— a reasonable amount— but two tablespoons of dressing has as many calories as a Hershey bar. And I was putting two cubic inches of chopped cheddar cheese on there— and two cubic inches of chopped cheddar cheese has as many calories as a Krispy Kreme doughnut. It was like a goddamn horror movie for me when I finally read the calorie counts on the various condiments and trimmings in my fridge. A tiny amount of food would always turn out to have this hellaciously huge amount of calories—like, if you burned a chunk of cheese it should heat your house for the whole winter. It should change the fucking climate.

I go out to the work cafeteria, or to any restaurant in Hollywood— and chicks are eating salads. Out here in the valley they’re eating things like “taco salads”— a salad served in a tortilla shell with an entire burrito dumped on it. People are eating “chop salads” the size of basketballs with chicken and cheese mixed in, and oily vinaigrette. And this is because they can say “oh, I just had a salad.” Fat girls I used to work with would eat like an LA-municipal-leaf-recycling-bin-sized salad with an egg on it and cheese, and then say “oh, I shouldn’t eat this cookie, but… I just had a salad for lunch.” Salad is like— people who eat salads are like the fat fucks i see sitting next to me in a movie, engrossed in their popcorn. The food is the only reason they went to to the movie, so they could squeeze another whole meal in the day without the honesty with oneself it would require to just sit down and get a full Boston Market turkey dinner at 3pm.

Tags: fatties, male body image, salad