Tonight I decided to deliberately have the most unhealthy evening that I possibly could without doing anything really and truly dangerous. Have you ever been in one of those periods in your life where you are trying to be extra aware of your health and lifestyle choices, but before you can begin to change your ways you feel the need to splurge a little bit? Well, I'm not really concerned about being healthy, but I still thought it would be fun to splurge. Heh... And so I began
Experiment In Futility #1.Warning: Do not attempt to recreate this experiment yourself, unless you happen to have the metabolism of a crystal-meth addicted, ADHD ferret, and/or chronic stomach disease. Trust me on this one.
Things began when I arrived home from work at around 6:15 pm, Central Time. I will admit that initially the impetus for this experiment was pure laziness, but great things sometimes come out of what are initially selfish pursuits. Looking in the fridge I saw hardly anything to eat. Not feeling like leaving to get food, I decided to snack a bit while checking my e-mail. This is when inspiration struck. I would spend the evening making choices as unhealthy as I possibly could without ever leaving my apartment or involving another human being.
Phase 1: I began as I planned, by checking my e-mail and snacking on random odds and ends. This quickly turned into a three hour marathon of internet surfing through banal blogs, just like this one, crude fan constructed web tributes to pop musicians, and Ikonboard forums with lots of posts about the supposed benefits of MDMA and marijuana use. By now I was really getting hungry, and so I prepared my supper.
Phase 2: I had a three course meal, consisting of 3.5 ounces of Lay's sour cream & onion flavored potato chips, around 1/2 cup of peanut M&M's, and 1.5 cups of Blue Bell vanilla ice cream with grape juice. All together this comes to around 84 grams of fat (37 grams saturated fat) and God only knows how many calories and whatnot. I think, if I sit quietly, I can actually hear my arteries hardening. The high salt content of my meal had made me quite thirsty as well, so I drank three large shots of Jack Daniel's Tennessee Whiskey to wash it all down. Now things were really getting interesting.
Phase 3: I decide to complete this initial experiment by vegetating on the couch and watching TV for entirely too long. Sadly, the experimental data was tainted slightly due to the fact that I don't have cable and thus was forced to find entertainment on DVD, which was actually very good (five back-to-back episodes of Arrested Development). This is a slight confound, but I don't think it will negate the overall findings of the experiment.
Findings: And so, what are the findings of this experiment in futility? Sadly the data was inconclusive and so the experiment will need to be repeated before any definite conclusions may be reached. However, I can summarize my early impressions as follows
(please note, these findings must be taken merely as conjecture until scientific process can confirm my initial suspicions): Making unhealthy lifestyle choices and behaving in ways that you know are not good for you do in fact make you feel unhealthy. You may be surprised to note that I feel quite bloated and queasy at the time of this writing, this in spite of my bizarro genetics. Though it is entertaining to "splurge" from time to time, it's only even marginally enjoyable if you don't do it all the time and to excess.
Unless there is cheesecake involved of course...
(any sexual connotations absolutely intended)
