Chipotle, Glorious Chipotle

Brown rice. Black beans. Chicken. Sour cream. Cheese. A pile of hot sauce. It's simple really, and yet it brings a surprising amount of joy into our lives. After a while, however, we develop a dependency. It's just too delicious, too quick, too filling, and too easy not to. But the hardest part, always, is accepting and admitting you have a problem.

But here I am. My name is David. And I am addicted to Chipotle.

I accept this as a battle I am going to be waging for the rest of my life, myself against the zesty high-quality faux Mexican that I first discovered a decade ago in Evanston, Illinois. I have no choice but to accept this fight. I have won minor battles along the way of course, changing ingredients here or there. When my addiction went into full swing my regular order was a feisty combination of white rice, a double scoop of pinto beans, a double order of barbacoa, sour cream, cheese (with a little more if you can spare it, sir) and a bag of chips. Take a gander at the Chipotle corporate website and you'll see their nutrition calculator conservatively estimates that at a scant 1,830 calories and 73.5 grams of fat. That's roughly 150 calories more than my current diet allows per day.

I realized long ago that this had to be reformed and over the years the order has changed. The chips have long since been dropped, as has the tortilla for the lighter and more easily mixed bowl option. Brown rice is now the norm instead of white, ditto black beans for pinto and chicken for barbacoa -- and single servings at that. The current order comes in at a significantly trimmer 690 calories and 30 grams of fat, numbers that, really, aren't quite so bad for you in the grand scheme of an average day, particularly since it leaves you with nearly 1,000 calories to spend on breakfast and dinner.

As a result of those changes my addiction is manageable, and not particularly threatening at that, which is good since before I decided to start losing weight my Chipotle intake was operating at a pretty steady rate of one meal per week. This is what happens when there's three locations within a three-block radius of your office. But I have also realized that my regular visits to Chipotle are not just a hindrance to reaching my goals when I could indulge in significantly less fatty fare such as, say, tilapia, but it's also a crutch, one that I lean on to get my fat kid fix every seven days.

Well, I had to find a way to make it into less of a crutch and more of a walking stick. And so I decided many weeks ago that Chipotle was no longer in the diet rotation along with various lean aquatic animals and leafy greens. Not unless I had earned it anyway.

I determined that as long as I was above that undesirable harbinger of rotundness for a man of barely 5'8" stature, the 200 pound barrier, I was not going anywhere near any burrito bowls. Once I got under 200 and fed the addiction, it would be cold turkey again until I was below 190 and then again until I cracked the 180 mark. As they say in battle, sometimes you have to turn your weakness into a strength and so I sought to do that. I didn't touch Chipotle for weeks, I hit the gym far more frequently than is healthy and I've even begun waking up early enough to use the elliptical machine for 45 minutes and then swim in the pool for another 40. And so this morning, after exercising, I stepped on the scale. And wouldn't you know.

It was Chipotle Day, motherfuckers.

At noon I left my office, walked two blocks north with my friend Jenny and I ordered the monstrosity you see to the right. I did not have a stop watch to see how long it took for my bowl of caloric goodness to disappear, but it could not have been long.

Swift. Clean. Brutal. Like a cheetah stalking its prey it was over quickly. The bowl, despite its efforts, did not stand a chance.

I was given advice this morning to eat slowly and to cherish the taste and the experience lest it all be over too fast, but in the heat of the moment, sometimes we can't control ourselves. Such was the case this afternoon at 129 W. 48th St. While I don't regret what I did or how I did it, I would be remiss if I didn't admit that it may torturous to wait the two months or so, or however long it actually ends up taking me to lose 10 more pounds, to eat it again. This is particularly problematic because my lunch today almost certainly pushed me back over the 200-pound threshold, at least temporarily.

But that's ok. It was worth it. And on the plus side, it's not like I have to worry about any major events in the next, say, four or five days that might typically involve any binge eating. Nope. None at all.

It's smooth sailing from here on out.

CROWD-SOURCED WEIGHT-LOSS PLAN DAY 69!

Days until wedding: 143
Target weight: 175
Starting weight: 219
Weight today: 199.6