When I reach the end, I will have my white whale

Call me hungry.

Sometimes in life there are curious developments, often driven by this most primal of urges. Things we don't understand, things that frighten us, things that make us strangely .... curious. It is the need to satisfy this urge, the need to satiate our stomach pains and hunger pangs, that can often drive us to the edge of sanity manifested not just in how voraciously or without order we consume something, but what it is that we are consuming. Perhaps we ignore the fact that all this time, the food is really consuming us. And if what we are consuming is not atypical enough, not extreme enough -- not enough of a challenge, well, at the end of the day, it simply won't do. As I continue down this long and lonesome road to svelteness it is easy to be distracted by the temptations of decadent food porn that are rampant across the internet -- spending your day at a computer with hours of internet access makes it easier still. After all, I am but a man, am I not?

As the Bible says, "We are but flesh and blood."

Sometimes, however, the mere pictures of these grand food items are not enough to satisfy those primal urges. We must indulge. We must know for ourselves that we found and conquered the beast. In the past I have sought out these dynamic gustatory adventures. Last April in Pittsburgh I not only had the vaunted pulled pork and pierogi stacker at Manny's BBQ in PNC Park, but also the Chickin' Little Headwich at Fathead's Saloon, a monstrous pile of buffalo sauce-soaked chicken fingers, ham, proscuitto, bacon, fried eggs, cheddar cheese and Chipotle mayo. In Kansas City last August I did a whirlwind tour of the town's vaunted most famous BBQ haunts, such as Gates Bar-B-Q and Arthur Bryant's -- for the second time. In Cincinnati last November, I downed a plate of Skyline Chili and engulfed a pulled pork, chorizo and fried onions concoction the next day. In Europe last summer I made a point to try whale, bear meatballs, wild boar sausage and reindeer sausage. I was disheartened that I was unable to try puffin while in Iceland. Indeed these absurd food challenges are things I have sought out, mountains I have climbed so I could tell the world, "Yes, I have eaten a bacon explosion," which, for the record, I have in fact eaten.

But we're trying to lose weight here, right? Isn't that the goal of these morning workouts, obnoxious Facebook updates and this droll-yet-pedantic blog? Why yes it is. So in the past several months large food ventures have been rare. I've strayed away from wild bizarre sandwiches while rarely indulging in pizza or cheeseburgers. My life has been depressingly devoid mac-n-cheese while salmon, ahi tuna and tilapia (which I recently found is quite good when seasoned with cinnamon) have taken all of their places.

And then there's Chipotle.

Yes, Chipotle, you sweet maiden, you. I have made no secret about my love, nay obsession with the fast food "Mexican" eatery, a place that brings me such satisfaction and yet haunts my dreams as I avoid its caloric avalanche. I have managed to keep this in check by using my once-weekly burrito bowls as an incentive for reaching weight-loss milestones, as I have mentioned before, and indeed late last week I paid a visit after dipping below the 190-pound mark.

But the week before that, I was told of something remarkable. Something truly daunting. And yet, something I must conquer. The Quesarito.

Like any chain restaurant with its secret or not-so-secret menu, In-N-Out Burger, where I might be eating this weekend, is perhaps the most famous of these, Chipotle is apparently no exception to cleverly hidden decadence. Supposedly, any item we the customer can come up with will be produced within reason, and so the Quesarito was born. The idea is simple enough. It's your standard burrito, but instead of being wrapped with a single flour tortilla it is enveloped in a full quesadilla. But as simple as it sounds, the bulky, cheesy colossus comes in at roughly 1,500 calories all by itself.

Now, even with the list of ridiculous foods I can claim as my victims, I would never consider myself the king of wild, terrible eating. I am no Joey Chestnut, no Takeru Kobayashi, nor am I even on the level as those guys from Epic Mealtime. But so help me, I will conquer this. Given that I am restraining myself from eating anything too crazy, and that a standard Chipotle burrito bowl is my milestone reward, it stands to reason that this will have to be in my future, perhaps at the end of the line.

As it stands that will be my ultimate plan. With just over 100 days to go until my sister's wedding I have 14 more pounds of weight loss to wade through. The closer you get to your body's ideal weight the tougher it is to drop those final pounds and the slower your progress comes along. But even as those final hurdles seem more and more elusive, I will keep plugging along, and when I finally reach 175 pounds sometime in late May or mid-June, I will walk into a Chipotle and at long last I will make this mine.

Captain Ahab had Moby Dick. I will have my Quesarito.

Is this revenge I seek? The opportunity to come to the place that greased the wheels of my slide back toward rotundity, take on and defeat its greatest challenge and say, "This is no pyrrhic victory, you cannot conquer me?" No, that is too easy and too simple, too self-aggrandizing to say that my own base need for revenge is important enough that Chipotle would bother to set up road blocks.

But I never claimed to be better than an average petty human being. If the Quesarito that I seek is what I need to gain the satisfaction that I will not be shackled down by the food I consume, so be it. When I finally reach 175 pounds and tackle this beast, I will do so while ensuring it does not put me back on the slippery slope toward obesity. I will have the discipline to remain svelte even with the gooey, greasy concoction in my system. I will consume the Quesarito. The Quesarito will not consume me.

From Hell's heart, I will stab at thee.

Probably with a fork. I mean look at it. It's really unwieldy.

CROWD-SOURCED WEIGHT LOSS PLAN DAY 108!

Days until wedding: 102
Target weight: 175
Starting weight: 219
Weight today: 189