The Cookie Monster Trial – 56 Days Left

So yesterday I set out on a new course, to finally defeat the Cookie Monster. This blue furry creature has become my new symbol for the desire to eat poorly in times of stress. To suddenly go nuts and eat all the cookies in the house, or whatever other sugary snack is before me. I have done better since my commitment. Lost weight and all of that, but now I am down to the end where I need to get dialed in on my nutrition. Start looking at the food I take in as fuel (or so some dude on YouTube said that I needed to do). So my kids joined in with me and we set out on a quest to prepare all of our food for the week. Perhaps recruiting a small army of “helpers” was a good idea, but it also increased the number of meal preps. So that might have been a trade off.

Anyway, I researched several good meal options and planned out several ways to mass produce them, containerize them and have them ready to go for the week. I measured them out and calculated the macro ingredients with precision. I watched several YouTube videos where fitness gurus talk about how easy this is, how simple it is to prepare and layout your nutrition plan in advance. To prepare everything so that the week is easier to maintain your plan. Liars.

It started well, we had a full steam of energy and my daughters and I were excited to be acting like military chefs, coordinating a massive operation in the kitchen. Our strategy was to prepare small taste test meals and once we had the recipes dialed in then we would prepare the number of meals we needed. The taste testing worked out well. I even got a thumbs up from the Mother In Law – which is a kin to winning the conclave in Rome. So we got to breakfast, and we cracked 48 eggs into a big pot, stirred in the veggies and started cooking massive quantities of bacon in the oven. That is when things started to go south. As it turns out bacon produces grease and it gets hot and produces smoke. My daughter burned her hand, I spilled on the floor which became slick and difficult to walk around in. The spinach was difficult to cut and became much larger in volume then expected. I struggled with muffin tins, ran out of olive oil and discovered that the YouTube video guy I was watching was a charlatan.

However, we got through it. We got through one mass produced meal and despite destroying the kitchen felt pretty proud of ourselves. We moved onto course 1 of lunch and that is when everything went to hell. Turns out that it is not that easy to maintain order and cleanliness in a kitchen not designed for massive food prep. This is where things started to take a turn toward the supernatural. My daughters we playing a song list that alternated between Katy Perry and Metallica (they are my daughters not yours, do not judge). We started to get into a groove again, when we ran out of some ingredients and I was just about to throw in the towel and give up. Then it happened. Yesterday, to be funny I downloaded  a picture of the Cookie Monster on my computer in my office to send out in an email. Consequently, google automatically backed it up to my cloud drive. We were using a tablet connected to my Google Account in the kitchen to watch YouTube videos on cooking. Just at the moment that I was about to give up, the tablet went into sleep mode and the screensaver app started. This app is something I installed years ago and it looks for images on my cloud drive to play. Well guess what image it found first? You guessed it. The Cookie Monster. And just to add a bit of soul searching melodrama that song that started to play was Master of Puppets.

So I could not give up then. The cookie monster, via James Hetfield, was laughing at me. So we doubled down and finished. I now have a refrigerator full of little containers stocked and ready to go for a week of pure nutritionally dense bliss. Measured perfectly for the macro nutrients that I need. I think I will create a YouTube Video and talk about how easy this was!

Anyway, I went through a sore trial yesterday to try to get myself sorted out when it came to nutrition. Of course now I have to actually eat what I prepared and not in a moment of weakness opt for salty, sugary fast food instead. So the Cookie Monster trial is over. This leads me to my memorized quote for today by some famous Russian Orthodox zealot by the name of St. John of Kronstadt:

“Do not fear the conflict, and do not flee from it; where there is no struggle, there is no virtue.”

Special thanks to my wife for stepping in an bailing us out last night and cleaning the kitchen and mopping the floor. I think I might have heard her whisper, you are becoming a bleeping zealot. Which is why I was inspired to look up a Kronstadt quote!

Guy Reams (457)
365 Alumni
56 Days Left to 1st Marathon