Scott Green

Because I gained approximately 4,000 pounds in college, I’ve begun my post-graduation diet with the ultimate goal that, through sheer force of will, I might one day give all my money to the Weight Watchers corporation.

I have the extra bulk because I spent my time in Champaign on the standard college diet of three square meals a day, each of them pizza.

I’m just kidding. The standard college diet is four pizzas. But my point is, there’s definitely a culture on campus that encourages you to eat whatever you want, whenever you want.

Some of my feats of consumption still amaze me. I put down footlong Philly cheese steaks by myself in single sittings. I packed away a 920-calorie, 60-fat-gram fast food breakfast burrito slathered in country gravy. I finished a two-pound cheeseburger so fast the restaurant put my picture on the wall.

So I definitely have to get working on my diet. It’s a tough way to shed pounds, but preferable to alternatives like exercise, which has the downside of requiring I physically exert myself, or amputating a major limb, which has the downside of being very expensive if done by medical professionals.

The last time I tried to diet was four years ago. I lost more than 30 pounds while living in a fraternity house. This was hard because the dining room in our basement was always stocked with pasta, French fries and other goodies prepared by our in-house chef, Dave. It didn’t help that if I was too lazy to go downstairs, I could have pledges bring food to me.

I wound up spending mealtimes in my room, making a lot of turkey and mustard sandwiches on white bread and pretending there was more to life than food, which is of course ridiculous. When you’re on a normal diet, it’s hard enough to stop thinking about what you aren’t eating, such as turkey sandwiches with mayonnaise. When you’re dieting in a fraternity, where there’s literally a fresh pizza somewhere in the house 24 hours a day, you’re a risk to chew off your own hand.

But I succeeded, which was a great feeling for the two or three weeks I stayed at my target weight. Then things went south. My excuses for eating junk got progressively lamer: at first it was an extra piece of cake for a one-time celebration and by the end I was telling myself that, even if I ate these dozen Krispy Kreme doughnuts, I’d still be only five or six pounds over where I started.

This time things will be different. I’m going to destroy all the weight I gained in school, and I’m not going to lose focus. I’m going to employ all my collegiate wiles. No two-pound burgers, no pizza, and no eating in the basement of my fraternity, mostly because the building will be torn down this summer. I hope Dave finds another fraternity to cook for, because if he comes near me, I’ll kill him.