Diet Deviation

I’ve been good about observing my diet the last few weeks, so I decided to “reward” myself with a rare, fast-food meal at McDonald’s. Those one-dollar hamburgers and hot, salty fries are so tasty! So I went there and walked up to the counter and placed my order. “Two hamburgers, small fries, small diet, for here.”

The counter girl punched in the order and took my payment. Then she meandered over to a stainless steel bin and picked up one cheeseburger. She meandered back to the counter and placed the cheeseburger on my food tray. The reason I knew it was a cheeseburger is because printed on the wrapper in one-inch high, cheese-yellow letters was the word “CHEESEBURGER”.

“I asked for two hamburgers,” I reminded the counter girl.

“Oh yeah,” she replied, and returned to the food bin, picked up another cheeseburger, and placed it on my tray beside the first cheeseburger.

“Aren’t those cheeseburgers?” I asked, trying to be helpful.

The counter girl looked down, dumbfounded, at the cheeseburgers on my tray. An older employee working nearby said to her, “Those are cheeseburgers. Hamburgers are in the brown wrappers.” Then she turned to me and said in a confidential tone, “She’s new.”

I stepped away from the counter to make way for other customers to place their orders. Directly in front of me, behind the counter, was a machine called a McFlurry maker. I know this because there was a large label on the front it of that said “McFlurry.”

Now, I don’t actually know what a McFlurry is but, as the machine looked very similar to a milk-shake machine, I assume a McFlurry is some kind of semi-frozen dessert made from ice cream or perhaps (using industry parlance) made from an “ice-cream-style product.” Inside the machine was a small sign which had printed on it in large, bold letters a strict warning against putting any objects inside the machine. “DO NOT PUT ANY OBJECTS IN THE MCFLURRY MAKER BELOW THE EXTRUDER,” it said. I guess doing this must have previously caused some kind of bad karma. Also inside the machine below the extruder were two tall plastic cups filled with spoons and little plastic cups similar to coffee creamer singles. I don’t know, but it seems putting crap directly in front of a sign that says, basically, “Do Not Put Crap Here” might be asking for bad karma.

I got my two hamburgers and fries, and I sat, and I enjoyed them. What the hell, I’m not actually losing weight anyway. Yes I’m dieting, and yes I’m consuming a lot fewer calories than two months ago, and yet after losing a few pounds my body put the brakes on and said, “Oh no, you’re not!” Using nutrition information from Mickey D’s website, I computed my fast-food diet deviation to be 730 calories. Add that to my breakfast and I’ve only consumed 930 calories today, and it’s already after 5 PM. For what it’s worth, my diet is still golden. Or, at the least, gold-plated.