Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Now that our vacation (I mean hiatus) is over, and I’m back to getting up at 4:00 a.m., I am trying to figure out when to eat so that I don’t gain back the four pounds I lost on vacation (hiatus). Back when Buzz and I did afternoons, I normally wouldn’t eat anything until 4:00 p.m., and that made my food intake somewhat manageable. Now with the early show schedule, I find myself eating from 4:00 a.m. until 10:00 p.m. when I go to bed. Monday I tried waiting until after the show to eat, and that wasn’t so bad. I powered down my diet breakfast at about 11:00 a.m. As of 4:00 p.m., I’ve only had a few ounces of turkey breast to augment that. What an exciting life I lead.

Late afternoon and early evening are where I can do the most eating damage. I start feeling sorry for myself because I have to get up so early. I know plenty of you (including people who work on my own show) get up that early or even earlier, but I can’t really seem to use that in my quest to quash my eating. As it turns out, I only care about myself when it comes to certain things… like eating. I’m going to try to limit everything I eat to the hours between noon and 7:00 p.m. I mean how much can I eat in seven hours? The answer to that of course is anybody’s best guess, but I’d put my maximum calorie consuming ability at about 10,000.

And speaking of overeating, our own Patrick “Deep Dish” Bertoletti came in a disappointing fourth in the Nathan’s Famous Fourth of July hot dog eating contest. I think it was fourth, but it might have been fifth. I went to Nathan’s Web site on Monday afternoon (July 7th) and they still hadn’t updated it with the results. Hey, if they don’t care, why should I? Presumably, we’ll be talking to Patrick on Friday morning (if he doesn’t kill himself first) and we can ask him for a blow-by-blow-your-lunch description of the action. I know that Joey Chestnut won, and that little Japanese fellow came in second. If memory serves me correctly, "The Black Widow" came in fifth, At least he wasn’t beaten by a girl.