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My name is Spike Cohen, and I ate 10 pounds of food.
Last Sunday, I went to a hibachi restaurant with my wife, my mother and my cousins to celebrate Mom's birthday.
If you've ever been to a hibachi restaurant, you know that they give you an insane amount of rice.
I usually eat a keto diet. This day would be an obvious exception.
I hadn't eaten all day, so I decided to order extra scallops, in case the laughably large amount of food they give wasn't enough.
My wife doesn't eat rice, so I got her portion too. I knew that going into this struggle.
She also had them give me her shrimp. That, I hadn't anticipated.
But I'm a man, and that really doesn't excuse any of this but I'm going to say it anyway.
When my cousin Sherri asked the chef to give me her rice portion as well, I knew that I was in danger.
As the food continued to pile onto my plate, I had to form a mesa of sorts with the rice, so that the shrimp, scallops, and vegetables wouldn't fall off.
Because God forbid I neglect to eat any of it.
A pile of food would come. I'd eat it, and then get back to chipping away at my Rice Mesa.
And then another pile of food would come.
And then another.
I felt like Sisyphus, except his task at least made him more fit.
Mine put me at serious risk of hospitalization.
Nevertheless, I persisted.
My cousins said that I could take the rest to go and eat it later.
My wife informed them that I would be eating all of this food tonight, because I have a problem.
Minutes turned into hours. Not that I could keep track of time.
Nothing felt real anymore.
What we call "reality" stripped away from what was left of my consciousness.
Nothing existed but me and the endless pile of food.
At some point, the rest of the family was getting bored and wanted to leave, so I had to pack my leftovers into a to-go container.
To put it in perspective, less than half the food was left, and it barely fit into a full size styrofoam clamshell container.
As I packed the food in, my wife and mother insisted that it wouldn't fit.
My own wife and mother.
It hurt me to know that they didn't believe in me. In retrospect, I was probably a little overly emotional because my blood sugar was somewhere north of 800.
But Mark believed.
"It's rice", we both said, almost in unison. "You can really pack it in there."
And we were right.
You can really pack rice in there.
My family pleaded with me, "please Spike, please don't eat the rest of that food tonight. We are worried that you will die."
I said "of course I won't eat the rest of it tonight. I've had more than enough."
But my wife said "he's going to eat this before it gets cold."
"No no" I insisted. "This will make a great lunch for tomorrow."
She continued looking at my family.
"He has a problem."
My own wife.
First she didn't think I could pack that rice into the container. Now she thinks I'll eat the leftovers, when I insisted that I wouldn't.
I was heartbroken.
How could the woman I had pledged my life to, my Queen, my very rib, plucked from me and formed as I doth sleep, have so little faith in me?
It was a long and quiet ride home.
I felt alone, betrayed even.
At this point my blood sugar was hovering somewhere around 1200.
I'd estimate that I consumed roughly 600 grams of carbs, and 43,000 mg of sodium.
(I didn't bother calculating the protein and fat, because counting the macros of this meal seemed like a mockery of God and His creation)
All of this would have broken a weaker man.
But not me.
Unlike many lesser Jews, I am stronger than my addiction to Asian food.
My name is Spike Cohen, and I ate the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine's recommend weekly allowance of calories in one sitting.
This is my story.
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