Hello Reflux, my old friend.

It’s another three AM and I’m staring at the ceiling while the Acid Gnomes have their way with the lining of my esophagus. This happens every time I eat too much at dinner (like a Buick), eat too late (like any time after 4PM) or have erotic dreams about the wrinkled old Korean grocer who sells me my lettuce. Because I loves me my lettuce.

I went to my doctor to tell him it felt like I swallowed a scale model of the Death Star dripping in hot sauce. Doc asked me why I would do such a thing when everyone knows a creamy lemon sauce would have been the way to go. He also mentioned that said I was 19 lbs over weight. I knew he had to be hallucinating. I was thin, I was ripped and I was muscular. Yes somewhere under the gut that dripped like a glob of hot wax over my beltline was a set of muscles that would make a supermodel envious.

What did this have to do with the near constant sleepless nights of me sitting up in bed feeling like someone was boring a hole right through me a very blunt and very hot instrument?

“Reflux,” said he.

“Heartburn?”

“No, reflux. It’s different.”

But I’ve bad heartburn lots of times and this feels just like heart burn with a heart attack chaser.”

“Oh yeah? How many heart attacks have you had, Ace?” He had me there.

At plus-19 I was showing a BMI of obese (that’s medical talk for, “Do they make underpants that big?”) though if you saw me you’d say at worst, I could stand to lose a few but not obese. That’s what he put in the chart; Borderline Obese.

“You’re triglycerides and your pressure are too high unless you’re actually trying to pop like a balloon and scare all the kiddies at the party.” I had strict orders to lose the gut like a cheapskate friend, take the pills he prescribed and think more about celery than pizza. He closed the chart, gave me the dismissive handshake and left me alone in the room in my little gown, bulbous midsection and my wounded pride. He added, “Remember, nothing tastes as good as being thin feels”.

I needed a cheeseburger.

I began a steady regimen of sitting at the computer, sitting at the movies and sitting down as I worked in a gym. I’d be down to fighting shape in no time. That was two years ago. For two years I’ve been on pressure pills, water pills, triglyceride pills and a reflux pill. I’ve been up at least three nights a week with an exquisitely painful sensation in the middle of me that can best be described as someone trying to scoop me out with a giant melon baller. Over the holiday season, which in my house runs from August 30 through mid-January I not only ignored my doctor’s advice but I, shall we say added an extension to the rumpus room and gained another 9 lbs.

The final shoe dropped when one of my shoes dropped and I couldn’t bend down far enough to reach it. I looked like a hot air balloon trying to dock in high winds in a thimble. I joined a weight loss website during a moment where I was creating an unholy alliance between a knish, sauerkraut, mustard and about a half pound of baked ziti. The site tracks the calories I enter and plots my weight and goals. I logged in and hit the ground running. The additional 9 pounds melted off like butter off a hot biscuit. It was easy. I logged in everything I ate and shocked myself at how far over my daily calorie requirement I was used to going. Then I lost four more. I could almost see the tiniest hint of a future set of abs sprouting under there. All was going well. You’d think there was a “Until” moment like all was going well until I met…the salami and mozzarella sammich. There wasn’t a particular moment, more like a lost week or two where I stopped counting thinking I had it all memorized. I found a deli that made the best bacon and egg sammich in the city. I found out about Nutella tarts and the joy of little pigs in a blanket. I thought I slipped only once or twice, that I had it all under control.

As I write this it is 3 AM on the third sleepless night. The acid gnomes are trying to escape though the emergency hatch carved into my esophagus. I’m slouched over my computer and my navel now aims at the floor. My niece asked me recently if I could see my feet over my stomach. That will cost her a birthday gift.

I have not touched the scale for I know what it will tell me. He was right, my doc, nothing tasted quite as good as thinning out felt. And so we begin again. I have my measuring spoons in my work bag. The oat meal is on the stove. By summer, maybe not this one but surely the next I will stride shirtless, muscled and tan down the beach, at the library, perhaps the diner during the early-bird special and maybe into a church. For nothing feels as good as feeling the aghast expressions on the faces of old ladies as a well-oiled shirtless man struts his stuff in the most inappropriate of places.