Comparing and Contrasting

I'm finding out that it's more difficult to gain weight than I thought. In addition to the plateau effect, whose root is homeostasis, I've also gotten a case of acid reflux, thanks to my body's response mechanism working in another way: the recent surfeit of food has resulted in a recent overproduction of stomach acid. I have enough spare production capacity to get some of it up my foodpipe.

If only I had known what a challenge was ahead of me. I keep looking at the scale, wondering why it is so difficult to get up to 240 pounds. The size of my belly seems to be co-operating nicely, but the scale still confounds me.

It's almost certain that you've seen "Special K" being advertised as a diet food. It actually does serve well in that capacity, tasting fine with only milk. Perhaps my taste buds are out of whack, but I found that adding 1 tbsp of sugar to a bowl doesn't improve it that much, and leaves a gloppy sugar residue at the bottom of the bowl, which would only be appealing to the type of person who likes sugar as a between-meal snack. (Come to think of it, that does remind me of something...)

More promising, but ultimately disappointing, was the same amount of corn syrup stuck on top of a bowl. Maybe it's the idiosyncracies of my taste buds, but I found that a nice heap of corn syrup makes the cereal taste better than the sugar did. The only drawback is the residue of the syrup sticking to the spoon, which makes the first few spoonfuls kind-of sticky.

The best option, I found, was using chocolate milk; that made a bowl of "Special K" taste great. I suspect that others discovering the same thing is what led Kellogg's to offer a chocolate-covered version of the cereal.


Weight before the four-bowl breakfast: still 233 pounds.