by Scott Davis
Scattered, Smothered, and Covered
We all have our weak points. We all know exactly where we are most likely to stumble. Sometimes we stumble even when we brace for those moments. At other times, we breeze through the test, our resolve set because we guarded ourselves in anticipation of temptation.
Then come the surprises. Often, when we least expect it and just when we are feeling strong and self-assured, we walk around a corner and headlong into temptation.
The Bible says, “Let anyone who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall” (1 Corinthians 10:12). One of our most susceptible moments comes when we’re riding high. The time right after a success requires an extra measure of caution. Human nature breeds overconfidence following grand moments, and right after I get full of myself I usually wind up full of crab meat.
It’s tough to make a living on the road. Every church or venue I perform in, my host wants to take me to a nice restaurant. It’s always a treat because I love to eat local specialties in hometown eateries.
People ask me why I love to eat so much. It’s because I love the flavor of foods. I’m as addicted to zinging my taste buds as I am to filling my belly. While I was on the road, I never wanted to eat at the same old chain restaurants I frequent back home. We have Applebee’s, Chili’s, Longhorn, O’Charley’s, just like almost every strip in the country. I want to go somewhere different in every city.
Artists who perform on tours often send requests for meals ahead of time. Because it is almost impossible to stay fit and disciplined amid the vagabond lifestyle, most artists ask for healthy platters or salads. In my bigger days, I sent requests for them to show me the best restaurant in town. I had one standard question.
“Which place has the best food that’s not a fancy restaurant?”
Halfway through my concerts I sometimes thought to myself, “I need to hurry up and close. I’m hungry. Let’s get to the closing prayer and go eat.”
Food brought half the fun. I didn’t mind if it was exotic as long as it was local. I’d eat any animal that didn’t move or at least moved slowly. Buffalo ain’t bad. Alligator indeed tastes a little like chicken, just more rubbery. And tripe is surprisingly good. Tripe, in case you don’t know, is stomach tissue, usually from a cow. I’ve also eaten snake, emu, and squirrel. As long as it wasn’t still twitching, I’d try it.
My curiosity led me to surprising discoveries at the oddest locales. The best barbecue I’ve ever put into my mouth was in Rapid City, South Dakota. I never figured I’d find some of the best Southern cooking in the country 70 miles from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. A couple from Memphis, Tennessee owns the little joint. My mouth waters thinking about it.
When I traveled with Mark Lowry years ago, we enjoyed looking for the best hole-in-the-wall restaurants. We called them Meat-and-Threes: our choice of meat for the day and three veggies.
My favorite always has been Southern food done well like my mother cooked. Lots of butter, lots of fried foods, lots of grease. Many people wouldn’t be caught dead in a Waffle House, but I think I want to be buried in a casket that smells like the Waffle House.
It’s easy to get fat when you awake at 3 a.m. and you’re so hungry, so enslaved, that you’re willing to drive to Waffle House and order hash browns that are scattered, smothered, covered, chunked, and topped. Southerners will know that means they’re scattered and cooked well, smothered with onions, covered with cheese, chunked with tomato dices, and topped with chili. It’s a thick pile of grease. And I hope it’s on the menu in Heaven. I’d order the hash browns along with chopped steak and waddle home at 4:30 a.m.
Waffle House can be a world unto itself.
One night, I had the run of the place. I sat in the corner booth, listening to the unique conversation between the cook and two waitresses, the only other people awake in Stockbridge. The raging debate had many ins and outs, bold statements and subtleties. Points were made, others conceded. Heads nodded and shook, fingers wagged. And accusatory giggles filled the air. Their subject?
They argued about which county jail had the better food.
That’s another reason never to cave in to late-night cravings. Mama always said nothing good ever happens after midnight.
On a different night I sat in my Waffle House booth and read a book. The waitress ambled up and said, “Whatcha doing?”
I looked up at her, then back down at my book and paused for a second. Then I looked back up at her.
“Reading,” I said.
She looked puzzled and cocked her head. “What for?”
“So I don’t have to work at Waffle House.”
OK. I didn’t say it, but I sure thought it. I didn’t lose my witness. I was a fat Christian. But I was still a Christian. Besides, I needed her to bring me my favorite order.
Waffle House regulars will know this little recipe: I would order a slice of pecan pie and ask the cook to put it on the grill and dollop a big slab of butter on top. He put a steel cover over the pie and let the steam melt the butter into the pie. Oh, glory. It’s indescribable. You can just hear your arteries hardening. At other times, I took a piece of apple pie and had them put it on the grill with butter and then melt a slice of American cheese on top of it. How’s that sound? I didn’t think it’d be good until I tried it, and it’s amazing.
I know this is supposed to be a book about losing weight. I know right now it sounds like a cookbook for tubb-a-lubs. Here’s the point: All of this is Golden Nugget thinking. This is how to stay fat or get even fatter.
It starts in our minds. It starts with thinking about food, focusing on something we long for but don’t have at arm’s reach, and it creates desire even when we’re not hungry.
Forgive the cruel method, but my reminiscing about my most terrible times of temptation played on your senses. You probably thought you were in a safe zone—a book about eating healthy and losing weight—and you were doing well. Yet the descriptions of my foraging at Waffle House carried away your mind to the all-too-familiar place of indulgence, and maybe my descriptions made you think of your favorite foods. Maybe you even smelled them. Maybe you’re smelling them now….
Maybe I need to stop.
Temptation is a harsh minefield. It leads to sin, and I heard long ago sin will take you further than you ever wanted to go, keep you longer than you ever wanted to stay, and cost you more than you ever wanted to pay.
I so relished the taste of food and made it such a god that I would bow down and try anything. The food I described isn’t something to desire. It’s evidence of a crime. It’s how I got fat.
Waffle House is a place I need to avoid (though I’ve found that I can eat healthily there if I remain disciplined). What’s your Waffle House?
My Wife’s Hand
Even dogs struggle with temptation.
I used to get my bowl of cereal, settle into my recliner, and prop up my feet on the coffee table to watch TV and eat. One day I finished this routine, took down my feet and put my bowl on the coffee table, then put my feet back up and continued to watch my show. Well, apparently the International Wife Manual says you’re not supposed to do that.
“Huh-uh,” Donna called out from the kitchen. “The milk will get all crusty on the bowl and the little bits of cereal will dry in the bowl and be too hard to wash out.”
The whole time, my dog sat off to the side of the recliner, staring at the bowl. He made sure he was on the opposite side of the recliner from the treadmill. He wouldn’t get near the thing.
Every now and then, he looked over at me but then turned his head when my eyes met his gaze. Every time I looked at him, he turned his head away nonchalantly, acting as if no such bowl with no such trace of milk existed.
It’s as if he tried to say, “What? Me? That bowl? Pffft. Wouldn’t think of it.”
His little eyebrows twitched up and down whenever he’d look at the bowl or looked away. I finally broke down.
“Here,” I said, and put the bowl on the floor.
He attacked it like it was full of filet mignon. Apparently that no-no is underlined in the International Wife Manual. I’m not sure which one hit my ear first, Donna’s voice or the dishrag flying in from the kitchen.
“Scott! No!” she yelled.
“What?” I said, sounding like my dog. “He’s been sitting there staring at the bowl. At least let him lick the thing.”
I wilt under temptation even when my dog is the one tempted, but I stuck to the QWLCA plan religiously during my big weight loss. My visits at the QWLCA clinic helped. But so did the lady who threw the dishrag.
Donna truly was my better half during my great quest.
On the rare occasions I cheated while trying to lose weight, I cheated only with permitted foods. I might’ve had extra servings of strawberries or vegetables during the day, but they were on the approved list. I’m proud to say I never cheated on something off-diet like ice cream. I went for a whole year and didn’t eat ice cream. I didn’t eat pizza or pasta for a year. In fact, I haven’t had pasta since November 2008.
I’m allowed to eat frozen strawberries. When I cheated, I ate maybe two or three servings of frozen strawberries instead of one because I love strawberries. It slowed the weight loss a little bit, but on my initial surge of losing over 100 pounds I never had a weigh-in showing I had regained weight even when I slipped a little. I lost weight every week.
The QWLCA staff members reminded me they’re human too. They all hear the call of the Brownie Siren like I do. The clinic offered me a new peanut butter protein bar during one visit, and the lady who worked with me said, “Oh, these are awesome. I ate a whole box of them one night.”
I laughed because even the experts have those moments.
Donna doesn’t. She’s super strict. She’s so precise in everything she does, even in her artwork for my company. I eyeball a piece and say, “That looks good to me.” Not Donna. She blows it up to five thousand percent and counts the pixels. It has to be dead center. I tell her, “Nobody’s going to know.” She says, “Well, I know.”
She’s a little OCD about that stuff. I’m OCD about other things: I have to have exactly three steaks, cooked exactly medium rare. Donna’s integrity helped me eat right every day during the campaign.
The QWLCA plan weaned me from pork. I occasionally dropped a few bacon bits on a salad, but those don’t count because the crunchy ones in a bottle are Styrofoam sprayed with pork scent. Pork is forbidden because of high fat content. It’s not like I can never eat pork again, but I have to moderate.
Understand, I love pig. My dad taught me I could eat every part of the pig, and I love the whole critter. Abstaining from pork has been tough because when I test on personality profiles it not only shows my gifts but also my passion for pork chops. During the maintenance stage after weight loss, the QWLCA plan doesn’t include an absolute prohibition against eating certain kinds of foods. Rather, it encourages moderation and discipline. I wanted a lifestyle change rather than a diet because a lifestyle change has a greater chance of permanence than a diet. When you come off many diets and resume “regular” eating, you’re going to gain.
Here, I must make a confession.
Donna asked me, “Are you going to be honest in the book and reveal you’ve struggled some in maintenance?” I looked at her and nodded like the sloppy puppy I am. “I think you ought to tell that, because that’s where people are. They struggle with that.”
I need to be honest. I regained about 25 pounds to reach 202 pounds after getting down to 177. But I reasserted myself as I pushed to finish this book, and I’m losing weight again. I plan to reach a new goal weight of 170 pounds, less than my college weight.
Now you know why I had success with the QWLCA plan in the first place. I can’t overstate the importance of the regular visits to the clinic, but you can’t take the clinic home with you. For someone like me, an unmitigated food addict, a plan partner is almost required. I’m convinced I could have lost weight alone because of my determination to change. Yet I know Donna’s encouragement and correction, her mere presence, proved priceless.
It is imperative the people closest to us buy in to our weight loss efforts. Most people don’t like conflict, and if the people around us don’t support our efforts we would rather drop the effort than drop the pounds. It’s just easier to pick up a fork than a dagger.
This is the sad reality for many overweight people. They want to lose weight and need help and support, but their loved ones poo-poo the need by refusing to sacrifice and eat right themselves. It’s hell on earth to try to lose weight while a spouse is sucking down Haagen-Dazs.
Even the most stout-hearted warriors at the start of weight loss will fade without the love and support of family and friends.
Now, when I come to those lonely windows of the night that I used to call my Waffle House hours, I don’t grab the car keys. I grab my wife’s hand.
And I pray.
I thank God I have Donna, the personification of a biblical help mate. We’ve been married for 13 years and we’re best friends. We laugh a lot and get along well, but when you get married in your mid-30s, you’re kind of set in your ways. I want to do certain things certain ways, and she’s the same.
We get along fine, but she still likes it when I’m on the road because that way I can’t mess up her stuff or alter her routines. We’ve become my parents. When my dad retired, he drove my mom nuts because he stayed around the house all the time. He tackled projects like refinishing the cabinets and then put everything back in the wrong place. They fought more after he retired than they had when he worked and came home stressed. I still can hear mom saying, “Don’t you have something to do?”
It’s like that with Donna and me. We love each other, but all of a sudden she’ll say, “Aren’t you booked somewhere? When are you leaving again? I need some time alone.”
In pursuing weight loss together we shopped together, cooked together, cleaned together, and read the plan together.
Donna lost 40 pounds on the plan and saw immediate results like I did. Two weeks into it, she began experiencing radical changes in her health. Her hot flashes and night sweats disappeared long before substantial weight did.
Here’s why: I think everybody’s strength is also his or her weakness. For instance, when it comes to my ministry, the people who work with me know I’m particular and tough. It’s got to be done right and on time even though I’m not personally organized. My hard edge sometimes gets on people’s nerves because it sounds like I’m mean when I’m really not. I’m just demanding to make sure the performance is good.
In the same way, Donna lost weight because she is precise about doing things. When she starts something, she is completely devoted.
Her dad convinced her to start running one year. They found a race every weekend—3K and 5K runs. Friends joined Donna as she ran races all over the state.
When she started running, she wasn’t quite up to shape but she finished the race no matter what. If she turned red and bordered on a heart attack, she still would cross that finish line.
“That’s the way you were with this diet,” I told her the other day. “Once you decided you were going to do this, that was it.”
That helped me because I knew she was going to be strict at home, on the road, at the restaurant, or wherever.
At the same time, her strength is her weakness. When she went off the diet, if she was going to slip up and have a doughnut she was going to do it right. She was going to scarf a whole bunch of good donuts with ice cream on top.
Thankfully, those moments have been few and far between.
We’ve trained ourselves to eat healthy meals in healthy amounts, and our proven track record assures us we can continue it. The joint effort bonded us more closely than we’ve ever been, and not just because our bellies are no longer in the way.
“We shared a common goal,” she said recently, and that is true. The same reasons motivated us both and we worked as a team. I’d prepare part of the meal in
one half of the kitchen and she’d work in the other. I’d chop squash, and she’d work on the chicken. Even now, when I grill I go buy the chicken and she does the prep and seasoning. I grill it while she prepares the salads. Then we enjoy the fruits of our teamwork.
We usually don’t sit at the table though. After coming off the road, I like to use TiVo to catch up on our favorite TV shows. But it’s not like we’re the Cleavers. We bicker, but I think it actually helps us eat right. She’s not afraid to call me out or slap my hand. I’m thankful for her obsessive tendencies when it comes to my eating.
Donna read an article the other day that asserts couples that argue live longer.
“Well,” I said. “We ought to live to be 150.”
We’re like best friends and laugh a lot, but we go Edith and Archie on each other all the time. I’ve learned if she’s really mad about something to give her time and she’ll get over it. And then she’ll apologize to me because usually it’s her fault.
Even while losing weight I sometimes tried to be sneaky. Remember, I’m the guy who hid wrappers in the trash and snuck out at night.
“No, no, no,” Donna said more than once. “You already had your three fruits today. You can’t have a bowl of strawberries.”
“It’s OK,” I said. “I’ll drink some more poop tea and get it out.”
Donna rolled her eyes.
“Or I’ll use prunes as one of my fruits,” I said. “That way, if I eat it’s going to come right back out in a few hours.”
Donna sighed and shook her head. “You’re an idiot,” she said. “Some of your logic is just so weird.”
I like Mexican food, but it’s hard to eat healthy on Mexican food. It’s possible, but the options are not so grande. After losing my big weight, we decided to test a local Mexican cantina. At the table, I whipped out my iPad.
“What are you doing?” Donna asked.
“I’m writing down stuff. I’m counting the tortilla chips we have.”
“It doesn’t matter if you count them. You still had seventy-three chips,” Donna said. “Just because you’re counting them doesn’t mean they’re not fattening.”