Binge Lite

Well, I figured out the best way in the world to lose weight: go to a buffet with my older brother. Nothing will suppress your appetite quicker than watching him for an hour at Golden Corral. (Of course, if you only stay for an hour you'll only see about one-fourth of the meal.)

My older brother is a master of stacking food. The capacity of those ten-inch plastic plates could be tested by weighing what he puts on them. Engineers could study his stacking techniques and learn how to build better skyscrapers. See, when most people go to a buffet, the reason they stack food is because there isn't much room on the plates if you don't want your food to touch. So the stacking would more aptly be called "overlapping" for most people (see example on the right). But my older brother stacks 12 inches high because he hates getting up to make more trips to the buffet. If he can get more food per trip, he can make less trips. He still ends up making 5 or 6 trips throughout the meal, but he despises every one of them. He usually tries to catch people as they leave the table and asks them to bring him a plate of ribs when they come back.

After the sun has set and the rest of the group is fighting off the post-buffet nap, you finally get the signs that make you think he's done eating:
1) He's eaten two plates of dessert (not the 3-inch dessert plates, but the 10-inch dinner plates).
2) He's out of breath and there are 6 different stains on his shirt.
3) Management has asked him to slow down because he's looking pale.
4) The bill has been paid and half the party has left.

That's when he surprises you with his 7th trip through the line.

But the one thing that I don't understand about the whole process is his drink. In this drawn-out display of self-indulgence filled with more calories than the average town eats, he drinks Diet Coke. I'm going to mention that again in case you didn't understand. While eating his body weight in complex carbohydrates and ruining the taste of food for the rest of the table, my older brother insists on drinking a Diet Coke. That's like Voldemort making sure he's polite to his waitstaff. (Didn't understand that one? Fine, try this instead.) That's like Hannibal Lecter being unwilling to squish a bug. (Better?) At that point, isn't it too late to be worrying about a diet drink? Why not splurge that extra 1 percent and have the regular Coke. Or better yet, get the Mountain Dew mixed with Coke. Or have the Coke/Mountain Dew/vanilla softserve/chocolate sprinkles drink that complements your inventive combination of barbeque brisket and taco meat? It's just too ironic to drink Diet Coke with that amount of food.

And it also makes me wonder why Golden Corral even serves Diet Coke. If your business model is based on the idea that people will pay a relatively low price for large quantities of food, why not skip the diet drinks and serve the real stuff? Or put some slushy machines next to the milkshake machines. Or maybe employ some out-of-work nurses to start up a gravy IV for each patron when they sit down.