Almost exactly one year ago, I came home for four days for my future sister-in-law’s bridal shower. Yes, I’m a boy and yes, I wasn’t reeeeeeeally invited, by my mom was feeling stressed about it and I had a tiny break between seasons of ANTM, so I hopped on a plane and spent the weekend on Long Island. It was April. It was so pretty out.

Since that weekend almost 365 days ago, I have gained over thirty pounds.

“Oh, no,” you may be thinking, “Dan is a monster. Let’s give him pamphlets about the dangers of morbid obesity and let’s give him coupons from Subway and then rename him ‘Chunk Fatori’ and laugh about him when he’s not in the room. Not that he’ll ever be entirely out of the room, because when you’re that big, you’re kind of close to everything all the time.” But don’t despair, fellow (though a bit catty, to be honest) reader. It’s not that I’m fat (at least not THAT fat) now, but rather that I was dangerously skinny then.

I was on a crazy diet at the time, and the second I went off of said crazy diet, I started to gain weight in a pounds-an-hour kind of way. This is not solely because I was on some uber-Atkins diet where I was allowed to have my first piece of bread and immediately gained twenty pounds; this was because as soon as I had the full arsenal of food available to me for the first time in over six months, I started eating like a freaking maniac. I was eating because I had to gain weight, which was the most astonishing concept of all time. It was like having unprotected sex in order to not get an STD. It didn’t make sense, but I was all about it.

This new world of eating like a monster led to nights like this:

And this:

And, perhaps most disturbingly, this:

Yes. That’s an entire container of Trader Joe’s raw cookie dough, which did not stay on the planet long enough even to see the inside of an oven. And that Cheetoh snow drift in the back? That got taken care of as well. Big time. My compliments to the craft services people at an old job of mine that I’m legally obligated not to mention.

Eric rebelled against this dangerous eating with great success during his 21-day detox, but I just kept on eating and eating and eating. When I started The World’s Most Stressful Job back in December, the thought of health and nutrition and certainly weight loss went right out the window. So I’ve been trying to run every day while I’ve been here, but it’s been a bit of challenge when the weather looks like this.

In fact, this is a picture of what it looks like outside of my window at this very moment.

Yeah, happy freaking springtime, everyone. And have a good run, Boston Marathon. Me, I’m back on the cookie dough diet because it’s the only thing that can keep me warm.