Drinking Salt Water?

(For those who missed my post yesterday: http://www.myfitnesspal.com/topics/show/82221-unconventional-nordic-exercise)

DISCLAIMER: I am exploring topics of weight loss, nutrition and self-image through absurdist allegory. It keeps me coming back to the site, and maybe it distracts people from agonizing over the more serious side of weight loss. I have had posts deleted in the past, and I would point out that there doesn't seem to be any rule mandating that posts on the forum present factual or even realistic discourse on these topics. I point to "Favorite Food Haikus" as a good example of posting for entertainment and social value. Anyway, enjoy today's character...



Alright, here's my problem in a conk-shell: I'm a fish-man, not a fisherman, a fish-man, I spend 20-24 hours a day in the ocean, alternately rescuing and drowning beach goers and shipwrecked mariners, depending on my mood--and you probably think that's extreme, but fish-people are fickled herrings... get it? Right. Well, fickle though we may be, we are passionate creatures, prone to flights fancy and we swim headfirst into love. That's how this all started. I was minding my own business one day, I had grabbed a surfer by the leg and pulled him into the depths, and just as he stopped thrashing... there she was, Amanda, the lifeguard, she grabbed that surfer right under his arms and dragged him to the surface. Just for a brief moment we made eye-contact, and the ocean was just me and her and that limp surfer, slumped like soggy driftwood in her arms... as I reached for her, she screamed, air bubbles issuing forth from her gaping mouth, and she kicked at me and ascended to the surface. She swam as quickly as she could, and I know I could have caught her... but what's the point? She thinks I'm ugly. That beautiful pearl, with her siren whistle, day by day, tempting me to come to shore... but I never do. I took a good look in the mirror that day, and I didn't like what I saw staring back at me: a bloated, disgusting fish-man. Pay no mind to everything I do have to offer, I'm strong, I have my own place (I live in a lovely wreck that I've redeposited piece by into a semi-submerged cave at the base of the ridges rising over the cove, under the bait shop, and I have most of the modern amenities: chairs, tables, fire, a laptop in a plastic bag.) and I can breath underwater... but I could see that it was all for not if I didn't make a change to my body right then and there. So I did what any rational fish-person would do: I ravaged my living space, I snapped the table in two, I smashed my baubles and trinkets, I tipped over a chest of gold coins... and then I collected myself, I took a hard look at my lifestyle and the poncy jowls resting on my shoulders beneath my gills, my broad, fat-faced gills, those hideous gills--I hated them, I wanted to fillet them right off of my face. And my skin? Scales all over, slimy, and shimmering with an opalescent tinge as the firelight of my cave illuminated their grotesqueness. I plucked a scale from my chest, I hated the scale. I wanted to pull them all off, but it really hurt, so I didn't. Instead, I did what any rational fish-person would do: enraged by pain I ravaged my home: I dashed the pottery I plucked from the wrecked Chinese junk, I kicked over the piled up bones of drowned sailors, tore the clinging seaweed from the wall and hurled it into the roaring fire around which I danced and prayed to my mysterious gods of the deep... and then I collected myself, I got onto the baitshop's WiFi and I signed up for MyFitnessPal. So, when I entered all of my information, my diet and my exercise, I was doing really well. I eat mostly fish, mollusks and seaweed, so I'm getting tons of protein, iron and other nutrients, maybe a little light on the carbs, and the occasional saltwater taffy isn't going to kill me, after all, I swim all the time, so I know I'm burning it all off--and yet, when I look in the mirror, what's staring back at me? Big soapy eyes, dull and cloudy, a wide lipless mouth with needle-like teeth and those fatty-fat-fat, sloppy gills... those hideous gills. Where am I going wrong? My face was, maybe a bit marred by scales, but by any appreciable aesthetic standard quite pleasing... except for those damned gills. What else can I do to tone them up? I've tried neck exercises, and that just makes the whole thing broader, and it doesn't firm up the sacks of flesh dangling from the sides of my face. And then it dawned on me: I think I'm retaining water. I started including saltwater into my dietary charts, and low and behold, I'm drinking 30 gallons of saltwater a day, I had no idea! Do you have any idea how much sodium that is? A LOT!

So, do you think that's my problem? Is it worth leaving my home and everything I've ever known so that I can become a new fish-man? Is it worth going "freshy" over a girl? Even if the lifestyle is healthier, and I do make the change, won't I have to come back to the beach and confront Amanda with my love? And what if she shoots me down? I suppose I could grab her by the hair and drag her to my new freshwater lair... but those things aren't exactly love nests, they're muddy and they smell like algae, not like the sea with its powerful beauty and warmy salty breezes. Freshwater living lacks charm, and I'm not a piscanthropologist, but I'm also halfway certain that I could die. And I would die for the love of that vigilant shoreline beauty, but without it... my efforts would all be for not. Worse yet! What if she is taken with the new me and repulsed by my freshwatery abode? Sure, she'd demur and pretend things are fine, but you can't fake enthusiasm, it shows. I would see it in her eyes, I'd sense it in her touch, I'd know it when we're making love... lying there like a dead fish, that far off stare wondering how things might have been if only she'd taken up with the crocodile man at the circus. His short strong arms and that powerful jawline. Have you seen my chin? I don't have one. How can I compete with crocodile man fantasies?

My fate is in your hands? Should I make the changes for her? Is she a keeper, or should I throw her back and seek out some other fish in the sea of love... no really, a fish might be more accepting.

Thanks