Life as a recovering big guy hasn't just meant ordering the fish and skipping desert. It has meant transforming the way I think about food and myself. This is a long-winded way of saying I miss nachos.

What I really mean is that I miss being able to enjoy nachos with delirious abandon, without the gnawing mindfulness that they're bad for me. My “journey” -- that‘s how we dieters describe the de-fatting process -- has been a good one. But sometimes I get sick of wellness.

I suppose nachos have been on my mind because of the Super Bowl, which was played yesterday and won convincingly by the food and beverage industry. The game is No. 2 on the calendar behind Thanksgiving in calories consumed by Americans, which would be of no big concern if we made better choices the other 363 days.

Why we don't is a complex matter, but I've come to believe that it's connected to our national infatuation with excess (Exhibit A: The Super Bowl). Americans have grabbed up the better part of the continent and then some. We've invented the airplane, the artificial heart and Donald Trump. We think big here in the ol‘ U.S. of A - even in an endless recession.

If American excess could be restrained to SUVs, credit card debt and Destiny USA, everything would be great, but unfortunately our national obsession with pushing boundaries tends to manifest itself on our plates.

Once, when I was about nine years old, I destroyed my fellow Cub Scout pack in a pie-eating contest. I won a flashlight. That might have been the first time it clicked for me: Overeating was fun. It was a way to get attention. It was my birthright. For the next 40 years I relished wowing people with how much I could eat ... and I paid for it.

The weight I‘ve dropped the past six months has been a function of the obvious: eating smarter and exercising more consistently. But psychologically it's more complicated than that. Six months ago I stood before two doors. One of them opened to an endless buffet and an open bar. The host was Paula Deen, hobbling around on her one foot and handing out Gooey Butter Pudding Pops as an appetizer. In this room people ate because they were bored, stressed, happy, sad, to reward themselves, to console themselves or just because everything was so yummy. Eating consumed their lives, literally.

In the other room there was a lot of non-fat yogurt and fresh fruit. The food was simple but satisfying, There was little added salt, fat or sugar. The primary value of food, everyone agreed, was as fuel to enable them to work, play and live. OK, some of these people tended to be boring, but they sure looked good.

Six months ago I chose Room No. 2, and I‘m OK with it. That isn't to say I don't occasionally sneak over to Room No. 1 to steal a few small wheelbarrows of raw cookie dough. But the key word is occasionally.

The way I see it, a love of hugeness and excess doesn‘t have to mean eating yourself into an early grave. Last month I acquired a new bicycle designed for riding in snow. It‘s an absurd, completely extraneous piece of equipment, with huge, chunky tires called “Big Fat Larrys” stretched across 4-inch wide rims. Even in this winter of little snow it is helping me stay connected to my inner Big Guy without piling on the calories.

Hey, better Big Fat Larrys than Big Fat Jeff.

Readers, meet humorist Jeff Kramer in person as he and Carol Sames, director of Upstate‘s Vitality Program, host a free presentation from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Monday, Feb. 13 at HealthLink, 6333 Route 298, East Syracuse, next to the DoubleTree hotel. Call 315-464-8668 to reserve your spot.