This two-ingredient combination finally got me excited for “clean eating”

Watermelon and lemon go together like conservatives and hypocrisy. 

Google says I didn’t invent this combination, but out of obligation, I’m here to tell you exactly how this happened for me. I suck at diets and the reason is very simple: food tastes so good, and diets feel like I’m unnecessarily punishing myself. 

I am a pig for a great steak. I am a pig for lobster mac and cheese. I am a pig for every single Italian dish ever created except spaghetti. I’m a pig for buttered-down freshly baked breads. I’m a pig for fusion anything — and I am a pig for washing all of these beautiful dishes down with a craft cocktail made by a farm-to-table person who only dresses in flannel. I’d rather eat than work or read or smoke a Jay that was rolled by Rihanna and passed to me by Barack Obama on the night he became the first Black President. I love food. 

So, there’s no surprise that on a recent doctor visit, a collection of people with lab coats came into the small room where I waited patiently and said a variation of, “You should try giving up food, especially if you want to live,” and “You will never be satisfied again,” and “I hope and pray that you starve,” and “Delete all of the cooking shows from all of your devices, because you are now an egg white lifer. 

Now, I’m sure it didn’t come out like that, but as a person who would choose eating at a Michelin star restaurant over playing around of tennis with Serena in Oprah ‘s backyard, that is exactly what I heard. But lucky for me, I will always put my family and well-being over everything, even my food addiction. People do this every day and if it’s one thing I specialize in, its mastering things that people do every day. 

In this journey, I began forcing myself to love dressing-less salad, jugs of purified water, the bitterest dark chocolate as a treat, and yes, seasonless salmon. This has been going on for about a week, and the one thing I learned is that delicious food is kind of like heroin — once you get through the aches and pains of kicking it, you can potentially reach normalcy and maybe even find joy in the bland boring universe of what they call “clean eating.” The other day, I happen to experience that joy. 

I was grabbing a salad from one of my favorite spots in Baltimore called Atwater’s. They specialize in chicken salad sandwiches (a beautiful dish that I may never enjoy again), delicious apple pies and all kinds of fancy breads — other items that are kind of extinct to me. On my salad was goat cheese that I plucked off, pecans and fresh watermelon. The freshest watermelon I ever had; it kind of tasted like Jesus grew it. 

“Do you guys have a side of this watermelon?” I asked the waitress, “It sure is good.” 

She said no. As I ate the salad, without dressing of course, I found myself struggling to chew those big leafy greens, so I took the lemon that was perched on top of my glass of water and squeezed it on the salad. Some of the lemon juice hit the watermelon, and Oh my God, my God, God. 

It felt like I carved into hot fudge brownie sundae. It was so unexpectedly good. Instantly I purchased another salad and then blasted to the grocery store where I bought huge container of pre-sliced watermelon and a bag of lemons.

Once home, I placed a portion of the sliced watermelon into a bowl squeezed lemon juice all over it until it almost formed a small puddle and suddenly clean eating didn’t seem so boring. I wonder what else is out there?