• Posted on:July 1st, 2008
• Comments:2 Comments
• Category:Eat and Be Merry, Weighing In
• 

If you are looking for a guaranteed way to gain weight and realize you’ve gained it when it’s too late to claim it’s “just water weight,” then follow my plan* for success.

Start working from home, preferably a job that doesn’t require you to meet anyone face-to-face, except for a trip or two every six months to meet up with your colleagues. This will ensure that you will never have to put on respectable clothing — say, anything without an elastic waistband — so you won’t necessarily notice the ever expanding girth as you sit in the recliner, laptop beside you on a TV table, just far enough away from the bag of Cheetos so that the neon orange cheesy powder doesn’t gum up your keyboard too badly.

Begin dating a wonderful, caring, attractive, thoughtful man who loves to cook and has never worked out in a gym. After awhile you’ll lose all interest in Cybex machines, too. This man has never been to a gym because he has the metabolism of a weasel on crack, which you do not unfortunately possess.

Live in a climate that sees snow for nine of twelve months of the year. Okay, I exaggerate. It’s really more like eight. When you walk outside in the middle of May and snow starts to fall, brush the frozen tears off your face, go back inside, whip up a pot of macaroni and cheese, eat, and repeat.

BONUS POUNDS if you happen to lose your cushy job, exhaust unemployment, apply for every job under the sun and get denied, lose the part-time barely-making-ends-meet job you did manage to get, and nearly give yourself an ulcer worrying about whether or not you’ll have to declare bankruptcy.

I’m living proof that this can happen to you, too! After three years of living up here, I’ve gained (at least) 20 lbs. Of course, it didn’t happen overnight, but more amazing to me is that I didn’t realize this was happening, say, TEN POUNDS AGO. Losing ten pounds is not a huge deal. Twenty-something requires a little more dieting, exercise, discipline…a little more EVERYTHING.

If I were the Detroit Tigers, the theme of my press conference would most definitely be “it’s a rebuilding year.”

I’ve struggled to get moving on any kind of weight loss program. It’s been a stressful year for me, a year when counting weight watchers points has taken a backseat to questions of employment, finances, relationships, and all of the other crap called life that causes one to not want to weigh dry cereal or put down the boston creme filled donut.

And I know, I know, DIETS DON’T WORK. I’ve tried many. A friend recently reminded me that we can’t let ourselves be defined by our disappointments, something I’ve been doing lately, especially when it comes to the job situation. I know I’ve done this when it comes to diet and exercise, too. It’s very easy to get discouraged after failure and want to give up. I’ve picked myself up off the ground in other difficult times in life, so why not here?

So this time, in my quest to live a healthier life and drop all of this excess baggage that’s affecting every area of my life in a negative way, I’ve resolved to be more thoughtful of the food I’m eating, and not be railroaded by the occasional indulgence along the way. And more importantly, I need to get out and move every day.

I guess this didn’t really end up being a post on food. And I don’t want to bore people with the minutia of what I eat every day. But as I sit here, on the verge of starting what looks to be a promising job situation (more on this later), and realizing I need to squeeze into some respectable office attire (chinos with non-elastic waists), this seems like the right time to start. Things are starting to come together. So here we go.

*This plan is not endorsed by Oprah, but I’m sure she might be able to relate.