Smile-breaks
Weight Loss Advice Comes Pouring In…
Been sending out these columns for years. Now and then I get a few e-mails. “Sounds like what happened to me,” you say. Couple weeks ago I sent out a column about being fat and WOW! Suddenly my e-mail box is flooded with advice!
Next time I’ll skip the doctor visit. You guys had real down-to-earth ways for me to lose weight. I’ve changed the names to protect the skinny.
“I never eat after seven p.m.,” Carlotta tells me. Seven?! At seven o’clock I’m just getting started! After a calorie-conscious breakfast, a long hard day at work and skipping lunch, I eat a nutritious, tiny-portioned dinner at six-thirty. About seven-oh-five I get serious hunger pangs.
At first I resist. I keep resisting, but it’s really tough. By seven-oh-seven, I cave. I run to the fridge and open the door. I try not to look at all those pictures of healthy foods stuck under the magnets as I swing the door wide open. I stare hard and long at the oranges and apples.
And then… the freezer. I know what’s in there. A whole bunch of bags of frozen peas and corn and frozen chicken breasts and three DOVE DOUBLE CHOCOLATE MOCHA ICE CREAM BARS. On a good night, I go back to the apples and oranges.
Milford told me that Tostitos and salsa have kept her slim ’n trim for years. She didn’t mention any limits, like only fifteen Tostitos a day or only after lunch, so that’s good. I’m thinking it wouldn’t be a bad life: sittin’ on the couch, dipping Tostitos in salsa as I watch “Desperate Housewives.”
Karly sent one of the more treasonous e-mails. “Why can't we just go back to the days when (the) Botticelli body was the rave and skinny women were considered worthless!!!” she says. And Carlotta advised me to, “Enjoy life and don't be so concerned about your weight. It is your health that is the most important.”
Their words of wisdom raised deep philosophical questions within my soul. Can you lose weight without worrying about it? Does the Botticelli body have mystical powers? Are skinny women worthless?
While you’re pondering on those questions, I’ll give you an update on my efforts to lose forty pounds.
First off, I revised it to thirty pounds. Even the doc said she doesn’t maintain her “ideal weight.” She stays with ten pounds over her ideal weight. Hey! Good enough for the doc, good enough for me.
Then I un-rounded the number. It wasn’t actually a whole forty pounds. It was – to be mathematically precise – thirty-six pounds. Now twenty-six pounds.
I can’t think of any more calculations to bring the number down, so I’m stuck with twenty-six pounds. For four weeks now, I’ve been on the treadmill for twenty to thirty minutes a day, two to three days a week. I’ve cut the carbs, but hey! I never realized how many foods have carbs! I’ve eaten less than 1200 calories a day for ten of the twenty-eight days, maybe twelve. The other days I kept it under 1500. Except for last Monday when I absolutely indulged myself all day long.
Net result: I lost two pounds the first week; one pound the next week; a pound and a half the third week and gained a pound the fourth week. I have about twenty-two pounds to go.
All of your good advice has given me food for thought, which by the way, has absolutely no calories, no fat and no carbs. I think I can make it now, if I just keep this last piece of advice from Karla stuck to my brain: “If you get hungry, go do something like exercise.”
The only thing is, it’s gonna be kind’a hard, carrying that treadmill around with me all day…