I have been trying to get a handle on my love handles for quite some time now. Lately I have had to get serious about it. It’s not that I can’t lose weight, in fact I have lost 100 pounds in the past five years, the problem is that it is the same 20 pounds every year. It got so that I didn’t need a scale to know how much I weighed; I needed a calendar. I can trace some of it to when I was doing my annual physical every spring. My doctor kept ragging me about my weight, which didn’t seem to be coming down as fast as he would like it to. It seems he wanted me to give up everything I enjoy in life so I could live longer. I figured if I followed his advice then when I’m 90 I can look forward to an extra year and a half in a nursing home at ten grand a month. Yeah, sign me up for that.
It goes back several years to when I had a job where I had to travel all over the state to take pictures at schools. I was the guy that would show up on picture day and set up the camera, lights and backgrounds, spend the day photographing as many as 500 students, then maybe hang around at the end of the day to take the team pictures during practice, then pack everything into my car and drive a couple hundred miles and get ready to do it all over again the next day. Some days were worse than others, but there were times when if I got to stop for lunch at all I would have to run to a convenience store and grab a bag of chips and a candy bar. I called that lunch for people who don’t have time for fast food. And if I didn’t stop at a pizza place before or after I headed down the road to the next town, I would add a hot dog from that same convenience store as I headed out of town. I think that before I started that job was the last time I weighed under 200 pounds till I got serious about a crash diet program, and that didn’t really stick, because once I reached my goal weight, I started to notice all the things I could eat again. It seems the big problem people have is they still think of these as their four main food groups:
A bigger problem – servings per container: 1.
A few years ago, Dave Barry wrote a book called “Stay Fit and Healthy Until You’re Dead” which to this day is the funniest health and fitness book I have ever read. Dave is not a diet and fitness guru by trade, he is a humor writer, and in that capacity, he has inspired millions of people to follow in his footsteps. Well, one at least. So, with the requisite disclaimers about getting the proper medical direction before taking his advice, he gave the following diet tip: don’t eat too much. While that is good advice, I didn’t think it went quite far enough. So, I came up with another section on exercise, which goes as follows: work out more. The theory being that most people are overweight because they over-eat and don’t move around enough. So, the average person following this advice can’t help but get results. I’m sure we could market this program and make tons of money, so Dave, if you are reading this, get in touch. I’m sure we can work something out.
