You Can’t Lose Weight by Talking about It, You Have to Keep Your Mouth Shut
As told by my “never-ending-fatty-guy” friend who loves to eat food and enrolled at famous fitness gym.
If you nod one chin and a couple more second the motion, you know it’s time to go on a diet. Unfortunately there’s nothing like a diet for improving your appetite. Nowadays though, there is no need to suffer alone because you can join a group and suffer with others. Organizations of weight watching thin people are out there ready and willing to help you fight the battle of the bulge. The first thing you have to learn is that goodies are the baddies.
Setting: Fitness Gym
At one meeting, an instructor held up an apple in one hand and a bar of the chocolate in the other. Tell me about this apple,” he said. “What are its good points in relation to our diet?” Hands were raised and answers like “low in calories,” “healthy” and “high in fiber” were offered. Then with a look of disdain he turned to the bar of chocolate and reeled off all its bad points. “Apples are not only far healthier,” he said, “they are less expensive. I paid 20 pesos for this one bar of chocolate.”
A plaintive voice echoed from the back of the room. “I’ll give you 50 pesos for it!”
At another meeting, one man was disappointed because he had only lost a few pounds in his first week. He told the others that a friend of his had boasted he’d lost ten. The instructor tried to encourage him by explaining that slow weight loss is likely to be more permanent.
“Is this friend of yours a doctor?” he asked.
“No.”
“A dietitian?”
“No,” the man mumbled. “I think he’s just a liar.”
Beware of cheating; you will usually be found out. While a man was attending a meeting of the Weight Watchers Club, someone broke into his car and stole a packet of biscuits and three bars of chocolate. Most of us only want to lose a few pounds or a stone or two at most. Consider the will power involved when these super slimmers’ decided enough was too much.
There are plenty of different diet books and internet offers on the market ranging from the obvious to the ludicrous. There’s the garlic diet, for instance, where you eat lots of garlic with everything: burgers, pizza, ice cream and even grilled chicken with unlimited rice – you don’t lose any weight but you look thinner from a distance. The pill diet, the 30-day diet is popular too – that’s the one people decide they’ll start…in 30 days.
Of course, there are a few hard and fast rules known to all regular dieters. For instance: (a) the calories in a bar of chocolate are cancelled out if taken with a diet drink; (b) if you eat something and no one sees you eating it, it has no calories; (c) when you eat with someone else the calories don’t count if they eat more than you do. Also, it’s a myth that the Heart Association has given out a diet that lets you eat hot dogs and ice cream and lose weight. A spokesman says this diet crops up every six months or so. They don’t know who starts it or why.
Salad is, of course, the mainstay of any diet and it’s a fact that it takes more calories to eat a piece of celery than the celery has in it in the first place. It’s just a pity that celery has all the flavor of polystyrene. At the end of the day it’s down to will power.
A friend decided that the way for him to stay fit and slim would be to take yoga lessons. He was determined to learn through self-discipline to stop overeating. When I asked if it was working, he happily replied, “Well I’ve gained five pounds but I’ve disciplined myself not to feel guilty about it.” There are a few alternatives to dieting; you could always place the fridge door handle two inches from the floor or solve your weight problem like never eating for a week or more.
And then, thankfully, there will always be people who accept the way they are. A fat man at a confectioner joked: “Inside of me, there’s a thin man trying to get out but I usually manage to subdue him with a couple of éclairs and a croissant. But, if you want to slim down and all this talk of dieting has made you feel hungry, remember those immortal words: “You can’t lose weight by talking about it. You have to keep your mouth shut!”