LIVE UNTIL YOU DIET -- How To Lose Weight By Downsizing The D-Word

We don't have an M.D. or a Ph.D. after our names, but this morning my partner and I each weigh twelve pounds less than we did three weeks ago. That's one pound for every year we might've spent getting those doctorates, if you care to look at it that way.

I do.

You might ask how we accomplished this weight loss. You might also ask why anyone would choose to live where the outside temperature is 22 degrees below zero this morning. Let's take the first question first:

Downsizing The D-Word

If I were making a list of six rules, which I swear I'm not, the first rule of weight loss would be to NEVER say the D-word. I'm so adamant about this, that I'm not even going to write it. If I write it, I'll think it, and if I think it, I'll labor over it, and if I do that, I won't do it. Or, worse still, I will. So, I'll submit it here as an acryonym in name only: D.I.E.T.

If you're someone who cannot let this pass, you may define it as "Did I Eat Today?" There. Now, get it out of your mind. Think about how cold it is, if you're hellbent on thinking about something.

The D-Word is a prescription for failure (yes, I can write prescriptions here, despite my lack of doctoral lettres, because it's cold enough this morning to validate anything).

The D-Word in the dictionary has horrible definitions as both noun and verb – the kinds of meanings doctors inflict upon their suffering patients, people whose minds are already so numbed by the cold that they'll do anything):

"Restricting food intake."

"Eat sparingly for health reasons."

"A regulated selection of foods."

"Habitual nourishment."

Bad. Bad. Bad.

And, wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

To lose weight, you have to change the way you eat. You are switching your body's engine to run on metabolic ethanol, or willow branch pellets, or pollen glue, or whatever image allows your mind to think enrichment and acceptance, not deprivation and denial.

You also might -- as you now focus on how you're gaining on what you're losing -- forget about how cold it is.

In humor, just as in real life, this is called a "mental picture." (No, this is not thinking. You're still thinking about frigid weather, remember?). Instead, imagine a bigger palm tree, rather than a smaller snow shovel. You're going to gain weight loss, not lose weight gain. Go here in your mind, and your body will follow as the joys of a spring thaw, not the miserableness of mud season.

Just how, Mr. faux Dr. Sherman, do we accomplish this, you might ask? How do we create mobile mental Floridian climates in our static arctic environments? Help us! We're fat & freezing!

Here's how (and stop clamoring. I hate that.) :

Downsize the D-Word and just eat better. As you do this, you'll eat worse less, despite yourselves, and you'll lose weight the same way you gained it – without even trying.

Now, for the remaining five rules for weight loss which I refuse to think about, but posted here because you won't let me off that easy:

5. If at all possible, begin this new life with a fat partner. Yes, I said FAT. You're both fat. You don't have love handles. You're not hefty, chunky, pleasingly plump or big-boned. You are fatties. You're are fat as fat gets.

Notice, I did not say slob. I did not say dumb. I know some idiotic slovens who are skinny as a post. You can be smart, neat and fat. Grant yourselves this.

Work with your partner. Share the responsibility. Misery may love company, but so does joy.

4. Stop eating crappy foods, and stop thinking about suing the crappy foodmakers for making you fat. If I were on the jury for that lawsuit, your lawyer would have to show me where junk food salesmen (two of them with their guns leveled) bound you up and funneled bags of cheese doodles into your face on a daily basis, and even then I'd have to recuse myself.

Don't make me tell you what "crappy" foods are. You already know, or you wouldn't be fat.

3. Stop reading diet books. You'd do better to eat them.

3b. Start eating good foods. Lots of 'em. Often. You already know what they are, or you wouldn't have avoided them.

2. Get a new scale, and use it every day in the same mode: Morning, naked, toweled off and fresh out of the shower, or evening, fully bundled, snow-covered, and just in from shoveling. And, remember, on any given day, at any given time, you'll always weigh two or three pounds more or less than you did the day before, or will the day after.

Call these your FFP's (free-floating pounds) and write them off. They're an illusion. They're also real – just like that luscious lawn waiting patiently under all that snow.

1. Most importantly: EXERCISE more. Ah, the dreaded "E-Word," I daresay worse than the D-Word for most of us fatsos! (Hey, I'm not letting you off that easy, either.)

But, you can trick yourselves out of its dread, and by now you realize that self-deception can be a good thing, when applied in reverse, because it was you you'd been fooling all along, anyway. You fooled yourselves fat. Now, begin by sneaking-in E-Word activities:

If you're downstairs, use the upstairs bathroom. For the average evacuator, this alone will add 125 miles of brisk, if not hurried, walking per year.

Now, stretch out this application, and use it for every little thing you do: Jog up any handicapped ramp. Park at the end of the Wal-Mart lot. Take the long way around the barn. Put all your food in the bottom cabinets. Get those arms flapping, and wave your goodbyes and hellos when you say them.

And, before you know it, you'll find yourselves where my partner and I are this morning: Even allowing for our six FFP's, there are 24 fewer pounds of us in this house, enlightened up.

That's the equivalent of a super-sized box of diet books, forever left out in the cold, and spring is coming.

Copyright 2007 B. Elwin Sherman. All rights reserved.