Dear Elaine;
Listen. I know you’re concerned with your weight. How do I know? Because you’re a girl and because you’re alive. Our guy friend wondered to me why most women think they’re fat when they’re perfectly lovely, and I think it might be because when we go to the clothing store, the only items that fit us have a silhouette of a whale on the label.
In general, if the size number is greater than the age at which we lost our virginity, we start getting concerned that we’re hideously fat. I just read the touching book about funnyman Chris Farley, and evidently I weigh the same as Chris Farley at a “good” weight. So we’ve gotta do something.
A lot of people say they just don’t know how to get in shape. I know how. It’s just that it’s hard work. I was watching a show about weight loss, and how it’s just an equation- if you take in fewer calories than you put out, you’ll lose weight. I said, thanks a lot, TV- you think I’m fat *and* bad at math.
The last time I lost a lot of weight, women would ask me all the time how I did it, and as I explained that I was training for the Portland marathon, running 40 miles a week, I could see their eyes glaze over with disinterest, and they would say, oh, well, my friend’s been sleeping in a hydraulic tube, wrapped in Saran Wrap smeared with lard and beeswax, and I was hoping it was something like that.
I’m not working hard anymore. This time I’m working out smarter. This time I’m gonna lose weight in a fast and easy way!
What are my options for nutty-ass, health-endangering fad diets?
I do know a guy who is the last living Atkins dieter. I am not a good candidate for that, because I don’t eat meat, so I am not swayed by the magic of eating bacon smeared with butter. As far as I can tell, all that would be left for me to eat is celery and dust. Also, I read that carbohydrates are not just the fuel for your body, they’re what powers your brain, which is why every Atkins aficionado I have known has had ketosis breath and the attention span of a potato-starved gnat.
I was curious about Alli, the little blue diet pill that makes you shit fat*. There is a helpful booklet that comes with Alli that reads: There are some side effects, which include “oily spotting” and shitting when you hadn’t planned to. Don’t be a baby, Elaine – it’s all the same symptoms as you get from eating at Taco Bell.
The book also says: the excess fat floating on the toilet water may look like oil from a slice of cheese pizza.
See that? Already Alli has helped me! I’ll never eat cheese pizza again! Blarg! And it’s classic Clockwork Orange-style reprogramming: instead of feeling watching violent films and feeling nauseous, you’ll grow to associate eating a doughnut with the very real possibility of crapping a stick of butter on the subway.
* This is not their official motto- yet! I have helpfully emailed it to them and am patiently waiting for a response.
All the skinny bints at work go on about the Master Cleanse diet. A couple of years ago, it gained some popularity because Beyonce went on it so that she would not be mistaken for the fat, talented girl in Dreamgirls.
Apparently, the difference between this and real-life anorexia are the duration and hot lemonade, which has just enough maple syrup in it to keep you alive- and it’s supposed to turn you inside out with the mastery of its cleansing.
It seems that when people are not worried about the size of their ass, they’re concerned with what’s inside of it. A very similar diet is the cabbage soup diet, which is the same thing except you pretend you’re eating soup, and then you fart yourself thin. I guess I’m not clear on the details.
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