If Ony it wasn't the Food

My friend Dennis wrote to tell me he started a weight loss program. Since it was almost a week before New Year’s Day, when he would make his annual resolution to lose weight, he was way ahead of schedule. In fact he’s so far ahead of schedule, he’s already told me it probably won’t work. I know exactly how he feels.
Five short years ago I decided to lose 20 pounds. I got on the South Beach diet and stuck with it for months. It worked too. I lost exactly 20 pounds. I was proud of myself and people told me I looked good which after all is why we go on diets to begin with. Nobody goes on a diet for health reasons. Doctors can tell us we’re going to have a stroke, a heart attack or both. Our knees can ache and our arches can collapse like the Roman Empire and it doesn’t faze us. If it comes down to a choice between a pepperoni pizza and a six pack versus a salad with green tea, it’s no contest. We’ll ask the ambulance driver to stop for a pizza even as the EMT is saying “City General emergency room,” while she’s placing the oxygen cannula in our noses.
There are good reasons for our behavior. Although it’s never been fully explained in medical journals, I am sure that excess fat never really leaves. It remains lurking around the corner, in hiding if you will, while we dabble in celery and watercress. I don’t know how, but it knows that your diet plan, like your savings account, is temporary. In no time you’ll be begging that fat to come home and what’s more, to make amends, you’ll ask it to call it’s relatives in Margaritaville and invite them to live with you too. Dennis says fat is more like a suit you hang in a closet. Without thinking one day you put it on again and you’re stuck with it.
When it comes to food, the temptations are enormous. Anyone that travels on business for example, knows that the only way to maintain your weight is to walk to your destination, a highly improbably solution. If you fly you can count on thirty fast food kiosks in the airport, not one of which will sell you a piece of fruit. I have actually gained a couple of pounds just walking from one terminal to another in Philadelphia. The aromas contain more calories than I can possibly burn by running to my gate.
It’s not much better driving either. The Interstate Highway system, a product of the Eisenhower Administration, apparently was built with funds supplied by the fast food industry. Why else would there be billboards trumpeting an infinite number of burger, taco, donut and soft ice cream joints? Have you ever seen a roadside sign that said, “Health food store ½ mile on the right?”
People that don’t travel are no better off. Every neighborhood supermarket in America is set up to defeat any diet you can name. The fresh bakery section is on the same aisle as the fresh vegetables. Both offer fresh goods of course, but like perfume and sweat socks, one of them smells better. Consider the frozen food section with refrigerated foods running down both sides of the aisle. You think it’s an accident that the ice cream is on one side and frozen lima beans are on the other? That’s a tough choice. Even high calorie cold cuts are displayed under lights worthy of a jewelry store display case. It’s hard to look away.
A key ingredient of any diet always includes regular exercise. But exercise alone won’t get the job done. Thankfully, makers of diet pills, supplements and high -in -everything -but -calories shakes are eager to help us with those resolutions. You have to love all those commercials touting easy remedies. Of course, pills alone won’t do the trick either. The fine print appears at the bottom of your TV screen: Works best with 14 hours of exercise daily. I might be willing to try some of these diet aids if the average Americans with the before and after photos agreed to appear next year, live and in person in my living room. Are they still sporting svelte figures?
Regardless, a new year has arrived and there’s work to be done. I’ll bet somebody will check themselves out in the mirror after reading this and decide they can’t live with the image staring back at them. Something has to give. If only it wasn’t the food.

Copyright 2009 Len Serafino. All rights reserved.