Ahhh, screw it – I’ll just do a few extra sit-ups tomorrow!

If you’re anything like me, you were one of the geniuses who triumphantly decided to take a stand this New Years and put taking better care of oneself on your list of resolutions, right between “Get really, really good at foosball” and “Figure out where that stench in the garage is coming from.”

Then again, if you’re exactly like me, you’re probably also finding yourself getting exceedingly frustrated by the lack of progress that you’ve been seeing as a result of said dietary and cardiovascular tortures, from the crunches and incessant jogging to the unyielding self-restraint in the delicious face of everyone else’s Chinese takeout lunches and overflowing hot fudge sundae desserts. All that hard work and dedication, and still we’re here just a trudging along with the figure of an inner-tube at best? I mean, seriously – what’s a guy gotta do to lose a few stupid pounds around here, anyways?!

Yes, that is the age-old question, far more important to our ever-bloating society than why the chicken crossed the road (to avoid getting eaten by fat Americans) or why hotdogs are sold in packages of ten while hotdog buns are sold in packages of eight (to remind us that we’re going to need extra to make up for that damn chicken getting away). Sure, it’s easy to put on a couple of dozen pounds by binging on cheeseburgers and pizza and hot wings and every other fast food staple that this overindulgent country was founded on – heck, your average over-eater doesn’t even need the holidays to round out that girlish figure, but then come swimsuit time, heaven forbid those pounds melt right back off like the butter did over tub after tub of movie theater popcorn in the several months prior. It’s like somebody stacked the deck in the tentmaker’s favor, I tell ya!

I guess if there’s but one thing that we can take from said savory sufferings in the name of seeing slimmer sizes, it’s the idea that while we may not necessarily be dropping massive amounts of actual weight while we’re sweating to the oldies and then subsequently forcing ourselves to eat food that really only appeals to people from that very same era, then maybe at least we can learn some valuable information about what sorts of things we can’t do to lose weight. I know that I sure have over the last eleven weeks, and call it trial and error … even if it does happen to be a bit heavy in the error category, but if merely one positive thing has come from this diet aside from all of the frequent flier points I’ve earned on my credit card for buying all of this so called “diet food,” at least I can now officially vouch that, among other things, the following do not help yours truly lose weight:

  • having potato chips around the house
  • living within a drivable vicinity of any establishment that makes, sells, or even rents potato chips
  • writing the words potato chips over and over again in a column until my mouth is literally watering to the point of toweling requirements
  • eating chocolate cake for breakfast…
  • …and for lunch…
  • …despite following it up with a reasonable dinner
  • making what may seem to be justifiable excuses at the time to skip a day of exercise
  • skipping a whole week’s worth of exercise with the intention of eating nothing but grass and working out 24 hours a day non-stop the following week to catch-up
  • swearing off exercise in its entirety and vowing to remain fat forever after stubbing my big toe like the dickens on the corner of the elliptical, while also subsequently being a bad influence for children within shouting distance who don’t really need to be learning such 4-letter words at their age
  • cashing in a 401k at what could be its lowest possible value to help gather the down payment for a shady, amateur liposuction treatment that seemed like a pretty good deal at the time on Craigslist
  • sobbing uncontrollably for hours into the night at the sarcastic, offhand suggestion that it’s really better that I don’t lose weight because otherwise the planet might shift off balance and roll into the sun
  • spending so much time putting together this stupid list instead of doing something a bit more physically demanding than typing and being hilarious on the Internet