Page M1lé April 25, 1990.

This Week

THE LAST WORD

Se

Fat chance for this couch potato

By GORDON F. HOOPER
This Week Contributor
am mired in a conundrum: Where does flesh go when you
lose weight? I was told by my doctor to lose some weight or
I would die sometime in the near future. He intimated
that would be next week, if not sooner, so I had lots of

motivation to diet.

That made me consider my
life to that point and I had to
decide if car payments, mort-
gage installments, what I owe
Visa and everything else it
was necessary to pay for to
survive in today’s world was
overbalanced enough by a few
more years of life to make it
worthwhile. It was close, but I

and onsetting middle-age
angst to go there also? If I find
the answer to this question,
I'll never have to work again.
People will be beating down
my door to thrust money at
me for the secret.

As of yet, I haven’t got the
answer. I’ve been told that
matter can neither be created

advantage. to staying alive.
So I lost the fifty pounds the
doctor wanted me to. When
my scale quit groaning and
read out the weight the doctor
desired, I looked at my re-
duced waistline and immedi-
ately noticed that a lot of flesh
%had disappeard. I mean, I
used to have a waistline in the
vicinity of 45 inches, but 45
sounded better than the ac-
pail shleAWeO, acs, ee
and man al-
ways has been
a vain crea-
ture.

waist had disappeared.
Where did it go? It’s not as if I
could open up one of my bu-
reau drawers and look at the
10 inches neatly wrapped in a
6 handkerchief. It was just
E gone, like the hair on my
£ head. At least I knew where
2 that went; down the toilet
© after I pulled it out of my

zette, Saanich Nows, Sidney Review and The Esquimalt Ne

Back to the question. Where
> did 50 pounds it took me
2 many years of overindulgence
>in rich, good-tasting food to
= accumulate go? The Twilight
& Zone? The fifth dimension? A
2 parallel Earth, just two se-
~ conds away? If it has gone to
= one of those places, how do I
2 arrange for my car payments,
= mortgage installments, Visa

«__Thave been
called lard butt

nor destroyed. I think I have
proved that it can be dest-
royed. I offer a picture of
myself with a potbelly which
used to hang over my belt in
proud defiance of gravity and
a recent one of my new, svelte
self. Nobody has yet shown
me where the extra poundage
has gone.

I has suspected the avoirdu-
pois might have shifted to my
rear end, as I have been called
lard-butt on
more than one
occasion. The
problem with
that theory is

My waist is Se ee SE that not only
now thirty- oF Ore than has 10 inches
nine inches, gone occasion of beer-gut
sothat means 2 4 disappeared,
10 inches of so too has fifty

pounds of weight. That means
it couldn’t have shifted to an-
other area, and I’m left with

the vaporization of matter ~

premise again.

Now that we’re on the sub-
ject of mysteries, why is it
that simply walking past a
bakery and sniffing adds
weight to me? One of my
friends is skinny little guy
who could consume an entire
deli counter and still stay at
the same weight. You'd think
that when a person scarfs
down two pounds of beef-
steak, it would cause his
weight to go up by at least two
pounds. But no! Nothing in
the known world will cause
him to gain weight. He’s been
150 pounds since birth, and

no doubt he’ll still be 150
yn they start sho-

velling dirt on him.

That's why I developed the
theory that skinny people who
look like underfed bone racks
and could use another 20 or
30 pounds exist in another
plane or dimension where the
gaining of weight is not possi-
ble. I demand to know why I

gain weight just thinking ~

about food when my thin
friends can chow down till
Sara Lee runs out of cake,
then belch and reach for a
bedtime snack without gain-
ing an ounce.

Now that I’ve lost all this
weight, I’m going to have to
spend money on new pants

and shorts. This is in addition
to the major dollars I spent on
a fitness club, special foods
from a reducing organization
and miscellaneous items such
as an exercycle, rowing ma-
chine and a new sports car to
keep my mind occupied while
I was refraining from stuffing
my mouth with food. Don’t let
anyone tell you they have a
way to lose weight that is
inexpensive. That exercycle
and rowing machine damn
near pushed me into bank-
ruptcy!
Also to be ignored are the
people who tell you to eat food
that is “Good for you”. This

er

always is something you
never heard of before until the
righteous health people start
dropping the name around.-
Be honest. Ten years ago you,
never would have consider
putting soy beans, tofu or r
bean sprouts in your mouth =
on a dare. Now you have to ~
eat it for “health” reasons. Il P
stick to meat and potatoes,
thank you very much.

Oh well, at least I can think
how good I looked while ’m
putting back on the lost
weight. You surely didn’t ex-
pect me to stay cadaverously
thin forever, did you? If so; go

back and read the title. 3

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