I had an idea for a quick weight loss plan that I would start over the Christmas holidays. It's pretty simple.
I'd start out walking from my house on day one of my vacation and see how far I could walk in the 11 days I have off. I thought I'd stay in cheap hotels or whatever I could find. I'd walk as far as I could each day and then rest up for my continuing journey.
I mentioned to my wife that my first day would probably get me to a cheap hotel over on Broadway about 6 blocks from our house.
Second day maybe I'd walk some and then get on a bus for awhile so I could get some miles under me. I might change the name to the Rosie Ruiz marathon diet on day two. Actually riding a city or other bus would be better than sitting at home because I wouldn't have an endless supply of food and I'd be occupied keeping an eye on my busmates.
I like to watch.
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A less Walter Mitty like plan would be to start out slow and just try to move more and eat less.
How exciting is that?
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Another way to lose weight without really trying is to get really sick.
I contracted some mysterious illness on a trip to Singapore about 15 years ago. I lost 20 or 30 pounds on that diet.
My theory was that I got some weird bug from a gray water drain on the bottom of an airplane. I'm not blaming Singapore. I was in Hong Kong, Taipai, San Francisco on that trip.
I still think it was fiddling around with that gray water drain and then putting my fingers in my mouth (I was chewing tobacco and working underneath an airplane). Good Lord only knows what was in that drainage from sinks used by people from all over the world to wash their hands, or whatever else people use the lavatory sinks of a 747 for.
I couldn't stand the sight or smell of food for a few weeks. Got some weird bacterial growth on my tongue as a result of a compromised immune system. Doctors kept treating my symptoms but had no clue what the cause was. I thought I was going to leave this earth for awhile. Then as quickly as it came on....it went away.
I have to digress for a moment.
Have you ever wondered what the difference is between blue and gray water? Who hasn't?
Here's the deal. The toilet's on an airplane don't drain overboard, but the sinks do. Toilet water is called blue water(held in tanks onboard) and sink water is called gray water. Gray water is drained out of the airplane via a heated mast..the mast is heated so the water doesn't freeze and sticks out a ways so water/ice doesn't attach to the fuselage.
Let's get back to the diets.
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Maybe the elevator diet? That's where you get drunk, force open the doors on an elevator shaft, step into the elevator (shaft), fall a few floors to the bottom of the shaft and stay there for a week until someone rescues you.
That happened to some poor blighter in Seattle.
In researching this diet I found the Seattle elevator diet is not without an element of risk. Early attempts occasionally met with disasterous results as in this HistoryLink Essay: Albert R. Bruce steps into an elevator shaft and plunges to his death on March 5, 1910.
As my mother used to tell me "nothing in moderation"...or was it "everything in moderation". The elevator diet should only be used in moderation and under the supervision of a Doctor or trained EMT.
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I bet a homeless diet would work too. Just leave home without your American Express or any other source of cash and forage for food like the other people on the street.
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Prison diet or a Navy bread and water diet. Eat like a kid diet. All might work. When I was on a ship they actually could give you the brig and bread and water as a sentence. I'm glad I stayed out of the brig. Not that I don't like a good piece of bread mind you.
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Oh what the heck. No diet is going to work...especially not around Christmas. I'm going to keep repeating that "move more eat less" mantra and see if it starts to sink in.
A big part of my problem is I've become enamoured with a couple of things that require absolutely no movement over the last few years. First it was the online sports betting and then blogging/web page fiddling around.
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I watched Dodgeball the movie a few times this weekend. In the movie Ben Stiller owns Globo-Gym (evil). He is trying to take over Average Joe's Gym (good). In one scene Ben Stiller tells the owner of Joe's, "I like that whole I'm not okay, you're not okay, but that's okay, thing you got going." It's a funny movie partly about people who are obsessed with fitness and how they look. Good old Average Joe's is about having some fun, losing a few pounds and being happy.
I can live with that.
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Here's some Dodgeball links -
Here's a clip of one of a variety of spots in the film where White Goodman (Stiller's character) talks funny...Mr Jokey Jokemaker.
A reviewer at the The New York Times who liked it.
and a bunch of different comments at Rottentomatoes.com about Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
