So Who Isn’t Trying to Loose Weight in 2002? (Originally published in 2002, Eve of Destruction, Signal Newspaper.)

January 8, 2002

So the race is on.  It’s the start of 2002 and at the top of everyone’s resolution list is to loose weight.  What a surprise.  There are several rumors about weight loss, diet plans and the so-called benefits of exercise.  I will attempt, in my own destructive way, to filter through it all in the usual non-scientific manner for the four Signal subscribers that continue, year after year, to read my columns.

My favorite is the jokester that wrote a mock newspaper headline for the year 2035 in my husband’s December copy of The California Fire Service magazine, “35 year study: diet and exercise is the key to weight loss.”  No self-respecting fat-bearing person wants to hear that.  We want to hear about the new fads!  The fake fatted ice cream and Doritos!  Bring on the new Doctor prescribed diets! Make it simple and easy!

My office has a den of dieting activity going on right now.  The men try it first and then it trickles down to the ladies.  Of course for some reason, maybe one of you scientific readers can answer why, men loose weight faster than women do.  Maybe it’s the fact that they are doing it for the first time.  (Or admitting it for the first time?)  Maybe it’s because they overdo it to be done with it quicker.  (Dieting is for the weaker sex.)  Maybe it’s because they think they look fetching on their treadmill immediately following their one-hour “reward” meal.  Maybe they combine the reward meal with the treadmill speeding up their metabolism and slowing down their insulin production at once.  Whew!  Maybe they’re actually more anal about weight loss than we women are.

One of my spin instructors, Debbie or Jodi or Camille or Udo, said that you just can’t eat within three hours of your bedtime.  So go to bed later I say!  One of my muscular buddies that I hadn’t seen at the gym in awhile just lost thirty-six pounds.  He can’t eat after 6 PM.  Or maybe it was 6 AM considering it was quite the tonnage.  He looked pretty damn good before the weight loss, now he’s just as cute, but may be getting too much sleep.

Another workout friend, Rachel, said that the average person gains ten pounds over the holidays.  I looked at all 96 pounds of her and said most of us at the gym on a Friday after four PM aren’t normal.  We only workout as a form of bulimia, I was once told, to compensate for the See’s candy and Martha Stewart’s sweet potatoes we convinced our sister-in-laws to make for us.

One of my old spin-mates hadn’t been to the gym lately and is dieting.  Her husband is hanging out at the gym, although, because she’s a little feisty.  Well, I’d be a little feisty too if I had to stop eating before everyone else’s dinnertime, inadvertently wasted my one “reward” meal on Cheetos and had to go to bed early because I was STARVING!

Hey!  You know what I say? Do whatever works for you.  For the Eve of Destruction that means the dreaded three S’s: spinning, stress and soy products!  Of course the fact that I quit my mid-week alcoholic beverages in January of 2001 helped with the first six pounds.  But I started up again after 9-11.  (Dieters always have an excuse, but this was definitely a reason to pick up a single malt scotch, or two.  I’ve tapered back down but I’m sure I was not alone in this sudden need for a drink.)  Luckily though I was knee deep in soy yogurt, soy protein powder, soybeans, and chocolate soymilk by then so I was able to keep the 6 pounds from creeping back on.

The last four pounds (Of the ten you are supposed to gain) I lost being really stressed out during the holiday season.  (Someone please explain to me why you are supposed to loose weight when you are getting married and supposedly “stressed out”.  I ordered a size eight dress because of this cruel advice.  Of course the last time I was a size eight I was twelve and not even close to puberty.  But I counted on being ill for my wedding.  It didn’t work out that way.  In fact Dr Kim remembers my dress tearing.  I remember pleading with the seamstress to let out the 1/8-inch seam.  She was more interested in filling the top with pads.  Which is another thing…no matter how endowed you are why do they want to do that?

Anyway, it was Eddie who was ill while I couldn’t stop tap dancing.)  When I told Eddie I lost ten pounds this year he said that would make me just under forty pounds.  Huh?  Apparently I never tell Eddie when I gain weight only when I loose it.  Never expected him to do the math.  Ain’t I the ultimate blonde?

So the big weight loss kicker is stress, but you can’t obviously plan or count on that as I illustrated so eloquently above.  So come by Casa Bushman for the holidays and you’ll be so nauseated you won’t be able to gain the ten normally predicted pounds during the holidays.  Of course having the power off on Christmas for the 2500 homes in Newhall helped.  Which also helped in serving the frozen, leftover tamales.  Not to mention the plethora of conflicting family and in-law personalities permeating from one open room to the next.  Maybe a little cooked food could have calmed us down?  Oh well, too late for that.

Sorry, readers, I transgress.  Point of all points is to find what works for you.  And unless you aren’t healthy what the heck is the matter with having a “winter coat”?  I’m not wasting a perfectly good opportunity for resolutions on my own weight loss.  In fact, I informed Eddie just this morning that my resolution is to make him healthier.  Not slimmer.  Of course I had to say that as one of my Christmas presents to him was a gift certificate to the California School of Culinary Arts.  He’ll be making my sweet potatoes, I’ll spin, stress and soy it off and then…will they offer a dessert soy course?  Just to keep us on the healthy side of anal dieting of course.