A couple of weeks ago, in a desperate attempt to avoid doing laundry, I went clothes shopping. I picked up a pair of pants for work and was appalled that even though the ones I bought were in my "fat size," when I tried them on at home, they were still tight.
I asked my girlfriend what she had done to my new pants. She told me that I had uncovered her little plot. Yes, she confessed, she had slipped Rhohipnol into my Yoohoo, taken me to an abandoned lot and altered my trousers while I sat in a hypnotic stupor. She just hadn't counted on my keen powers of observation to uncover her little ploy.
All in all, it was a pretty impressive display of sarcasm.
At any rate, I decided that something had to be done about the situation, so I took a drastic step. Apparently, my current weight-loss strategy-watching really skinny people on television-wasn't working as well as I'd planned. I decided to do something a little more drastic. I joined a weight-loss program. I won't tell you exactly which one, but for the purposes of this article, let's call it "Excuse Me-Your Scale Seems To Be Off By About Seven Pounds, Inc."
The EMYSSTBOBASPI system of weight-loss is a three-tiered one:
1) Motivational meetings where members are encouraged to stand up and announce their previous week's weight loss. Other members applaud and cry happy tears for them. I went to one of these meetings my first week and I'd rather remove my own appendix than attend another one.
2) Social humiliation. Members show up on meeting nights and have themselves publicly weighed. The ladies who weigh you in are actually very nice, but I think they must be specially trained to raise their voices when they say things like, "Oh dear! Well, these things happen. Keep trying, dear!"
3) The point system. On the face of it, the point system is fairly simple. Every piece of food that you eat in a given day is assigned a certain number of points. You have a point allowance each day that you are not allowed to exceed. For instance, I am allowed to have 31 points each day, so if I can keep each meal down to 10 points or less, I'm golden. This seems awfully reasonable.
EMYSSTBOBASPI even supplies you with a little point calculator that you can use to estimate your point intake.They don't tell you that you can't have chocolate eclairs for breakfast-you just have to keep within your point range, which, in that particular case, would limit you to carrot sticks with lemon juice for the rest of the day.
How the point values of different foods are calculated, however, is a bit of a mystery. Allegedly, there is some complicated calculation that involves serving size, grams of fiber, fat, calories and-as far as I can tell-random numbers. I suspect, however, that this is just a cover story. I think that the points are directly proportional to how enjoyable a given piece of food is.
Check it out:
A cheeseburger is worth 10 points. Steamed broccoli is worth no points. A thimbleful of ice cream is worth five points, the same as a washtub full of plain oatmeal. Beer is fairly reasonable, so long as you stick to "Lite" beer, or as we in the food business call it, swill.
Here is what I ate yesterday:
For breakfast:
One bowl of "kashi" (a type of organic cereal made of shredded cardboard and twigs) - 3 points
Milk for the cereal - 2 points
One piece of candy to take the taste of the kashi out of my mouth - 2 points
Total - 7 points
For lunch:
Went to the county fair.
One piece of fried dough - 7 points
Smelling the onions, peppers and sausages - 3 points
Total - 10 points
Dinner:
Salad with cheese and croutons - 10 points
Cake from my girlfriend's plate - No points. (This was a good deal for her too; because she didn't technically eat all the cake, she didn't get charged any points for it either.)
Total for the day - 27 points. Woo Hoo! I think I lost three pounds!
Okay, okay. You don't have to tell me. I know we cheated. We aren't the only ones, though. My second week at EMYSSTBOBASPI, the lady in front of me was dressed unseasonably…(searching for a diplomatic word)…casually.
She wasn't wearing any shoes and although she had multiple piercings in each ear, she wasn't wearing any earrings. She kept mumbling nervously to herself. When her turn came to step on the scale, she took off her sweater, revealing the tiniest sundress imaginable.
I tried not to gloat when I weighed in. I'd lost five pounds. I just didn't have the heart to tell her that I'd just given blood.
