I'm going on a diet.
I've chosen to announce this gigantic piece of news in this space because I want to be held accountable by the many wonderful friends and family members who read these lame ramblings. I feel that I can pull this off if I have a Greek Chorus of supporters witnessing my efforts and shouting encouragement or screaming hurtful insults.
I need an audience, people. I always have.
You can consider the above photo the "before." It's not quite anatomically correct, but I fear it's in the ballpark.
In three months I will publish another entry featuring an undoctored, up-to-the-minute series of photos of yours truly, which will serve as the "after" and will provide unassailable evidence that I, Joel A. Getman, am now one of the skinniest men in America.
Or at least not has blubbery as I used to be.
I have chosen to make this announcement and take this action now for several reasons. First, it will be relatively easy for me to remember when this diet started. In the past many of my diets ended prematurely because I thought I had been on a diet for six months when in fact it had only been six hours. That won't happen in this case. This diet starts on 1-1-13 and it won't be over until I walk down the street with onlookers saying, "Did I just see a gracefully aging American man or was that one of those stick insects that usually hide in trees?"
Another reason for this action involves the couch in my Miramar Beach townhouse. When I sit or lie on this couch, something I do quite often, I usually can't get off it. I am currently incapable of getting myself off the couch due to a redistribution of my bodily weight and some very plush cushions. (on the couch!) The other night, I was fearful of having to spend the night on the couch. It was only through the clever use of a series of levers, pulleys, and one very disgruntled longshoreman that I was finally able to make myself vertical again.
Verticality is one of the secrets of a fulfilling life and I want to experience that.
Finally, I have decided I am using too much soap. I currently average 37 showers per bar of soap. After my Fabulous 2013 Diet, with its accompanying decrease in surface area, I am hoping to bump that number up to 50. This will result in significant monetary savings which I will use to buy pizza.
Now admittedly this will not be my first rodeo; although, ironically, if I were to enter a rodeo, it WOULD be my first rodeo. At any rate, I have been on many diets in the past. Obviously, something went terribly wrong.
Of course I am aware that the second you call something a "diet" you doom it to failure. I mean I'm not completely stupid. I read the headlines in the check out line just like the rest of the gals. It's supposed to be a "lifestyle change" or some such new age phrase.
OK, how's this: On January 1, 2013 my lifestyle is going to dramatically change...I'm going to eat better foods and not as much as I did from 1947-2012. How's that?
I have succeeded with this problem in the past. As a matter of fact around 2003 or so I thought I had the problem licked. I went on the South Beach diet with the dedication of a member of Navy Seal Team 6 and lost a significant amount of weight. Strangely, I also started to enjoy pastels but that's neither here nor there. I was almost too good to look at. People couldn't look me in the eye for fear of spontaneously combusting. The weight I lost was donated to the Central African Republic. They used it to create a massive water desalinization facility. I'm told it still works. Alas, little by little my demons came back to tempt and eventually defeat me. It was a classic guerilla maneuver. Small, elite teams of M&Ms and Twix Bars would surreptitiously become available to me out of thin air. (Well, not quite thin air. I had to enter the convenience store to purchase and then eat them.) Heretofore struggling pizza-by-the-slice establishments all over New England would find their fortunes improving thanks to the generosity of a certain not-so-skinny-anymore benefactor. Eventually, they all knew me by name, like Norm at Cheers.
I promise that whatever happens, I won't fall into those same traps again. If my destiny is to remain one of the world's fattest humans, it will be because I've spent the next three months eating too much kale.
Stay tuned, people. It's going to be a wild ride.
Ain't life grand?
J
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