No sweat, preferably

Yesterday I finally came to terms with the fact that I am a great big tub of lard.

In the last few months, I have gained approximately twenty pounds. More importantly, however, every pair of jeans I own will no longer fit me if I do the top button on the fly. Well, technically they can fit me if I do the top button, but it is incredibly uncomfortable and also it creates an unsightly yet vaguely humorous spillage of belly flesh over the waist. Unpretty! And I can’t help but notice how *solid* my fattiness is. It is not at all as squishy and malleable as television and movies led me to believe it would be. It’s *heavy*. I guess that could be why heavy folks are heavy.

As I am far too cheap to simply accept myself the way I am and buy some new trousers, and because walking around with my jeans unbuttoned at the top seems undignified at best, I have decided that I am going to dedicate some of my free time to taking an inch or two off my abdominal region. In service of this I have gotten my “ab-slide” contraption out of mothballs and have begun intensive daily workouts. This work I do on the “ab-slide”, however, may be cancelled out by the fact that working out on it renders me unable to move for several days, leaving me stranded on the couch with a bag of chips and the remote control. I have also started doing a daily regimen of push-ups and sit-ups, which, again, leave me unable to move. The sit-ups are probably redundant anyway, as I think the “ab-slide” contraption is meant to replace them. Lord knows it’s easier on the back. Oh, if only someone would invent some sort of padded mat which will allow one to exercise unhandicapped by painfully solid hardwood floors!

Another step I have taken towards reducing my waist size is the complete elimination of food from my diet. I’m not quite there yet, however. Yesterday after work I went to the local chain supermarket with the full intention for buying food for me and for my household. However, I thought, “A-ha! I’m going on a diet! No more food for me!” So, instead of food, I bought liquor. No beer, though – certainly beer won’t make my waist any smaller. No, I bought a bottle of scotch and a bottle of sweet vermouth. For dinner I ended up making myself a double Manhattan. I can already feel the flab melting away. I feel *something* melting away, at any rate.

Finally, as a last resort, I have begun corset training. The gals at the workshop think that I can have a fifteen-inch waist by June if I keep at it!