Batter up, step on the scales
Lori Borgman | Monday, July 19, 2010
The
husband has really done it now. The man has lost 15 pounds in four weeks.
I would
never try to take personal credit for the husband’s success, but I might mention
that I had talked to him recently (several hundred times actually) about heart
attack risks. I talked to him about the danger of packing on weight around the
middle, about the fact that he works outside a lot sweating in the heat and
humidity, lugging heavy equipment, and about the fat content of ice cream and
cheese.
Was it
my nagging that motivated him? No. He decided to knock off some weight before
his high school reunion.
You want
to know how he did it, right? For a small weekly fee ($19.99), a special
weight-loss supplement called El Placebo ($49.99), and a DVD of me carping about
weight loss (just send a blank check), I’ll tell you. Just kidding, I’ll tell
you now.
He’s a
man. That’s how he lost weight; men lose weight easier than women. A man
thinks, “I’m going to lose weight now,” and five pounds drop to the floor.
A woman thinks, “I’m going to lose weight now” and her phone rings. She is
asked to make brownies for a social function and dutifully says yes.
She goes into the kitchen, mixes up brownie batter and licks the beater,
hoping that no one is watching. She pours the batter into the pan and wipes the
spatula clean with her finger, which goes directly into her mouth. She is about
to wash the mixing bowl but sees traces of batter clinging to the sides. Waste
not, want not.
Thirty-five minutes later, she takes the brownies out of the oven. They look
good, but they would look even better frosted. She mixes up that fabulous recipe
for chocolate frosting on the back of the Hershey’s cocoa can. She has no choice
but to repeatedly test the frosting for consistency.
She frosts the brownies and thinks what they could really use are some
chopped nuts. And toasted coconut. She tests the nuts for freshness and the
coconut for toastedness.
The brownies look nice in the pan but she decides they would look superb on a
platter. She cuts them into serving portions, gathering excess frosted brownie
with each drag of the knife. This brownie excess is deposited on a small plate
for someone else to enjoy, but she devours it herself within seconds.
And then disaster strikes. Two brownies break on their way out of the pan.
Since the brownies are broken, each piece is now smaller than a regular serving,
meaning the calories are smaller, too, so she eats those as well.
The next morning the woman steps on the scale and screams, “Men! They have it
so easy!”
And that is how the husband lost weight – because he is a man and not a
woman.
I refuse to believe it had anything to do with the fact that he cut out all
eating between meals, ate smaller portion sizes, reduced the many glasses of
milk he drank each day and eliminated all desserts with the exception of
45-calorie frozen fruit bars.
Believe what you want. Just don’t ask me to make brownies.
