HEALTHY LIVING

 by

 C. Neuroticus Absolutus

As a chubby home sapien, I am easily attracted to magazine covers that promise to make me thin. The cover of my wife's latest issue of Redbook does not disappoint. "15 snacks that make you slim! You can win the hunger game."

When I checked the table of contents, I found a less promising entry. "6 ways to snack yourself skinny." (What happened to the 15 snacks? I lost 9 snacks just turning the page!) Wow! I could snack and lose weight! My wife had recently introduced a 100 Calorie Slim-Fast Double-Dutch Chocolate product into our pantry. It's part of Slim-Fast's 3-2-1 plan for losing weight.

Well, I normally don't fall for anyone's diet plan, but their "Double-Dutch Chocolate" hook reeled me in like a starving tuna.

But then my old German logic whispered in my ear. "Eat more, Weigh less? Gimme a break, dude!" I reached for my handy calculator. If I ate only 1-100 calorie bar per day, that would be 700 calories per week times 52 weeks equals 36400 calories per year, divided by the number of calories in a pound (3500) equals 10.4 pounds I would gain in a year if I could find the will power to have only one chocolate bar per day.

Of course, the Slim-Fast people have these chocolate bars as part of an overall diet plan and the Redbook people are trying to get you to substitute "good snacks" for "bad snacks." So maybe, just maybe I'm not being fair. But hell, neither are they! Double-Dutch Chocolate bars?

So when my wife says, "We need to go for a walk, chubby," I remind her that she was the one that brought "those things" into our pantry. And you know where that gets me: "Wait while I put on my sneakers, Babe."