Who doesn't love a good list? Thanks mostly to David Letterman's "Top Ten," the list is fast replacing the expository essay as the literary form of choice for periodicals. Everyone benefits. The reader is spared long-winded explanations, grandstanding commentary, and pointless flourishes of style. The writer doesn't spend untold hours worrying about structure, progression, or transition. A short intro, ten zingers - badda bing, badda boom - you're done.
So I couldn't have been more delighted to find "Ten Secrets of the Effortlessly Thin" on the MSN Health & Fitness website.[i] For contained in this one list of supposedly helpful hints are the most irritating and noxious platitudes ever uttered or written about dieting. Even the use of "effortlessly" in the title is an affront to anyone who has struggled with weight loss. If it's really effortless for you, you should thank God every day and keep your precious suggestions to yourself. But since you feel that our lives would be so vastly improved by your keen insights, let's tackle them one by one.
They don't diet. Well, "they" don't need to diet because they're already thin. The explanation for this banality emphasizes the despicable, "permanent lifestyle change," i.e., eat better regularly and make more sensible food choices. Yeah, and you'll live a lot longer if you don't get hit by a bus.
THEY KEEP TRACK OF THEIR WEIGHT. That's because the scale is their friend, not an instrument of abject terror. It gives them positive reinforcement. It gives us nightmares.
THEY EXERCISE REGULARLY. They don't look like the Hindenburg in sweatpants.
THEY DON'T SOLVE PROBLEMS WITH FOOD. They don't have problems with food. In fact, the effortlessly thin have fewer problems in general. Since "the food won't fix what's bothering you," they suggest "going for a walk, watching a movie,...or taking a bubble bath." I can't speak for everyone, but when I'm ravenously hungry, food works a lot better than lukewarm suds.
THEY STOP EATING WHEN THEY'RE FULL. They're full when they've consumed enough to satisfy their biological hunger. I'm full when it would take an air compressor to drive so much as a single Cheerio into my body, and my pants are so tight I sound like Al Green on helium.
They don't surround themselves with temptation. They're so pure that nothing tempts them. For the rest of us, seeing a Snickers wrapper in the gutter is enough to trigger a binge.
THEY ALLOW THEMSELVES TREATS. "A small but really delicious chocolate bar" may "put the craving to rest" for the saintly slender, but it incites me to clear out the snack inventory of Seven-Eleven.
THEY EAT BREAKFAST. Not Denny's Lumberjack Slam.
THEY MOVE, STAND, AND FIDGET MORE. If nervous energy provides such a great weight loss benefit, how do they explain the late Rodney Dangerfield?
THEY DON'T SKIP MEALS. "Thin people keep their gas tanks [i.e., their stomachs] between one-quarter and three-quarters full all the time." How thoughtful of them to clarify the gas tank-stomach conundrum; I was halfway out the door to fuel up the car. But keeping with the metaphor, it takes a lot more gas to fill up my Lincoln Navigator than their MINI Cooper.
Please, just go back to living your naturally skinny lives in silence and leave us to our efforts in peace.
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