25 Pounds

I am sick! I’m not used to being sick. I have what they refer to as “the common cold.” I never get colds, a fact that I attribute to my drinking of copious amounts of green tea.

I love green tea! I love the diet Lipton green tea with citrus! Thanks to diet Lipton green tea with Citrus, I have a very low chance of getting cancer (antioxidants!), but (thanks to artificial sweeteners and other chemicals) a rather high chance of liver failure. So, I recently switched to regular old tea: I brew a bunch of organic green tea (Republic of Tea has some yummy flavors) and drink it over ice. It’s a little bitter without sweetener, but one gets used to it.

On a somewhat related note, I also use the bathroom about 20 times a day. (Tea’s a unsympathetic diuretic.)

The sickness came upon me suddenly and swiftly late Friday evening and began with achy muscles. So unused to being sick (this is a point of pride with me), I became very certain I:

1) was exhibiting the first signs of a degenerative muscle disease.
2) was coming down with a nasty case of fibromyalgia.
3) had inadvertently joined a fight club, and had so strictly adhered to the first rule of Fight Club (you do not talk about fight club) that I hadn’t even told myself.

The snot factory that has taken up shop in my nose made me rethink these diagnoses.

I feel slightly defeated. Especially because I am on day 6 of my diet. I’m on a diet! A real one! Because I KNOW THE SECRET to losing weight. The secret is- wait for it- to consume fewer calories than you expend. Shocking, I know. You have to burn 3500 calories to lose 1 pound of fat. During any given day, I expend about 2300 calories. My “diet” consists of eating around 1400 calories a day. If I do this, I should burn 900 calories a day. Which means I burn off one pound of fat in 3.88888 days. BUT if I exercise and burn off MORE calories, I can lose weight FASTER. And get a nice tight butt, too, which I feel is important for my self-esteem.

I’ve already lost 4 pounds. My goal is to lose about 25 more. They say that to motivate yourself to stick to a diet, you should post your weight in a public place, like Facebook or your blog or the scoreboard at the local baseball stadium.

I’m not doing that.

I am using CalorieCount.com, which makes counting calories like a fun game. At the end of the day, it gives you a complete nutritional analysis. Vitamin A? Too low! Carbs? Good! Fiber? Always too low. Someday, I’m going to have straight “goods.” Probably not today, though.

Anyway- despite feeling like I’d been trampled by an angry mob at a bagpipe concert (this actually happened to me once), I went off to the Y for the first time in too long. I spent a half hour on the elliptical machine until, fearing for my safety and the safety of those around me, I chose to get off. It was then I realized I’d turned into a jellyfish.

I’d promised the boys we’d go swimming. We changed into our suits in the locker room, though I wore shorts over my suit because I did not intend to actually get in the pool, myself. The stupid lifeguard MADE me get in because Ben was “underage” or some such malarchy. This was a shock to me, since I have not yet dropped the necessary poundage to feel comfortable going full bathing suit in a public setting, and also because I had not properly, um, “groomed” for the occasion. I’ll just leave it at that.

You have never seen a person remove their pants and get into a pool as fast as I did. I made Superman look like moving molasses. And the pool was, not surprisingly, a very nice place for a person who had recently been transformed into a jellyfish to be.

Now we’ve had lunch, I’ve calculated my calorie intake for the day, and I’m feeling pretty pretty good. Except that I’m a sick jellyfish. We’re going to Mario’s tonight with friends (the restaurant, not a random dude named Mario), so careful preparation is in order. I shouldn’t eat the bread. But I love the bread. I’ll probably eat it. But I shouldn’t. And then there’s the butter and the pasta.

Kate Moss said nothing tastes as good as skinny feels.

Kate Moss, my friends, is a liar.