So You're Fat - Face It!

Warning - preaching ahead!

This is advice from a skinny guy who has never been overweight - since I was about 3 years old that is... All of us have to watch our weight - some of us have just been more successful than others. My step-dad told me that the most important exercise I could learn was push-ups - from the table.

So what is the novel insight? Nothing new or revolutionary here. This should be common knowledge.

First, be honest. Americans are overweight and lying about it. I have a friend who went for a health screening and was told he was obese. He explained to me that the charts don't apply to someone his height. He's lying to himself. Most of us are lying to ourselves. I bought a cheap fat percentage measurement device that told me I was 10 percent more fat than I thought I was. I didn't think the device worked. But it was right. I took ten seconds to figure out that I have gained 20 pounds since my 180 pound in-shape days - and the extra weight doesn't appear to be muscle.

Second, measure. Honesty requires it. It is easy to mislead ourselves without a standard. What to use? A pair of pants or a favorite dress. When they don't fit, it's not because they shrank! The easy answer is to buy a new dress or a new pair of pants and rationalize about changing shape, or stress, or busy lives. Trust the measurements - they are better than memories.

Next, eat normally. What I mean is, eat the kind of normal, boring diet taught by grade school teachers, departments of health, grandmothers, and common sense. Skip the fancy diets, the pills, the special sections of the grocery store. Not that there is anything wrong with those special foodstuffs, they are just another lie: There is no magic method to lose weight.

Expect hunger. Everyone experiences it, fat or skinny. Live with it. Ignore it. Realize that not being completely full at the end of a meal should be normal rather than unusual. Hunger is not bad. As my wise but blunt step-dad would say - it won't kill you.

Finally, tiredness and sweat are good. Very good. Quality-of-life critically good. Be active. Exercise and more. Our bodies were designed for motion, yet we fill our lives with immobility. Walk, run, bend, sway, jump, play. Use it or lose it. The germ of this rant came as I walked up and down O'Hare, while nearly every one else minimized the distance from the airplane seat to the airport seat.

Our bodies - the wonderfully complex and adaptive system that they are - will optimize to the lifestyle we choose. If we choose to sit - we will have comfortably fat rear ends. I play basketball regularly, and still painfully re-discover muscles whenever I try another sport. Don't let your body optimize for something less than the optimum you want.

You know what you want your body to look like. And I believe you know what you have to do to get it to look that way.

You will sweat and you will be hungry - but you will be happier and healthier.

And no, not every single one of you has a special health condition that prevents you from removing those pounds.

Good luck!