Previously: How the “O” word shocked me into dieting
All my life, I had been laboring for free. Like a schmuck, like a sucker. Like a fool.
I mowed the lawn just because it needed it. I shoveled the sidewalk merely because my wife asked me to. No more, baby! Now Daddy gets PAID.
Paid in sugar.
I had already found my diet’s magic bullet: pickles had zero calories, so I could snack all day long. And my wife (thrilled to finally have a dieting companion) had switched us to low-cal meals of fish, chicken, salads.
I’d set a grand goal for myself: to lose 75 lbs in 75 weeks. Inauguration Day was coming up. It was as good a kickoff date as any. I should reach my goal 18 months into the new Biden administration.
So I ate pickles, rode my stationary bike…and twiddled my thumbs. This was dieting? This was my big weight loss adventure? BOOO-RING!
To make things worse, my son suggested a phone app for counting calories. I told the app my height, weight, eye color, and astrological sign. It told me how many calories I could eat every day.
Now I had to enter into the app every little thing I ate. Handful of mini carrots? Type it in. Half a donut? Reach for my phone. All day long. BOOO-RING!
Then I made a discovery that changed everything.
It transformed the way I feel about dieting. And eating. And my wife’s endless list of “honeydews”: clean out the shed, dig up the garden, paint the porch.
My calorie counting app has a section called “Workouts,” where I’m supposed to enter all my physical activities, like playing pickleball or biking along the river. Or honeydews.
Every day, the app gives me a “budget” number, derived from my goals and current weight. Today that number is…hang on, let me look…1,547. That’s how many calories I can eat today.
But the calories I burn through physical activities are ADDED to that number. Pulling weeds for an hour in my wife’s garden? That’s 267 calories. Like gold coins in my pocket. Spend’em on anything I want! A Snickers bar. A cheddar brat.
Chocolate iiiiiice creeeeam.
And the beautiful thing is: this is all sweating that I would be doing anyway! I love riding my bike on the river, and my wife would beat me up if I didn’t mow the lawn. But now I get PAID to do these things!
My son offers to clean out the shed for me. BACK OFF, punk. He’s trying to steal the M&Ms right out of my mouth!
Of course, there’s no escaping the complexities of labor economics. There are two baskets of clean laundry in our living room right now. I could fold them and put them away. Let me check my app… 25 calories?!
Yeah, I’m gonna to go take a nap.
See you next Tuesday for “Part IV: How much does an elephant’s dick weigh?“