The Stick Man Diet

Soccer Mom 2.0

by John Christmann

I gave up making weight loss resolutions for New Years long ago. I can’t keep them. The final straw came when I resolved one year not to make any resolutions, and realized I had failed even at that. These days I don’t even think about dieting at the start of the New Year. Or, for that matter, any other time of the year. There are many obvious drawbacks to this lack of self improvement, but failure is not one of them.

You see, I believe whole heartedly that if you feel good on the inside, you look good on the outside. This is one reason I like drinking beer. But even for a slob like me, who feels pretty good about his appearance even when he shouldn’t, there are defining moments when I feel the need to change.

One of those moments occurred recently as my wife and I were preparing dinner. My daughter was drawing at the kitchen table, happily completing a family portrait. Her drawing consisted of a bunch of simplistic stick figures, because, well, she inherited her artistic skills from me. On the left of the picture was an enormous circle sprouting four spider-like appendages. “This is you, Daddy!” she said proudly.

Now I don’t consider myself to be excessively overweight, but I do from time to time lose sight of my shoes when standing in a crowded elevator and feel the pinch of my belt buckle under my belly when I plop down onto the sofa. Those times when I look in the mirror and see a potato perched on tooth picks, I immediately renew my membership to the YMCA and eat carrots for a couple of days until I have deluded myself into feeling trim and healthy. I also stop riding elevators and looking in mirrors. But as my daughter so innocently pointed out, I will never again be the stick figure I was in my youth.

My kids, of course, eat whatever they want and look like Number 2 pencils. They gorge themselves on ice cream. They drink gallons of milk. They put butter on everything. They snack continually on cookies they purloin from their not-so-secret location in the far reaches of the kitchen cabinet. But when it comes to meals, especially dinner, my kids take it upon themselves to eat in moderation. They push food around their plates until it is mush—a puree of all the things they do not like. Then they get up to go to the bathroom. Then back to the table to plow more food. In the middle of dinner my youngest son jumps up on his chair wielding a spoon and announces he is Captain Jack Sparrow. My daughter squeezes under the table to retrieve her napkin and some assorted crayons. Her older brother stands up to demonstrate Derek Jeter’s batting stance. My wife and I implore our kids to sit and eat, but they wriggle impatiently in their chairs and leap from the table at every possible moment. Finally, when their food has sat long enough to grow spores, we excuse them from the table. They bolt in all directions like freed prisoners.

For several days my daughter’s stick man portrait graced our refrigerator so that I could contemplate life as an oval each time I grabbed a beer or scarfed down the latest left over. This was too much, even for me, and I resolved to finally do something about my condition: I took down the picture.

But I also realized that I desperately needed a new diet. Something easy. Something effective. Something without carrots. But what? I then recalled Oprah on the cover of a magazine I had seen at the grocery store. Her large head was digitally imposed on Mary-Kate Olsen’s anorexic body, with a bold caption that read: “Oprah’s secret: eat right and exercise”. The story went on to say that Oprah was carrying Donald Trump’s love child.

It occurred to me that watching Oprah on TV daily would in itself be enough to curb my appetite and thwart my expanding waist line, but the mystifying simplicity to Oprah’s success intrigued me. As I observed my bony children playing jump rope with their spaghetti at the dinner table, I suddenly realized the real secret to becoming a stick figure again: eating right and exercise are not separate events, they are concurrent events!

I immediately put the Stick Man Diet to work. The very next meal I sat down with my kids and began to complain and push food around. For thirty minutes I wriggled in my chair, got up to go to the bathroom, and slid under the table to retrieve my fallen utensils. I let the food sit until it was cold and crusty and gross enough to make the disposal gag. I clutched my neck and ran around the table five times screaming “Agggh, I’ve been poisoned!” each time vegetables touched my lips. I continued this regimen for three weeks, and would have gone longer had I not significantly embarrassed my wife by being ejected from a fancy French Restaurant for wearing sweats and leaping among the tables denigrating cold haricots and goat cheese.

But over the course of three weeks I lost ten pounds! I am no longer afraid to ride in an elevator. I wear belts again. It has changed my life. And the Stick Man Diet is not nearly as arduous as other diets. I would rather eat modest portions of slop than large slabs of bacon and pork rinds. It is certainly more fun to play with my food than to puree carrots and beet juice in a blender. And I would much rather run around the table with my kids than around a track with a bunch of sweaty fat men at the YMCA. Oh, and it sure beats listening to Oprah.

But even more important, with the success of the Stick Man Diet I have regained the courage to make New Years Resolutions again. So this year I am announcing to the world my intention to train for the Olympics in China. The way I see it, by the time summer rolls around I should be able to sit guilt free in front of the TV and gorge myself with Pot Stickers and Tsingtao beer.

On your marks, get set, Bon Appetite!