Thursday, July 24, 2008
diet pill
The late night bug had once again made a home in my house so here I am at 2 in the morning watching a late night TV. When I was younger, I wished for the days when I could sit in front of the television and allow the infomercials to melt my brain into mush. Now that the days were here, I found myself regretting having spent so much time lamenting ability (or lack thereof) to watch greasy salesmen with off color toupees and checkered suits offering to sell cars with bad transmissions to people with no credit.
Tonight I saw a diet pill commercial and looked down at my own flabby love handles and chunky thighs. Those people in the commercial always looked so satisfied with life, with their six pack abs and bulging muscles and model faces. Meanwhile, the only six pack I could ever keep was a six pack of Coke and the closest I got to anything bulging is my veins when I try to open a jar of pickles. I wanted the all star body. I wanted to look muscular and buff with chiseled abs and tanned skin.
But I had to face facts. These people probably diet and exercise six times a week and drink raw eggs and protein shakes every morning and still take the diet pill to keep them from wanting to eat more than what's in their daily percentage value of vitamins and minerals.
I looked back at the commercial, no showing a grinning woman with astonishingly thin body standing next to a picture of her before this pill. Her body in the before picture looked gargantuan compared to the Baywatch babe running along the beach holding that same glorious bottle of pills. Testimonial after testimonial flashed across the screen and each person seemed to start off larger and larger and ended up thinner and thinner. I was starting to wonder if maybe this was really some miracle weight loss cure, almost like Jared Fogle and his Subway Sandwiches.
Common sense tells me, though, that even if I do get that diet pill (which I am seriously considering) the results will require some extra work like dieting and exercise and regular trips to the doctor and careful measuring once a week of how many fractions of a pound were lost, then recording these meticulous calculations into a journal to be proudly shown to your doctor. It's worth the time and effort. Unfortunately, I'm too lazy to put forth that time and effort. Maybe next time I see the commercial I'll be more motivated to get up and go get a diet pill. Or at least, I'll talk to a doctor about it. Or a friend. I guess either way it doesn't matter too much, so long as I talk to somebody. Or think about doing it. It's the thought that counts.
Mike @ 10:27 AM