Panama Goes on a Diet

PANAMA GOES ON A DIET

A few months back I got to looking in the mirror, something I do not do as much as the tone of these essays would imply. Anyway I noticed that I was, hopefully, getting fat. I say hopefully because either I was getting fat or my entire underlying abdominal muscular structure was giving way and my guts were getting ready to fall down around my knees. I got on the scale and got out my online chart and discovered that not only was I fat, I was borderline obese. Borderline. Obese.

Moi?

I got in touch with my personal trainer, who was taking a nap in the bedroom.

“Patty?” I whined manfully. “I'm borderline obese.”

“Told ya,” she said supportively. “Time for a diet, Chubs.”

As it happens, she'd been in touch with our chiropractor and had been looking at a diet plan called Medifast. Here's their deal: they send you a big boxful of boxes and every three hours you choose one thing from one of the boxes and eat that. That one thing is sufficient to keep you going for another three hours, no matter which one you choose. Three hours later you choose another thing from the box. Most of the time the food is palatable, some of it downright tasty. But it ain't bad is my point.

And once a day you get to actually eat something. A real meal. We invariably have either broiled chicken and a salad, or baked salmon and a salad. We have these because these are what I can fix, and me cooking for both of us is part of my personal trainer's philosophy. “You need to be in closer touch with what you're eating,” she says. 

I did not go into this blindly. I researched it on the internet, and found some criticisms of the plan. One of these revealed that this is sort of a pyramid scheme, which it is. There was much chortling amongst the regulars on the forum. About how stupid a person would have to be to fall for this scam. There was a picture of the moderator of the forum. She looked like Shamu. I therefore gave the nod to my personal trainer and she signed us up.

So far I've lost quite a few pounds in two months. And it ain't torture. I'm not going to say how many pounds I've lost, because I hate that kind of stuff, but it's something on the order of two large cats.