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MsJacquiiC · #1

Every day brings a new way to lose weight in 10 easy steps. Ten steps to permanent weight loss and wellness. A 10-step plan to losing weight after 40. Ten steps to a healthy lifestyle.

Part of Step 8: Find out more information about these ?fruits? and ?vegetables? you keep reading about.

Forget all of them and follow my two-phase, 10-step plan to lose 70 pounds in one decade, including sound advice on becoming ridiculously overweight.

Phase 1: the not-so-lean years...

Eat everything in sight for at least five years. Never have one brownie when you can have three. Swing by a fast-food restaurant and eat in the car before heading home to eat dinner. Frequently eat a bowl of ice cream right before bed. Repeat.
Avoid exercise as if it would kill you because, let?s face it, at your size, it might. Take the elevator even when going up or down one floor at work. Drive to the store even though it?s only a half-mile away. Call to your children in a different part of the house and tell them to find the TV remote control and bring it to you while you remain seated/lying down/too lazy to stand. Have them bring you the Cheez-Its, as long as they?re up.
Get on the scale from time to time and wonder aloud why you can?t seem to lose weight. Keep buying larger-size pants, blame your aching back on that old mattress and cling to comments from people who inexplicably say you look thinner.
Blow out your knee at your cousin?s wedding reception during a particularly exuberant dance circle. Tell yourself the injury had more to do with the broken glass and spilled beer on the floor than the fact that your knee no longer was interested in supporting your corpulence.
Have knee surgery. Wallow in pity about how unfair life is and how the doughnut place on the way to work is on the left side of Niagara Falls Boulevard, and it takes forever to make that turn. Begin physical therapy, which includes using an exercise bike and a treadmill. Vaguely recall that you own an exercise bike and a treadmill, but they are now being used as a place to hang winter jackets.
Go to a vacation spot that requires you to spend most of your time outside with your shirt off. Be sure to have someone take your picture in that state. Act surprised by what you see. Get to know the term ?morbidly obese.?
Struggle to button your pants with the size 42 waist, the ones that have never been touched by a belt because what?s the point? Go to the store and hold up a pair of 44s and be horrified by their resemblance to a pair that might appear in the ?before? picture in an ad for a diet plan. Decide that losing weight will be less frustrating than shopping for pants.

Phase 2: a healthier you...

Drive past fast-food restaurants instead of through them. Eat only when hungry. Compare how many calories are in a can of Dr Pepper vs. how many are in a bottle of water. Find out more information about these ?fruits? and ?vegetables? you keep reading about. Realize that ice cream, cookies and chips are not three of the four food groups. Understand that a coupon to get a free hot dog when you buy one at Ted?s is a suggestion, not a command.
Walk up two flights of stairs and be shocked that you don?t pass away. Jog a mile. Collapse in a heap. Take the jackets off the exercise bike handlebars and work the pedals for 15 minutes. Sweat as if you just ran the Sahara Desert 10K.
Notice a correlation between occasionally exercising, not eating like a pig and seeing your weight go down. Have energy to do things you?ve never been able to do before, like exercising more often. Dust off your old pants and wear them. Buy a belt because you need one. Wake up every day vowing to never let your weight get so out of control. Repeat.

Bruce Andriatch for The Buffalo News
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