Ask Cranky Fitness: Sabotage, Husbands & Party Girls

Some blogs get so many questions from readers that they have to devote whole posts to answering their mail. Not Cranky Fitness. (At Cranky Fitness, we get emails from people who want to sell us amazing things like genuine Rolex watches and these pills that enhance body parts we don't even possess, which is a pretty neat trick in my opinion.) So we've decided we should simply assume that our readers are too shy to ask these questions, but would like us to ask the questions as well as supply the answers.

Or at least, that's our story.



Dear Cranky Fitness,

I'm really trying hard to keep my family and myself fit and healthy, but my efforts are being undermined by a certain individual, whom I shall refer to by a pseudonym to protect his identity.

Every time I decide to serve a nutritious salad and a yummy vegetarian casserole for dinner, "Hubby"(not his real name) brings home pizza or cheeseburgers. While this strikes me as far too coincidental to pass as anything but deliberate sabotage, he insists it is merely "a curious statistical anomaly." What are the odds of this "accidentally" happening Every Single Time? I'm not very good at statistical anomalies.

signed,
Frustrated English Major

Dear F.E.M.,

Either you're leaving tell-tale clues about the place like tacking a "Buy Lettuce" note to the refrigerator door, or else "Hubby" is an alien with mind-reading capabilities. Suggest in the future you bury the lettuce beneath a thin layer of cheese and serve it in a tostada shell, so that it looks to your family like they're eating something high-caloric -- until they get past that first layer. Then you can unleash a sinister laugh and insist they eat their dinner before they get dessert.

P.S. Putting the dessert somewhere in plain sight might speed this process up a bit.

--Merry


Off with his head!

Oh, okay, perhaps that's not a practical solution. At least not if you are somewhat fond of the big doof, or if you prefer not to deal with the criminal justice system.

Just as you can't physically force him to eat healthy nutritious food, he can not make you eat hamburgers and pizza. I like Merry's suggestion of stealth and trickery! But if he is not easily fooled, and is seriously unwilling to eat the healthy stuff, seems like you're stuck. Short of a marital boycott (if ya know what I mean (nudge nudge, wink wink)), you may just have to admit you're not always going to eat the same things for dinner.

If you can get him to at least openly acknowledge that he's being a stubborn ass and trying to avoid eating healthy food, you might save some money on those duplicate meals. Which can then go for extra life insurance for hubby, since he's going to be croaking a lot earlier than you are.

Here's a good rule: if you have kids, then they get to eat the healthy stuff with you in the dining room, while he has to suck down his hamburger out in the garage away from their impressionable eyes. Seems fair, right? And then he can join you all when it's time for dessert, which he doesn't get any of, because he hasn't had his vegetables. But he can sit at the table and do the requisite fatherly things like belch and ask how school is going and break up food fights.

---Crabby



Dear Cranky Fitness,

Help! During the week I am really good at staying on my diet and working out regularly. Then come Friday night, Saturday, and Sunday: two and a half days of decadent feasting, wild bacchanalian parties, and exercising only my ability to appreciate wine, men, and song.

I don't want to give up my friends or stop having fun, but I'm not losing any weight here. Shouldn't five days of being good entitle me to a couple days of fun?

Signed,
Party Girl

Dear P.G.,

The short answer to your question is: no.

--Merry

Nothing wrong with wild bacchanalian parties! I'm all for 'em. Problem is, your ratio of Virtue to Reward is out of calibration. If you are not getting results, you need to suffer a little bit more and party a bit less. Otherwise, if your weekday sacrifices aren't paying off, you might be too tempted to say "screw this stupid healthy living stuff" and stop being virtuous altogether!

You may want to try cutting back to one weekend day of "whatever," and then finding less self-indulgent ways of being social the other day. A bike ride in the park with friends on Saturday, followed by catered bacchanalian orgy on Sunday! Then you can still look forward to the weekends without totally undoing all your good behavior the rest of the week.

Plus, of the "wine, men, and song" combo, two of the three are arguably exercise! Crank up the men and the singing, and see if your results improve.

---Crabby


Dear Cranky Fitness,

I keep seeing commercials on TV for a weight loss system where they make all the food for you and send it right to your house. It looks like delicious stuff, too--meals like spaghetti and chicken and pizza and meatloaf, plus there are desserts like chocolate cake and cookies and even ice cream! Lots of people have lost a ton of weight on these programs, you should see the before and after pictures. My best friend says these programs are a scam, but what does she know, she's never tried one! I think she's just being too negative. I love her but she's always such a buzzkill.

Anyway, the only downside I can see is that the meals cost a lot of money. But isn't my health a good investment? Don't you think I should sign up right now? I can totally tell that if I had all this great food to eat I would succeed in my weight loss goals and be slim and beautiful and a rich man would ask me to marry him and so the extra credit card debt would be no big deal in the long run anyway!

But what do you guys think?

Signed,
Thinking Positive in Pawtucket!


Dear Thinking Positive,

I think you will probably do whatever you want no matter what we think because that's what people do when they ask for advice! (At least that's what I do.)

Anyway, congratulations for finding this incredible resource on TV. Isn't it amazing that all those food manufacturers who fill the grocery stores shelves with reduced-calorie foods haven't figured out their secret yet? Because surely if pre-made low cal convenience food at the grocery store was this tasty and healthy and satisfying, everyone who wanted to lose weight would be successful! Then there'd be no need to sign up for expensive programs marketed relentlessly on cable TV that force you to buy your convenience food all from one supplier for every meal for 28 days straight.

And what's even more amazing about the plan you've found, is that somehow if you get this particular kind of convenience food, with it arrives the willpower you need to eat nothing else except what's on your plan! With regular diet food, this special packet of willpower is generally not included.

We love Positive Thinkers here at Cranky Fitness! As a special offer just for you, please send us $100 now and we'll set aside $200 worth of our Cranky Fitness Miracle Weight Loss-Cupcakes© for delivery right to your doorstep... just as soon as we invent them!

---Crabby

P.S. If you want a list of rich men who are looking for debt-ridden women to marry, please send a self-addressed stamped envelope and $4,382.07 (cash only) and we'll send you the list along with the cupcakes.

-- Merry


What, you think you could come up with better answers? Enquiring minds want to know!

For that matter, if you have any questions you'd like Cranky Fitness to tackle, send them to crabbymcslacker at gmail dot com.

Top 10 Reasons Not To Exercise

By Merry Sunshine

10. They sell pants in size Bigger-than-you-think.

9. Who wants to live past age: fill-in-the-blank anyway?

8. Hey, you still have a few Battlestar Galactica episodes to catch up on!

7. You don't want your husband/wife/significant cat to see parts of you jiggle that were Not Intended To Jiggle.

6. Two words: plastic surgery.

5. Since the majority of the population is putting on weight even as we speak, you already look thinner by comparison. I mean, you don't want to look gaunt, do you?

4. One word: liposuction

3. All right, so maybe airline seats are getting narrower, but wouldn't you rather travel some other way besides flying?

2. Gyms are full of annoying people.

and the number one reason not to exercise is...

1. Oh, sorry, my vending-machine pizza is ready. Gotta go chomp. I'll finish this later.


I mean, c'mon. We live in a society that can deliver pizza within 90 seconds, but we don't have time to exercise?

Searching for "no time to exercise" brings up almost 15 million hits on Google. Something is wrong here. What is it?

The Pizza Diet, Size Issues, and Making a Change

It has come to our attention that supplies of cynicism are at an all-time low in many states around the country, and countries around the world. So this seems like a good time to run these studies past you. Besides, the really Deep & Serious post I was working on has gotten too deep and too serious. Thursdays require some levity.

The Red Wine & Pizza Diet

I'd hate for this to be the only blog that doesn't mention this new study.

A team of scientists at the University of Louis Pasteur claim to have discovered a drug SIRT1 that counteracts "some effects of a high-calorie diet." Chemically related to components found in red wine, this drug shifts the metabolism to "fat-burning mode" without side effects.

In mice, at any rate, it can prevent weight gain and improve blood sugar tolerance as well as insulin sensitivity. In other words, these mice can pig out on the Red-Wine-and-Pizza-Palooza diet without gaining weight.

Photo: Lulu

Is it too late to change my species to Mouse?

Who says size doesn't matter?

In a study of 7,000 women carried out by the University of Hawaii and published in the journal Obstetrics & Gynaecology, 92 per cent of those who were overweight had slept with a man, as compared to 87 per cent of women of "normal" size.

Is that the truth? The whole Truth? Nothing but the truth?

Honestly, if some researcher came up to me and asked about my sex life, regardless of what size I was, I'd want to know either a)what she was smokin' or b)what she intended to pay me to talk about something that's none of her business. I certainly wouldn't feel it was my duty to tell her the absolute, strict, hand-on-the-Bible truth. Plus, being easily distracted/amused, I was distracted and amused by the fact that the main researcher's first name was 'Bliss.' (Never said I was deep & profound, okay?)

Okay, any parents out there, listen up. Be aware that what you name your child may affect her or his career decades later.

Want to make a difference? Register and maybe save a life

On a much more serious note, if you’re feeling altruistic you should know that November is Marrow Awareness Month in America. Anyone who donates at the National Marrow Donor Program can do so for free.

Apparently in many other countries, registration is free. In America it usually costs about $50. (The cost is to cover the process of tissue typing your sample.) To register as a bone marrow donor, you need to fill out a questionnaire, swab your cheek with a cotton swab, and mail the swab in to the donor program. (They provide a kit for swabbing.)

Being a bone marrow donor can save the life of someone suffering from leukemia and similar ailments. A lot of people are talking about Change right now. If you want to make a change, that's one way to do it. I'm going for it.

Do you see any reason not to become a bone marrow donor? Or are you still mulling over the wine-and-pizza diet, and the women of varying sizes?