#230 Lounge Less

I was reading a magazine and came across an ad for a new nutria-system nourishing weight loss program. The “before” and “after” pictures were so dramatically different you wanted to call for a DNA test. I always expect the “befores” to have frumpy overalls and the “afters” to have bikinis but they should at least try to get people with the same brow line. In any event, the ad proclaimed a new scientific breakthrough in weight loss. That gives you the benefits of a low-carb diet but you still enjoy the carbs. I confess, I was intrigued. Anything that promises all of the benefits and none of the price sounds completely believable to me. I mean, free ride, perpetual motion, gain without pain, absolutely, sign me up. The next line reiterated this astonishing promise. “Take the work out of weight loss,” it proclaimed. And then, “Get a week worth of food free!” Wow! Both free and no work. I’m ready to throw out my cardboard sign and give up my place at the freeway off-ramp. Turns out the work you save, by the way, is ordering your meals pre-prepared and delivered to your door. So it’s the cooking that you do less of. Damn, and that’s the only exercise you were getting.
See, I think the problem here is that urge we all have to get something for nothing. Even though everything we’ve ever been taught by experience indicates otherwise, we still hold out for the million dollar lottery. It’s no wonder lottery winners soon end up with screwed up lives. Something for nothing just ain’t natural. But hope, as they say, springs eternal and a skinny butt is an eternal spring of hope. The holy grail of the diet world, small butt and six-pack abs. It’s kind of funny. Look at the old James Bond movies when Sean Connery takes of his shirt. He’s hairy, first off, and his waist is a little thick. Back then, the word ab hadn’t even been invented. The physical model of ultimate manliness was longshoreman burliness, not Schwarzenegger ungirlyness.
But today we have abs, and, of course, all kinds of infomercials have pay-over-time gadgets that promise to chisel our stomachs like Michelangelo on steroids. I saw the newest on TV the other day. And its name absolutely captures the expectation-setting of today’s no-pain but-we-promise-gain-anyhow culture. It’s called the ab lounger. That’s right, lounge your way to perfect abs. It’s a modified chaise lounge that bends back like the broken ones you used to have on the back porch and bends forward into a full crunch—with mechanical assistance, so you don’t have to actually work at your ab lounging. The ab lounger. That sums it up to me. This machine exercises for you. Talk about convenience. And bonus, your butt will look smaller cause your wallet won’t have any of that bulging unsightly money left in it.
America, ya gotta love it.