THE DOUBLE CHIN HYPOTHESIS

By Greg Evans

A favorite time to talk about all the new diet fads, and secret dishes that you can eat and lose 20 pounds in a week without doing any remarkable exercise, is often while sitting in front of a television set shoveling a cheeseburger and french fries, a cherry pie, extra meat lovers pizza, krispy kreme donuts into your mouth while washing it all down with a soda pop or extra sweet tea. It is a study in the desperate illusion people have in contemporary society with losing weight and looking "good" while remotely varying an ordinarily awful diet. If you haven't noticed before, take a look around you at the lines at the fast food restaurants every morning while driving to work. You may even be one of the people waiting in the fast food line for an extra greasy egg biscuit with bacon and cheese, or the coffee loaded up with heavy cream and sugar. Then for a snack to keep you from clawing the walls until lunch time you eat candy stuffed in your desk, or a bag of chips or something unhealthy and high in salt from the vending machine along with a couple soda pops. Ah! Finally, lunch time rolls around and you roll on down to the nearby take out restaurant or fast food joint and load up on something with two whoppers with cheese, some ungodly fat count and what...4,000 mg of sodium, along with a large heavily sugared drink. Then you still have the last leg of your work day to get through. You munch on candy until it is finally time to go home for the day and while driving home you call in an order for a take out dish or you may just heat up a notoriously fattening frozen pizza or T.V. dinner. But this kind of behavior and eating habits are not a one time thing but a regular practice and you wonder why you have a double chin and drop dead of a massive heart attack at 45.

It isn't rocket science that healthy people are lean. And no it isn't about genetics. They work to stay that lean and fit. The secret to losing all that unwanted fat is eat healthy food, small portions and suffer through the agonizing pangs of hunger. You will feel as if you are starving to death, wasting away like some Ethiopian but in fact you are only ridding yourself of blubber. I feel so bad for some of you out there when I see how you struggle to live a normal life being so obese that I am going to give you a weekly eating regime. It isn't a fancy diet and you won't lose weight rapidly. It is a slow process and once you get thin then you remain so because you will continue to eat well. There will be no returning to 300+ and size 60 jeans.

Breakfast (Pick one): 1 cup Oatmeal, two hard boiled eggs, 1 bowl of cheerios and banana and skim milk.

Lunch (Pick one): Peanut butter sandwich on wheat bread and piece of fruit, plain yogurt, tuna sandwich on wheat bread and piece of fruit, plain yogurt

Dinner : Baked fish (Salmon, Cod, Tuna, etc.) with three vegetables, Plain chicken (not fried) with vegetables.

Now comes the hardest part...no eating after 6:00 pm. And I promise you all no matter who you are, if you are over weight, keeping to that regime is unbearable. I was once 225 pounds and followed the eating schedule above and I am now and have been for over a year 175 pounds. It does work and once you reach your target weight then you can throw in the pizza on friday night or the occasional fast food breakfast, but it can only be occasional. I personally don't eat fast food.

I feel sorry for the obese people of the world because I think it must be so difficult to live like that. I imagine they often feel uncomfortable and self-conscious, but at the same time it is almost offensive to see some gigantic person with their head in their plate going to town on a portion that could kill a normal person, and I wonder why they don't decide that enough is enough and it is time to take back their lives. It is time to say no to pork rinds and yes to broccoli. And with what we know about health today it begins with your diet. Of course you also need to exercise and twenty minutes of power walking around the neighborhood daily is perfect. And then you should try and get a fairly good nights sleep, especially during the weight losing period. It is all about discipline! That's all, it is not e=mc2.