Mayb e today was a good day to start that diet and exercise program I
keep putting off.I padded to the kitchen in bare feet and my
nightgown, which still fit, thank heaven. I looked around for
something healthy to eat. In the fruit bowl, there were a couple of
spotted bananas, an apricot that had gone mushy and three MacIntosh
apples (not the kind that lay claim to computing abilities).
The bananas were edible but unappetizing. The apricot was
unacceptable; I tossed it in the trash. And the MacIntoshes were too
tart for so early in the morning. The last thing I needed first
thing in the morning was to feel my face shrivel up.
There were cereals, of course, but the kind I keep in stock for
my kids were not of the nuts, dried fruit, tree bark persuasion.
They were mostly the stick-to-the-kitchen-floor-when-wet variety. I
knew I couldn't eat those if I was planning to lose weight.
I decided to skip breakfast.
Going for a brisk walk would have fit into my plan, but like I
said, I hadn't any clothes to wear. Walking sans clothes in my
neighborhood would have attracted unwanted attention, briskly or
not.
To forget about my hunger, I put a load of laundry in the washer,
sat down, still in my nightgown, and began to do some writing.
My mistake here was that I sat facing a window. You see, the
birds and squirrels were still eating their breakfast.
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 Believe it or not, when you are hungry and you see a bird pulling
a nice, fat, juicy worm out of the ground, even brown bananas start
to sound appealing. I was actually jealous that the birds and
squirrels seemed to be getting breakfast, but I, a human being, top
of the food chain, was starving!
Do birds and squirrels ever go on a diet? Or exercise? No!
By the time I had downed my second bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios,
which was the healthiest cereal I could find -- It has honey, right?
-- I had convinced myself that diet and exercise went against the
laws of nature. And who am I to deny laws that had been written
since the beginning of time? Honey having no calories being the
exception.
For some reason, it was easy to ignore the fact that sitting at a
computer or watching TV went against the natural order of things as
well. Honey probably has that effect on people.
The next order of business was to determine what I was going to
wear. Fortunately, it didn't occur to me to compare my wardrobe with
that of the natural world. My body, seen au naturel, would've
terrified even the birds and squirrels.
After I had retrieved some clothes from the dryer and donned my
best pair of elastic-waist pants, I decided a little retail therapy
was in order. I was going clothes shopping! It was time to make the
birds and squirrels jealous!
[By LAURA SNYDER]
Laura Snyder is a nationally syndicated columnist,
author and speaker. You can reach her at
lsnyder@lauraonlife.com
or visit www.lauraonlife.com
for more info.
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