Just found this book & article's title to be amusing enough to give it its own blog entry.
Does This Clutter Make My Butt Look Fat?
"Is there a connection between the amount of clutter in your home and size of your butt? Peter says in many cases there is. "There is this weird connection between clutter in all areas of our homes and clutter we carry in our bodies and on our bodies," he says. The clutter and weight connection is the focus of Peter's latest book Does This Clutter Make My Butt Look Fat? An Easy Plan for Losing Weight and Living More."
Not surprisingly, there's a chapter on this phenomenon in that book I love to quote here oh so much, Don Aslett's Clutter's Last Stand. It's called "Clutter Al a Carte".
Is there really a connection? Well in some ways, yes. If you're not keeping up on maintaining possessions at home, then I imagine not watching one's diet couldn't be too far off. I can see how the pack rat attitude of "I'll just let this stuff pile up here" can also manifest itself as "I'll just eat out tonight."
I'm far from being a health expert. And I don't have any Richard Simmons sob story to tell about losing 100 pounds. I've never been obese. Though over the past year, I managed to lose a significant amount of weight. It was due to pretty basic stuff. So basic, that I'm almost embarrassed to list it here. But here it goes anyway. The Bill M. diet:
- Eat more than 2 meals in a day. I easily get into periods where I end up eating just two or even just one huge meal every day for a string of days. This especially happens when I have a messed up sleeping schedule, which is not infrequent. But once I get back on track, the weight goes down. Supposedly, breaking it down into 4 or 5 meals a day is supposed to help even more.
- Eat more meals at home. I have no idea why this works, but I hear it being said in the above article and others, and it honestly has worked for me. It would seem that I'd be just as hungry at home as I was at a restaurant, and thus eat just as much if not more from the "free" supply of food in my kitchen that I already bought. Yet strangely, I ended up losing weight when I ate more meals at home. Not to mention saving money too.
- Drink water. Was it they say? 4 glasses? 6 glasses? I honestly don't know. But if your urine is coming out darker than the color of this blog, then you need to drink at least one glass of water that day. I end up drinking a lot when I'm singing anyway. Sometimes we think we're hungry and start eating stuff when in fact we're really just dehydrated. Just one glass of water in a day can do a lot, or at least for me. And if it's giving you something to drink when you normally would have grabbed a soda or a beer, so much the better.
- Refrain from desserts. And that's "refrain", not "abstain". Damn straight I will have my cake and eat it too! But I do remember how I ended up gaining a lot of weight in college from having one dessert after another. I'd eat at the cafeteria, and desserts were abundant and free there, so why not? Once in a while ain't bad. But one meal after another, and you'll be wearing your belt in a wider notch.
- Get snacks on the more healthful side. I am not going to kid myself nor you that apple chips should be a permanent substitution for Chips A'hoy. Hell no. You need to have your indulgence now and then. I'm not suggesting self-delusion. BUT...if you have a habit for getting a snack from the kitchen, and you fill your kitchen with stuff like fruits, chances are you're going to eat those fruits because there's nothing else in the kitchen. Instead of reaching for "anything", you can have it be a little less weighty.
- Don't expect results overnight. Now this is the #1 thing that I swear all would-be dieters refuse to believe, and leads to their failure. Yes, we ALL like to have quick and over-simplified solutions to complicated problems. That's why things like home exercise machines, guitar tablature, and Jesus freak creationism are so popular. But short and over-simplified solutions are often wrong. The stuff that nobody wants to do because it takes too much effort, is still often the "right" way to do it, but it takes time.
- Other stuff I already had going for me. I'm not a smoker. I'm not on any medications. I don't drink often, and when I do, it's typically only one drink in a given night, and never beer (a beverage which I can't stand). I lucked out with some pretty good pickings from the gene pool. Again, I'm no health expert, but I imagine that somebody who had one or more of these factors would have a harder time than me when it comes to losing weight. Sometimes it is just luck.
I will mention one substance I tried back in the mid to late 90s: Thermochrome. It's one of these pills that sold by independent distributors, kind of like Amway. I took just half of the dosage, and I have to say, they WORK. Though like other diet pills, there are some notorious drawbacks. I didn't end up demented like the lady in Requiem for a Dream, though I did experience some teeth-grinding. I don't think I want to go down that route again, but I thought it was worth mentioning here.
