I knew it

A new study has found that bacon and other fatty foods can be as addictive as heroin or cocaine.

The study, done on rats, found that they'd eat junk food to the point of extreme obesity. They even kept eating when they were receiving electric shocks.

Researchers say fatty foods turn on "pleasure centers" in the brain, just like drugs, and overstimulation leads to compulsive consumption.

Hmmm, bacon.

Wait. What were we talking about?

Full story here.

Think yourself fat

It’s not chocolate and booze that are making me fat, it’s all the thinking.

A study in Canada has found that the more you work your brain, the more you want to eat. This is extremely bad news for a large segment of the New Internet Economy -- people who sit at computers all day, thinking about stuff. It’s not bad enough that we lead such a sedentary lifestyle. Now it turns out that the stress of mental work makes us want more food.

Researchers at Laval University reported the study in a recent issue of “Psychosomatic Medicine Journal.” (Don’t you love that there’s a publication called “Psychosomatic Medicine Journal?” I used to subscribe to it, but I thought it was making me sick.)

The researchers measured food consumption after subjects did reading/writing tasks or performed computerized tests. The study was done on 14 students (the white lab rats of humanity), who were turned loose on an all-you-can-eat buffet after performing the 45-minute tests.

Students who read a document and wrote a summary of it ate 24 percent more than students who simply rested in a sitting position during the test period. Students who did the computer test activity ate 29 percent more than those who rested.

“Those who had a more demanding mental task were more stressed and ate more,” said researcher Angelo Tremblay and, yes, that’s his real name.

Tremblay and his fellow researchers found that stress from mental work increased the hormone cortisol and also affected glucose levels, both of which can stimulate appetite.

Unfortunately, other studies have found that brainwork does nothing to burn calories. That seems unfair. Sure, our brains will spur us to visit the buffet again and again, but when it comes time to get rid of those accumulated calories, the brain can’t be bothered. It’s too busy pondering the infield fly rule or trying to remember the name of that cross-eyed kid we knew in third grade.

So what’s to be done? You already know the answer: physical exercise. Most of us don’t do enough manual labor to burn up the calories we consume; we’re too busy sitting at computers, playing Spider Solitaire. Since our brains won’t help burn calories, the only solution is to make our bodies do it through regular workouts, the researchers said.

They did find one glimmer of hope for the exercise-phobic, though that wasn’t their intention.
Because brain chemistry apparently can make us overeat, “mental work is a worse activity than simply doing nothing,” Tremblay said.

So there’s your answer. Stop using your brain so much, and maybe you’ll eat less. If you can stand to sit and stare into space without fidgeting or thinking, you’re all set.

This doesn’t explain why you run into so many stupid people who are also fat. But perhaps even a little bit of thinking is harder work for such mouth-breathers and therefore more stressful.

You’ll notice one important omission in the Canadian study: Television. Sitting and staring at TV is completely passive, but it clearly stimulates those same brain chemicals because nothing makes us want snacks more than televised sporting events. If sitting at a computer and thinking about stuff makes us fat, then sitting in front of a TV should make us HUGE. I know it’s working for me.

Anyway, that’s my theory about this new obesity study. I put a lot of thought into it. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go eat. I’m starving.

Primp my bride

A comic cliché that goes back at least to the early days of Dagwood and Blondie: The husband pacing impatiently while his wife takes her good sweet time getting ready for a night on the town.

As with so many clichés, this one’s got some basis in fact. Women have much more to do to get ready, which means men end up with more time to watch the clock and get ulcers.

Proof comes from Great Britain, where a survey finds that women spend three times longer getting ready for a night out. On average, the study found, women spend an hour and a half preparing for a night out, including taking a shower, doing their hair, applying makeup and polishing nails.

Over a lifetime, this adds up to 3,276 hours (or 136 DAYS) spent on primping and preening.

“The figures come as no surprise considering the pressure that today’s women are under just to make themselves look good,” said Heather Boden of the body wash brand Skinbliss, which commissioned the research.

Women are bombarded with images from advertising and media, telling them what constitutes beauty and what products they must buy right now to reach that pinnacle. They’re made to feel that they must invest time and effort into looking their best.

Men, on the other hand, assume they look fine, even when they are covered in actual soil.

If you don’t believe this double-standard exists, try this experiment. Put any woman in front of a large mirror in a well-lit room. She immediately will examine her reflection for flaws. She will get depressed over every bump and wrinkle. She will sigh. She will decide her clothes are hopelessly out of fashion. She will decide to go shopping.

Put a man in front of the same mirror, and he’ll start flexing his biceps, saying to himself, “Looking good.” This is true whether the man is a fit young Adonis or a middle-aged bald guy with the physique of a toad.

(The British survey didn’t differentiate between single vs. married, but I’m guessing the answers were quite different. People who are “on the market” invest more time in looking and smelling their best, just in case they meet that special someone, whereas a married person can feel fully primped as long as he or she is not wearing fresh baby spit-up.)

A typical man can get ready for any occasion in the length of time it takes a woman to decide “does this purse go with these shoes?” Then the man is forced to sit around in his uncomfortable dress-up clothes, getting increasingly anxious, while the woman does her hair and her makeup and changes outfits seven times. By the time she is finally ready, the man has rumpled his clothes, consumed too many pre-party drinks and is fast asleep in front of the TV. He then must spring awake and tuck in his shirttail and smooth down the dagwoods in his hair and drive like a bat out of hell so they can reach the special occasion before all the food is gone.

Plus, the reeling, half-awake man must remember to tell the woman how beautiful she looks. If he knows what’s good for him.

Otherwise, he may find himself asking: Does this purse look good upside my head?

Not-so-great room

Like many modern suburban homes, our house centers on a “great room” where the family does most of its living.

It’s an OK room, sure, but doesn’t “great room” sound pretentious? Seems like a real estate gimmick to me, though I suppose it would be hard to sell a house by advertising its not-so-great room or so-so room.

A great room performs the functions previously accomplished by a formal living room, family room, library/den/study and dining room. Today, we mush them all together, preferably open to the kitchen, which in newer homes is the size of a cruise ship.

The great room is a throwback to the “great hall” of the Middle Ages, the huge central room in a castle or manor house, with its feasts and fireplaces and animals underfoot. As homes got more complicated, the great hall gave way to collections of rooms with specialized functions: parlors, salons, drawing rooms, morning rooms, music rooms. This specialization continued until eventually, during Victorian times, there were rooms reserved strictly for fainting.

Today’s one-big-room model is great for entertaining, with easy kitchen access, open sightlines and high ceilings for the escape of noise and hot air, but the rest of the time, it presents problems.

For one thing, you’ve got to keep it clean. A visitor who walks in our front door can see at a glance everything from the living area to the patio to the kitchen. It’s readily apparent if we’ve left dishes sitting out or socks on the sofa. Ours has that “lived-in” look, with shoes and soft drinks sitting among scattered newspapers in the living room, and an array of battered pans on the stove. If we had a reception room or formal living room, we’d never use it and could keep it clean enough for visitors. Maybe.

The high ceiling lends a certain airiness, but all the heat goes up there instead of down by the furniture where we are shivering. And the whole area shares the same mingling aromas, which is fine until someone cooks cabbage.

It’s difficult to arrange furniture properly in an open room. Where do you put the reading lamps? How do you keep from snaking extension cords across the floor? Can you reach the end tables? Homeowners must rely on furniture “groupings,” which is a French term that means “take the long way around the sofa.”

Another problem with such floor plans is that kitchens tend to be too handy. Every time I look up from the TV, I see the kitchen. Look, food sitting right on the counter, just asking to be eaten! No wonder this country has an obesity epidemic. I, myself, currently weigh 723 pounds. At this point, I need a great room. A great big room.

Moms love the proximity of the kitchen because there’s a slim chance they might get help with the dishes if the rest of the family is nearby. At minimum, while Mom’s cooking supper, she can watch TV over her family’s collected heads.

A great room does give the family a wonderful place to congregate, if you like that sort of thing. Family members can multi-task -- cooking, eating, reading, watching TV, doing homework, clicking computers, sniffling, scratching, personal grooming, arguing, drinking, calling the police -- all in the same room at the same time. Until they drive one another crazy.

You can’t beat that kind of togetherness. It’s great.

Chair razing

Let's say you have some rickety patio furniture, and you'd really like to get rid of it and get something nicer, but you can't bring yourself to throw it out.

Here's what you should do: Invite me over for a barbecue.

For a modest fee of bratwurst and beer, I will gladly sit in your patio chairs and render them into kindling. Then we'll have a good laugh, clean up the mess and you can go shopping with a clean conscience.

How can I offer such a service? I am Brewer, Slayer of Chairs, Destroyer of Sitting Places, and Grand High Master of Splintery.

I achieved this lofty position by building my reputation over a lifelong career in chair smashing. I hate to brag, but it's well-known among my friends and acquaintances that you save the sturdiest chair for me. I'm six-foot-five and weigh over 250 pounds, many of them concentrated in the sitting region, and standard chairs don't stand a chance.

As with so many professional chair demolishers, I got my start in college. Horsing around, rocking back on two legs, buying the cheapest aluminum lawn chairs, all those things your mother warned you against.

The day I saw that I real potential to become an All-World Annihilator of Chairs came 30 years ago. I leaned a bentwood back onto two legs, only to have it crack and nearly pitch me out a second-story window. I barely caught myself in time. How's that for degree of difficulty?

As I grew older and ever heavier, more and more chairs fell beneath my destructive powers. Flimsy lawn chairs folded sideways. Pool lounges collapsed. Picnic benches splintered. Kitchen chairs splayed.

We owned a couple of antique armchairs with ornately carved front legs. They lived more than a century before they got to our house, where they were soon reduced to wreckage. Sometimes, while looking at family photo albums, I'll run across those chairs, and I'll feel a twinge of regret. But I swiftly push such feelings aside. No time for sentimentality; there's a whole world full of chairs to destroy.

I even broke a sofa once. Years ago, we bought a Duncan Phyfe-style sofa from a friend and had it refurbished by a roving Italian upholsterer who might've been lacking something in the green card area. The finished product was a beautiful, mustache-shaped sofa with graceful carved legs.

The very next Christmas, my family gathered around the tree in our bathrobes, passing out gifts and laughing. Full of joy. I had my gluteus maximus planted on one end of the redone sofa, and -- crack! -- a graceful leg snapped off. How's that for a Christmas surprise? Ho, ho, ho, pick yourself up off the floor and fix the couch.

My crowning achievement as Devastator of All Seating came a few summers ago, when I managed to kill not one, but two, heavy-duty lawn chairs at the same three-hour outdoor concert.

Granted, they were aged chairs, and they'd stood up to a lot of weighty abuse over the years. Their plastic arms were riddled with tiny stress fractures that were bound to give way eventually. But both chairs the same day? Some combination of sodden lawn and enormous man and beer worked its magic that day. Snap! Crack! Two chairs, straight to the dumper.

So, if you want to get rid of some chairs, stoke up the grill and give me a call. I'm in the Yellow Pages under "Chairs, Demolition." Ask for Destructor.

A world too small for such a man

My mantra for middle age: Every day, in every way, I am getting fatter and fatter.

I diet (sort of). I exercise (a lot). Every day, I step onto the bathroom scales and groan.

I am not what doctors call "morbidly obese." More like pathetically obese. It's just sad the way fat accumulates on the body of a middle-aged man who gave up smoking a few years ago and took up Oreos instead.

One look in the mirror raises a number of questions: When did my hips become wider than my shoulders? When did my waist measurement leave my inseam in the dust? Where did my belt go? Oh, there it is, hiding under my paunch. Sneaky devil.

I know I'm not alone. News reports regularly scream that America's the fattest country on earth, that we're killing ourselves with our own mouths. We're all so concerned about obesity and health, we can find solace only in another snack.

"Middle age" apparently refers to body location rather than simple chronology. You pass 40, and your middle shows its age by ballooning up as it never has before. This so-called "spread" is the curse of adulthood.

("Middle-Age Spread" sounds like a ranch, one that extends from Armpit Valley to Bad Knee Junction, passing the mustard-stained slopes of Mount Belly and Lardbutt Heights along the way. Yee-haw. Git along, lil hoagies!)

I was already a large man before I became a large, pear-shaped man. I'm six-foot-five, and rarely a day goes by that I don't hit my head on something, which may explain my many mental "issues."

Because of my height, I already bought my clothes at "Big-and-Tall" shops. I used to shop in the "Tall" section. Now, in middle age, I need the "Big" part, too.

With this widening has come more frequent painful encounters with the door jambs and sharp edges of my everyday world. A few years ago, I only worried about hitting my head. Now, I worry about snagging a hip on a cabinet corner. I tuck my elbows against my sides when I go through doors. I'm usually sporting a bruise somewhere.

The world isn't designed for the big and tall. Countertops and light switches and sinks always are the wrong height. Beds are too short. Doorways are too narrow. Bucket seats? Don't make me laugh.

Worst, of course, are airplanes, which are designed by elfin workers at Boeing who get their revenge on the world by torturing us big guys. (You might not know this, but "Economy" comes from the Latin words for "pinch my fat with your armrest.")

Recently, I rode in one of those small, turboprop planes formally known as "puddle-jumpers," and was forced by dire need to squeeze my very large self into its very small bathroom.

I got in there all right, facing the correct direction, etc., but when it came time to emerge, I had a problem. I was wedged so tightly, I couldn't move my arms. Which meant I couldn’t release the door latch. Which raised the very real possibility that I would remain in that fiberglass coffin until someone got me out with a blowtorch. By exhaling and pivoting just right, I managed to get free, but there were a few panicky seconds when a headline flashed before my eyes:

Middle-Aged Fatty Trapped in Airplane Loo

God, the humiliation. Only one way to beat that rap -- blame someone else. So I pictured this headline instead:

Trapped Fatty Sues Airline; Nabisco Named as Co-Defendant

Ah, that's better. Let's eat!

The turkey says gobble

Now I know why we have the Full Turkey Dinner only once or twice a year. The leftovers last three months.

The holiday season is one long graze, an endless smorgasbord of cookies and cakes and turkey and dressing and egg nog. Everywhere you turn, there's more food, more booze, more festive calories.

No wonder the average American gains 137 pounds during the period between Halloween and Jan. 1. No wonder most people's New Year's resolutions focus on diet and exercise. We have to work off all that cheery holiday gluttony. Call it The Turkey's Revenge.

A friend remarked the other day that obese people always have food within easy reach. They're in front of the TV and they have chips and beer and candy and pork rinds all around them. All they need is a funnel.

During the holidays, this situation applies to us all. Food is everywhere and you can't avoid it, even if you try. There's too much peer pressure. Fail to partake of holiday fare, and people will think something's wrong with you, that you're sick or depressed.

Try this one at Thanksgiving sometime: "No turkey for me, thanks." Your family will want to feel your forehead for fever. Your host will glare at you, because that's one serving of turkey that will be left over, and your host simply can't fit another thing into the freezer.

There's so much food during the holidays that some folks become desperate to get rid of it. They do this by forcing it down the throats of their friends and co-workers. People bring Halloween candy and Santa cookies to the office to "get them out of the house." You can't stop by a friend's house without being offered a seven-course dessert tray. And you have to lock the car to keep neighbors from stashing Zip-Loc bags of leftover turkey in the glove compartment.

We're guilty within our own homes. We leave plastic-wrapped plates of desserts sitting out, hoping others will consume them before they spoil or before Easter, whichever comes first. Eventually, all these goodies migrate to the nearest TV, where they are within easy reach. Next thing you know, it's February and we're investing in a Stairmaster.

I'd like to say this dire situation is confined to the holidays, but that's not the case at my house. We have two growing boys and they think the entire house is an open-air buffet. Boxes of cereal and bags of chips and granola bars and Popsicles wander about our house, seemingly of their own accord, following our boys wherever they go. Always within easy reach.

We parents don't encourage this behavior. Indeed, we've tried to confine food to the kitchen, where there's no carpet to catch spills. But food is portable and the boys have a full of agenda of running around to accomplish every day. They can't help it if the food chooses to go with them.

The part I find most alarming is that they aren't even stealthy about their disobedience. They leave a trail of candy wrappers and apple cores in their wake.

Imagine this scenario repeated, with variations, oh, 42 times a day:

Son: "Dad, can I have a Popsicle?"
Dad: "Sure. Eat it in the kitchen."
Son: "Okay."
Hours later, I'll find the sticky Popsicle stick on my bedside table.
Dad: "How did that get in here?"
Son, wide-eyed: "I have no idea."
Dad: (Grumble, grumble.)

And it's not just the remains they leave. They also have packages of food stashed all over the house in case of emergency.

One day, I pulled into our driveway. The shades were up in one son's bedroom window and there, sitting on the sill, facing out at the world, was a bright orange jumbo box of Cheese Nips. It looked like a billboard or a political poster, as if our household had decided to come out in favor of Cheese Nips and we wanted the whole world to know it.

I was mortified, of course. I don't even like Cheese Nips. If we're going to endorse a food product, it should be leftover turkey.

Holiday diet tips

The annual Holiday Eating Season -- which runs from Thanksgiving to Valentine's Day --officially begins this week, and that means trouble for those of us trying to lose weight.

Banquets and booze, potlucks and pastries, desserts and delicacies all gang up on us this time of year. Here a cookie, there a brownie, everywhere a cheese log. This abundance makes it nearly impossible to watch your weight.

(An aside: Isn't "watch your weight" a weird euphemism? I have no trouble watching my weight. It's right here in front of me. The problem is trying to watch anything beyond it -- my feet, for instance. If we need a euphemism for dieting, maybe we should call it "looking for feet.")

You can't escape the annual cornucopia, but you can find ways to manage your diet. Rather than counting every calorie or battling every temptation, use your imagination to set limits. Play little mind games with yourself, so you can pass up certain treats and keep your overall consumption within reason.

For example, some people allow themselves the freedom to indulge in holiday meals with loved ones, but skip desserts. Others eat only desserts, though this is not recommended. A handful go on the "all egg nog, all the time" regimen, a form of liquid diet guaranteed to result not only in weight gain, but probable arrest.

Here are some other creative dieting suggestions:

--The Alphabet Diet. Pick a letter of the alphabet and pledge not to eat any food that contains that letter in its name. Say, for instance, that you choose "R." Then turkey and risotto and cranberries are out for the holiday season. However, you could eat all the blintzes you want. Obese people might want to "up the ante" and select several letters. Caution: A vowel-free diet can result in medical problems.

--The Face Diet. Vegetarians often say, "I don't eat anything that has a face." This could be a good approach for holiday dieters, too. However, you might want to amend the rules to specify that really ugly faces don't count. You could, thereby, still eat turkey.

--The Repulsion Diet. When faced with the usual huge array of holiday foods, most people can identify one or two items that they simply can't stand -- such as gelid cranberry sauce or creamed spinach or oyster dressing. Load up your plate with your least-favorite things. Pretty soon, you'll find that you'd rather go hungry.

--The Rah-Team Diet. Cut down your sports-related noshing by eating only when your favorite team is winning. Warning: This season, fans of the San Francisco 49ers could starve to death.

--The Denture-Free Diet. If you wear false teeth, take them out before holiday meals. This will limit you to mushy stuff, and cut down your caloric intake. This method could help your loved ones lose weight, too, because watching you will turn their stomachs.

--The Battle-Axe Diet. If you can't stand your mother-in-law, be sure to sit directly across from her at every family gathering. That ought to kill your appetite.

--The Hangover Diet. "Tie one on" the night before every big family meal. True, booze is full of empty calories. But you won't want any yams the next day. Trust me.

Using such imaginative approaches, you can find a diet plan that will get you through the Holiday Eating Season.

If nothing works, tell yourself that obesity is the direct result of a happy, abundant life. Count your blessings and give thanks.

Personally, I'm thankful that I no longer need to worry about spilling egg nog on my shoes.

Sneezing off the pounds

Hello, friends. Today, I bring you great news about an AMAZING NEW DIET plan that could allow you to lose five pounds in a single week!

I know you've heard this sort of thing before. We're all deluged by advertisements touting the latest diet fads and spouting incredible results that only the most gullible and desperate dieters would ever believe. But my diet plan is different because it REALLY WORKS!

In only one week, with virtually no exercise, you can drop unwanted pounds and get back into those jeans that have been too tight for the past six months. You can look trimmer and feel better about yourself. You can amaze your friends and family.

I'm a perfect example of how this new diet plan works. In only one week, I lost five whole pounds. I had to cinch up my favorite belt by an entire hole! And, so far, I've kept it off!

How did I do it? I caught my first cold of the winter. After a week of misery, I got on the scales to find that the pounds had MAGICALLY DISAPPEARED.

That's right, friends. Without even trying, without breaking a sweat (other than those feverish, sheet-soaking night sweats), I dropped some of the excess weight that had been plaguing me for months. Now, whole new worlds (as well as whole sections of my existing wardrobe) have opened up to me. I feel like a new, if slightly weaker, man!

My amazing new Winter Cold Diet is so simple you won't even believe it. It's EASY! All you do is catch a passing virus. Then, for the next seven to 10 days, you'll find that you have NO APPETITE AT ALL! Even your favorite foods will hold no appeal for you. You'll find that everything, even sinfully rich chocolate and fattening holiday sweets, tastes like cardboard.

The Winter Cold Diet can be pursued in the privacy of your own home. No embarrassing weigh-ins in front of other dieters. No puffing at the gym in front of svelte young weightlifters who sneer at your decrepitude. In fact, you can do it without leaving your bed!

With the Winter Cold Diet, there are no special foods or drinks to purchase. All you'll want is water, and lots of it. Maybe some chicken soup. And lots of over-the-counter cold remedies to dry out your runny nose, calm your coughing fits and help you sleep around the clock.

Best of all, the Winter Cold Diet is ABSOLUTELY FREE! Nothing to buy now, nothing to buy later. No salesman will call.

You can pick up the Winter Cold Diet virus most everywhere AT NO CHARGE. There's plenty to go around. Co-workers will willingly share it with you. Perfect strangers in public places will gladly sneeze some of the virus right over to you. Heck, your children have probably brought the virus home from school. It's likely in their rooms RIGHT NOW!

Granted, the Winter Cold Diet does have certain side effects. During the diet, you'll feel really rotten -- headaches, dehydration, body aches, congestion, sore throat, coughing, etc. You'll go through a lot of Kleenex. All your hacking and spewing will disgust your loved ones. You won't accomplish anything, except a lot of excess sleeping, and you'll likely miss work.

But hey, as any of us fatties will be quick to tell you, that all seems a small price to pay to LOSE FIVE POUNDS! In a WEEK! Whoo-hoo!

Try the amazing Winter Cold Diet today! Pick up a virus! As if you have any choice.

Brain sweat

Like many of my fellow bloated Americans, I exercise daily in an attempt to shed pounds and to keep my stressed heart from one day popping like a balloon.

Many people pay for memberships to gyms, where they at least have the distraction of other members, including some in leotards. But those of us who work out at home are constantly reminded that exercise is boring.

Our minds wander all over, getting as big a workout as our bodies. I've got my treadmill set up in the garage with all kinds of distractions handy -- a small TV, reading material, music. But my brain bounces from topic to topic like a pinball, always coming back to the fact that I could keel over from exertion any minute, resulting in the big "Game Over."

Random thoughts from a typical workout on the Dreadmill:

Remember when exercise was all about having fun? When did it become drudgery? Here I am, bored out of my skull, walking to nowhere. Let's not think about how that's a metaphor for Life.

God, my legs are going to fall off. If they did, could I get new ones grafted on? Ones that already had muscles? Then I could skip the workouts and still look better in shorts.

These days, doctors can transplant most anything, including faces, from one human to another. Too bad they haven't mastered personality transplants. I can think of some people who'd benefit from that.

What is that huffing sound? Oh, it's me.

If Americans keep living longer and longer, will huffing and puffing eventually become the background music of life?

You know you're older when "getting lucky" refers to the last piece of cake.

How come we have angel's food cake and devil's food cake and who decided which is which? Do they serve those in heaven and hell? If so, I'll go with the chocolate, even if it means eternal fire.

Mmm, cake.

What the heck is manna? You always hear about "manna from heaven." Does it come in chocolate?

How come Death's always pictured as a specter in a hooded cloak, carrying a scythe? At new year's time, the long-bearded Old Year carries a scythe, too. Is he related to Death? How do you use a scythe anyway?

What's that awful smell? Oh, that's me, too.

The bravest person who ever lived was the one who first ate a lobster. Here's this creature, looks like a big bug, comes armed with clacking claws. Drop it into boiling water and it turns bright red -- a sure warning sign. And yet, somebody was the first to say, hey, let's eat this thing.

Mmm, lobster.

Is that the phone? Probably another telemarketer. Here's the perfect thing to say to get rid of telemarketers: "So. What are you wearing?"

Is that a chest pain? Nah. But what if it was? I'm all alone here. Could I get to a phone and call for help before it's too late? Would my family find me here, hours later, facedown on the treadmill? Would I have big black rubber burns on my face? I'd better start keeping my cell phone nearby.

I could use my workout time to talk on the phone, if people didn't mind the puffing. They'd probably hang up, thinking it was an obscene call. "It's that breather again…."

Mmm, breathing.

Time's almost up. Just a few more minutes of agony, then I can get off this machine and get on with my day. Assuming I don't pass out first.

Wonder how much liposuction costs?

All thumbs and out of control

If you want to know whether you're out of shape, take this simple test: Count the remote controls you have lying around your house.

If the number exceeds, say, four, then you're probably not getting enough exercise. If it exceeds six, you don't need a mirror to tell you that your jeans are too tight. Ten or more remotes mean you're lucky your heart still beats.

The remote control is one labor-saving device that does its job all too well. It's possible to keep ourselves entertained in countless ways without ever moving from the sofa. The only muscles many of us work with any regularity are the ones that move our thumbs.

Not that jumping up to switch channels was such great exercise. I remember those pre-remote days, when TVs had dials on the front of them, and it wasn't much of a workout to take those few strides over to the channel changer. But even then people found ways to avoid hoisting themselves off the couch. The only reason families had children was so the parents could order them over to the TV to switch from "Ozzie and Harriet" to "Gunsmoke."

Back then, we only had three or four channels. Now, we have hundreds of channels, and there's still never anything good on TV. But we idealistically hope we'll find something worth watching, and the remote control makes the channel-flipping search possible.

Here's the way most people (or, at least, most men) watch TV: Flip, flip, flip, flip, pause for show that might be interesting, nah, flip, flip, flip, brief nudity, flip, flip, flip, flip, check the score, flip, flip, flip, oh, look, sharks, flip, flip, flip, flip, funny commercial we've seen 200 times, flip, flip…

We have Dish Network at our house, and all I watch anymore is the on-screen guide that tells what's on the many, many channels. I scroll up and down, scanning titles and times, searching for something, anything, that might keep my eyeballs busy for an hour. I could spend that same amount of time and brainpower reading a book or puzzling over life's mysteries or planning my financial future, but no, I'm busy hunting for basketball highlights.

Our newest remote arrived when we recently replaced our 20-year-old "hi-fi." Naturally, the new stereo came with a remote control. Now I can play hours of music without jumping up to change CDs or adjust the volume. I can even skip that one lousy song that's federally mandated to be included on every album.

The stereo remote brings the number of remote controls in our living room up to four. (Household-wide, we have eight, I think, but I might've missed one.)

Since I insist on being in charge of all the remotes, my place on the sofa looks like Captain Kirk's command chair on the bridge of the Enterprise. I've got complete control of all electronics, and I'm steering us right into the Obesity Nebula.

I know there are "universal remotes" out there that combine all the functions of all the electronic gizmos onto one skateboard-sized device, but I'd never be able to program one. My VCR said the time was "12:00" for years, until my kids got old enough to fix it.

So, I'm stuck with my many remote controls, exercising control over my electronics, but little else, only getting up from the sofa to fetch more snacks. (If they ever design a remote control for the fridge, I'm doomed.)

But my thumbs are in great shape.

Autumn chill

Here's how I know it's time to go on a diet: While putting on my belt, I think, "Ooh, that buckle's cold."

I'm laying off the chocolate, immediately. Winter's coming, and I don't want icicles on my overhang. Brr.

Your job may make you fat

If you sit at a desk much of the day, then you're more likely to end up obese, according to a study from Australia.

Before you dismiss this as more tripe from overseas, consider this: Australians know something about obesity. During the 1990s, there was a 28 percent increase in the number of overweight people Down Under. Now, 58 percent of Aussie men and 42 percent of women are overweight.

Not surprising, perhaps, in a country where the national dish is "beer." But the researchers found the increase alarming, and sounded the same warning bells we've been hearing here in the United States of Unsightly Bulges: Obesity is a risk factor for diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke, cancer and many minor afflictions, such as chafed thighs and Multiple Chin Syndrome.

The study looked at 1,579 working Australians, examining their occupations, physical activity and body mass index, which measures body fat based on height and weight.

Researchers found that the average workers sat for more than three hours per day, with 25 percent of them sitting more than six hours a day.

"Higher total daily sitting time was associated with a 68 percent increase in the odds" of being overweight, the study said.

"Time and productivity lost due to chronic diseases associated with overweight and obesity may make it financially worthwhile for employers to be more proactive in the health of their employees by promoting physical activity at work."

Now that's going too far. It's one thing to warn that sitting at our desks will make us fat, but it's quite another to alert employers to this fact, put a dollars-and-cents value to it, and urge our bosses to make us exercise.

Aren't most jobs hard enough already? Do we really need our workday interrupted by sweaty managers who demand that we lumber to our feet for a session of jumping jacks and jogging in place? Wouldn't this increase the risk of workplace homicides?

Employers "promoting physical activity at work" will need to be sneaky about it. Here are some suggestions:

--Move the snack and coffee machines to the far end of the building, forcing workers to walk more. This may lead to longer coffee breaks and a temporary loss of productivity, but it'll get employees up and moving.

--Ban parking near the workplace for -- wink, wink -- "security reasons."

--Remove the wheels from desk chairs. This will force workers to raise up off their seats whenever they need to move. And the resulting scrawk of scooting chair legs will make them so crazy, they'll want to get up and run away.

--Order regular computer "malfunctions." This will get heart rates up and cause bursts of physical activity such as stomping and hair-pulling.

--Furnish ever narrower chairs so employees will worry they're getting too fat to fit in their seats. This works for the airlines.

--Finally, take a tip from those of us who work at home: Add laundry facilities to the workplace. Every 30 minutes or so, workers must jump up from theirs desks to fold and fluff. Add other household or gardening chores to keep them from spending long periods at their desks.

Sure, people may complain about these measures. They may argue that leaving their desks hampers concentration and lowers productivity.

Managers should simply reply: We're looking out for your health. This is the way things are done now. In Australia.

Facts + food = guilty pleasures

Remember the good old days when the closest thing to consumer information on a food product was "Open Other End?"

Not anymore. Now, all our packaged foods are covered with so much frightening information, it's a wonder we eat them at all. The government-required "Nutrition Facts" labels, such a boon to dieters, have taken all the fun out of noshing.

Maybe that was the whole idea. When an entire nation's bombarded with daily alerts about the Obesity Epidemic, perhaps the powers-that-be thought it would be a good idea to put us off our feed.

Naturally, it hasn't worked. The Nutrition Facts, which seemed so valuable and shocking when we first started reading how much sugar was in a bowl of Froot Loops, have become old hat. I suspect most of us don't even notice the labels anymore, and they wouldn't affect our eating habits if we did.

When you're craving a bowl of ice cream, you won't be stopped by such trivial obstacles as calorie counts or fat content. You'll by golly have a bowl of ice cream, if it kills you (which, over time, it just might).

Even the scariest warnings won't stop us from enjoying ourselves. Generations of cigarette smokers are proof of that.

All the Nutrition Facts (and tobacco warnings) really accomplish is to make consumers feel guilty. If you consistently read the Nutrition Facts on everything you eat, you'll worry over every morsel you consume. Plus, you'll suffer from eyestrain.

As I write this, I have before me a box of raisins, your standard lunchbox fare, about the size of a pack of cigarettes. Could anything be healthier than a box of raisins? Nature's own dried fruit, full of iron and potassium and dietary fiber.

Let's examine the Nutrition Facts, which cover one entire side of the raisin box. Calories: 130 (Ouch.). Calories from Fat: 0 (Good, good.) Total carbohydrate: 31 grams, or 10 percent of the carbs you're supposed to consume in a whole day. Excuse me? That's right, 10 percent. The sugar in these sweet treats make them absolutely forbidden on most diets. Dang.

Sometimes, the Nutrition Facts are amusing because they state the obvious. On the raisins, for instance, the label says, "Ingredients: Raisins." Check any bottled water and you'll find, "Ingredients: Water" and a full Nutrition Facts breakdown, even though all the numbers are zero.

A bag of pretzels in my pantry says "Fat Free" in big letters on the front, but the ingredients on the back include "canola oil," which, the label admits, "adds a trivial amount of fat." You've got to love that. That's what I'm telling my doctor next time he puts me on the scales: "It's OK, Doc, that's just a trivial amount of fat."

In my latest feeble attempt at dieting, I bought some "Fat Free SnackWells Devil's Food Cookie Cakes." Just a little treat to keep me from chewing my fingernails back to the first knuckle.

You'd think anything with the words "cookie" and "cake" right there on the label would be bad for you, no matter how "fat free" they might be. And they probably are. But the Nutrition Facts show that two "cookie cakes" have less sugar/carbohydrates than the healthy box of raisins. Which do you think I'll eat?

If you guessed "both," then you are correct. Because when it comes to nutrition, I want it all.

And that's a fact.

Dieting at your desk

Americans are obsessed with their diets and spend billions every year on how-to-lose books and "lite" foods and various other snake-oil remedies. In an attempt to cut off a slice of that action, we now present the Easy Diet Plan for Home-Office Workers.

Millions of people now work out of their homes, sitting alone at computers all day, while the refrigerator is right there, humming its song of seduction. A diet plan for these workers should be a lucrative hit on the market. Get in on the ground floor!

With our Easy Diet Plan, we reveal the secrets to good nutrition known only to those who work at home. It's all about calories, friends. Consuming 'em and burning 'em. But unlike other so-called diet plans, we don't insist that you count calories all day or worry about every little thing you feel like stuffing into your mouth.

No, with the Easy Diet Plan, we teach you that some foods, depending upon how and where they're eaten, have no calories at all. Our research among at-home workers -- who tend to be a peculiarly gourd-shaped people -- has found they are convinced of this Proven Fact, and their eating habits reflect a superstition bordering on religious fervor.

You probably know the most common tenet of this dieting belief system: Food eaten while standing over the kitchen sink has no calories. This dieting maxim is so widespread there are websites maintained by its followers.

What you learn from our Easy Diet Plan is WHY eating over the sink is preferred by anorexics everywhere. It's the Drip Factor. Crumbs and spills from your messy food drip into the sink, carrying calories with them. Clean-up is a snap, and all those nasty calories are whisked away down the drain. Time for dessert!

Research has found many other such exceptions to biology, and they're all revealed in our Easy Diet Plan.

For instance, did you know that food eaten at your mother's house has no calories? It simply doesn't count! Doesn't that make you want to go visit Mom?

Here's one that especially important for home-office workers: Food eaten at your desk contains no calories. How can this be, you might ask? We don't know. But we firmly believe it to be true.

Coffee, that home-office staple? No calories. Even if you load it up with cream and sugar and that frothy stuff people wear in their mustaches. No calories. Not a one. Coffee is a stimulant, people. It burns up calories. If anything, you should drink more of it. Right now. Go get some. Faster, faster.

Food dropped on the floor? A caloric freebie. Of course, for reasons of food hygiene, you should always follow the Five-Second Rule. If the food's been on the floor more than five seconds, it's probably acquired too many high-calorie dust bunnies to be safely consumed.

Here's another Proven Research Fact: Any food you can eat without benefit of a napkin has no calories. No, really. This is why so many of us home-office workers wear relaxed-fit jeans all day. We wipe our hands on our pants. With blue jeans, you can't even tell. For days.

Food items too drippy or otherwise messy to be eaten at the desk or without a napkin should, of course, be eaten over the sink. It's simple logic, friends.

If you work at home, you can eat light, quick meals (over the sink) several times a day rather than sitting down to the dining table for three hearty, calorie-heavy meals. This so-called "grazing" method is recommended by dietitians and snake-oil salesmen worldwide.

By "grazing," some at-home workers have been known to eat upwards of 15 light, nutritious meals a day! And they don't gain more than twenty, twenty-five pounds per year. Try applying your calorie math to that!

By carefully monitoring your frequent snack-food intake and the geography of your dining habits, you, too, could enjoy the benefits of the Easy Diet Plan for Home-Office Workers.

Sign up today!

How many light bulbs does it take to change clothes?

Sometimes, illumination isn't such a good thing.

I recently changed a light bulb (insert joke here), and it's going to end up costing me money.

That's because the light bulb was in my walk-in closet. When I replaced it, I discovered that the dead bulb dated from before we moved into this house, four years ago.

The previous homeowner had used a dim bulb -- 40 watts, something like that. I installed a new 100-watt bulb and the closet suddenly was filled with bright light.

Here's what I discovered in this newly illuminated space: None of my clothes match. And many of them bear the faint traces of old food stains.

I also found the closet was covered in dust and pocket lint and other litter that had accumulated there in the half-light. Much of this detritus was on my clothes.

How did this occur? Well, for one thing, I've essentially been dressing in the dark for the past four years -- who knew? For another, I work at home, which means my clothes don't get trotted out into the daylight very often.

Those of us who work at home tend to wear the same items over and over. A bathrobe, for instance. A favorite pair of ratty jeans. Ancient T-shirts announcing tours by long-dead rock stars. Sweats. If no one is going to see us all day, what difference does it make? Why not be comfortable?

On occasion, we work-at-home types must go out into the greater world, and this requires decent clothing. Then we have to sort through our closets for shirts and slacks and dress shoes. Preferably, these garments will have no major holes or stains or depictions of beer. But that's not easy to detect in a tight space lit only by a dusty 40-watt bulb.

Now that I've gotten a 100-watt look at my wardrobe, I find I must buy new clothes. This raises a fresh problem -- shopping.

I hate to shop for two reasons. One, I am a guy, and everyone knows guys have a genetic disposition against any kind of mall-trolling. Two, I'm a very large guy and my sizes are hard to find.

A typical clothes-buying excursion for me consists of frantically rifling through folded garments, trying to find something, anything, in size extra-large/tall, or XLT. (Doesn't XLT sounds like a racy car of some sort? Never mind.)

Stores don't carry that size. Oh, they might have a few items, but all the other XLT guys out there -- the ones who buy clothes more than once every five years -- have already snapped them up. As an XLT, I'm too large for your standard rack of clothes and not big enough for the Big-and-Tall men's stores, where you're required to have at least two XX's to even enter the wide door.

Shopping -- for an XLT guy who really wants to wear only rags anyway -- can be a frustrating, time-consuming experience that often results in the ingestion of large quantities of consoling beer.

My wife suggested I shop on-line, but I've had bad experiences there, too. Last winter, I splurged on a sweater on-line because it was on sale for half off. The color I selected was called something like "harvest gold." When the sweater arrived at my house, it turned out to be more like "autumn sneeze." Under fluorescent lights, it becomes "ultraviolet phlegm." It's not a garment I wear much, at least not anywhere that might have electric lights.

Since XLT clothes that aren't in funny colors tend to be expensive, changing that light bulb means I'll have to spend hundreds of dollars on new clothes if I ever expect to go out in public again.

But I've come up with a cheaper plan. I'm buying some 40-watt bulbs. Better to curse the darkness than to go shopping.

In fact, I think I'll put low-wattage bulbs throughout the house. Perhaps, in the resultant gloom, visitors won't be able to see the dust.

Weight loss dross

Americans have never been fatter, and things aren't getting any better now that we spend all our time on the sofa, watching election coverage on CNN and wolfing down comforting Oreos.

As Americans, we know that the way to address a thorny problem such as the inability to button one's jeans is to throw money at it. The American Society of Bariatric Physicians reports that we spent $467 million on prescription weight-loss drugs in 1996, as well as an additional $32 million on over-the-counter drugs and an estimated $1 billion to $2 billion on formal weight-loss programs endorsed by former British royalty and has-been actresses.

(The American Society of Bariatric Physicians, whose 2,200 members specialize in weight-loss treatment, planned to provide more up-to-date figures, but a new all-you-can-eat buffet opened down the street, and the doctors haven't been seen since.)

Dieting is a huge industry in this country, which makes the typical American think: How can I tear off a piece of that big chunk of money?

That's the precise reason I've developed new dieting strategies for our overweight citizens. A sampling of these approaches follows free of charge, but I expect to soon develop special medications, foods and exercise plans that should generate, oh, $1 billion a year.

But first, let's discuss qualifications. You're probably saying to yourself: Who does this guy think he is, giving diet advice? I have a wide range of experience in gaining and losing weight, and I have a wide range of sizes of jeans hanging in my closet to prove it. Lately, I've lost a few pounds. Not enough that people keep saying, "Have you lost weight?" No, my loss is more subtle than that. But my clothes fit better and I can hardly wait to get on the scales in the morning.

So now you're saying to yourself: Wowee, what could be this guy's secret? First, let me admit that I was aided in my weight-loss program by a nagging cold that hung around for three weeks, and which made all food taste like mud. Secondly, I've been getting a lot of exercise, doing household projects such as painting and mowing. This unaccustomed physical activity has, on many days, left me too tired to chew.

Most importantly, I've been fixing all the meals around here lately, and nothing will put you off your feed faster than your own cooking.

Perhaps such approaches will help you shed unwanted pounds. But if they don't work, then you should try one of these special diet plans:

--The Small Plate Diet. If you use smaller plates at mealtime, you'll eat less. Each plateful will hold less, so when you're on your third helping, you've really only eaten enough for two people. Once you've mastered that, you can move to even smaller plates. Pursued to its proper conclusion, this diet eventually will mean you're eating off a coaster.

--The Over-the-Sink Diet. Everyone knows that food eaten while standing over the kitchen sink has no calories. Therefore, you should try eating all your meals there. And you'll dirty up no plates at all.

--The All-Sugar Diet. Dietitians will tell you too much sugar is a bad thing. But overdoses of sugar give you untold amounts of energy. You'll soon find yourself sprinting madly around the house, burning up those empty calories.

--The Cigarette Diet. Every time you feel like eating, smoke a cigarette instead. Sure, this diet will kill you, but you'll leave behind a svelte, young corpse.

--The Salsa Diet. No, not salsa as in dancing. That would be an exercise program, and we all know how Americans feel about exercise. This diet requires the eater to saturate every meal in the hottest salsa available. Skipping meals soon will seem like a more attractive option than sucking on a fire extinguisher for dessert.

--The George Washington Diet. Instead of spending exorbitant amounts on dieting schemes, skip a step and just eat your paper money. Money is full of fiber and special dyes, but it's low in calories. Eat enough one-dollar bills and, not only will you not want other food, but you'll be unable to tell a lie.

And then you can stop lying to yourself about losing weight.

Puffing and panting

Call me Mr. Between-Jeans.

Even those of us who work alone in the privacy of our own homes -- where every day is Casual Friday -- occasionally must go out into the world and buy new clothes.

I ventured to the dreaded mall recently in search of blue jeans. Autumn (the Official Season of Long Pants) had arrived and my only pair of jeans had become so tattered that they could no longer be seen in public.

Of course, they weren't my ONLY pair of jeans. I have a whole closetful. All of us who grew up in the Era of Blue Denim have stockpiles of jeans because we never, ever throw out a pair no matter their state of disrepair or their laughably outdated sizes. But I was down to one pair that fit comfortably.

When one reaches a "certain age," jeans that once molded sleekly to one's body become way too tight in all the wrong places. Squeeze into a pair and within an hour or two, you'll feel like a magician's assistant, being sawn in half. You know you've got a problem when you remove the jeans and you can still tell what brand they were by the stitching and rivet patterns pocked into your skin.

If you're like me, you wear the most comfortable pair over and over until they're as faded as Grandma's housedress. They get that weird fringe at the ankles where you've walked the hems off underfoot. Seams fray and buttons pop and, eventually, you're essentially wearing a long denim loincloth. Not the preferred look for the successful at-home worker.

So it's out into the world to buy new jeans. The selection these days is mind-boggling. Cargos and carpenters and cowboy cuts. "Classic" fits and "relaxed" fits and "loose." Loose sounds pretty enticing, particularly to someone whose favorite garment is a bathrobe, but I try them on only to find that I'm "sagging" in the wrong places. You can only wear the really baggy jeans if your main form of transportation is a skateboard.

I try some "relaxed" jeans and they're okay, seemingly designed for sitting rather than standing, which should suit my lifestyle fine. But the fit isn't quite right.

I don't know what it's like for women, but men's sizes change after one reaches a "certain size." Waist sizes no longer inch along. Once you get past a 34-inch waist (and I think I passed that in college), the sizes jump up in increments of two inches. Naturally, I fall between two sizes. One's buttonable as long as I hold my breath. The next size up feels like they'll fall off. (Probably not much chance of that happening. There's all that "office muscle" below the waist that'll keep them from actually dropping. But they FEEL wrong.)

And they're too long, which seems impossible for a man who's 6-foot-5, who's typically lucky to find anything his size on regular department store racks. But suddenly I don't wear a 36-inch inseam anymore. I wear a 34. Am I shrinking? Did something happen to my legs when I wasn't looking? Are the jeans just riding that much lower these days?

I finally attribute the length problem to the prewashing all jeans undergo these days. In my youth, we always bought jeans a tad long because we knew they'd shrink. Now, they've already shrunk -- supposedly -- and the result is a different size for me. I like that explanation better than the idea that I'm growing shorter with every passing day.

Once I adjust for length, the waist size still feels wrong. So I try the "classic" fits and then different brands and styles, going in and out of the fitting room so often the salespeople start to eye me suspiciously.

Finally, I realize I'm holding the new jeans to too high a standard. I want them to feel just like my ancient, ratty jeans, which have stretched and strained to my body for years. Even with all the pre-washing and size-shifting, jeans still need a "breaking-in" period. So I buy a pair, trusting that they'll eventually feel just right.

But my shopping adventure reminds me that the best uniform for the work-at-home dad remains a bathrobe. One size fits all.