Thirteen Meals A Day To Lose Weight? Don't Tell Shecky 

Got an e-mail recently about a weight-loss plan that requires you to eat every 13 minutes and thought, "At last! A diet plan that follows my eating habits!"

Then I read the fine print. Drat. I had visions of heading to the fridge every 13 minutes for another chicken leg or bite of cold pizza. Or maybe a popsicle. I like popsicles. Or at least one those miniature Hershey bars, preferably a Krackle.

But no. This diet calls for healthy food, and not much of it at that.

In addition to your three approved (another way of saying small, low calorie and boring) meals a day, you’re supposed to eat something every 13 minutes, or 30 times a day – “something” being defined as a piece of raw vegetable or lean protein, about the size of the tip of your pinkie.

Let me repeat that: Every 13 minutes, you eat a morsel the about half the size of a lima bean.

In other words, over the course of the day you will eat a total of one carrot and half a slice of cold turkey – one teeny bite at a time. Whoop-ti-doo.

The idea, I guess, is to keep that ol’ metabolism cranked up and running on high by giving it little digestive chores to do all day long. I don’t know about you, but my metabolism tends not to react well to this sort of procedure. My metabolism is a trained professional, and after a lifetime of processing three (or more) great honking meals a day, it would consider a nibble every 13 minutes to be busy work.

Or not. Actually, my metabolism has gone haywire these last few years as my thyroid has become derelict in its duty, bless its little malfunctioning self. I kind of doubt eating a bite of carrot every quarter-hour-minus-two-minutes is going to make a whole lot of difference.

It’s also not going to make much of a dent in the carrot supply.

OK, so this is probably not the weight loss program for me.

Actually, I’ve only known one diet to work – the Dr. Shecky Diet, named for my former physician (now retired), the world’s funniest (he thinks) family practitioner. It was so simple even I could understand it:

1.      Don’t eat anything with a label on it.

2.      Eat lean meats and not too many of those.

3.      Get up and move your fat behind.

See? Not tricky at all. Well, except for Number 3. And the fact that Shecky forgot to say anything about cupcakes, which tend to be unlabeled. I guess he assumed I was adult enough to understand they don’t belong on a diet. That was his mistake. While he was looking for a slimmer, healthier Mike, the old model Mike was looking for loopholes.

(Don’t worry. He found out and closed them with what we might call a slightly blistering doctor-patient conversation. )

So I guess the message is clear, to me anyway. Instead of working all day to nibble away at a carrot, it’s time for me to get back on the Shecky diet and call the personal trainer. It won’t be easy, but Mom always said nothing good ever comes from taking the easy way out. Not that living on three small meals and a carrot per day is easy, but you haven’t met my personal trainer. Speaking of getting blistered. Wish me luck.

© 2008 Mike Redmond. All Rights Reserved.