A few weeks ago, I decided that I was tired of looking like I was carrying around Danny DeVito under my shirt. I was going to lose some weight, and I was going to do it before one more person accused me of shoplifting a cantaloupe.
The question was, How?
I’ve already failed miserably on the annoyingly popular Atkins diet. I did manage to lose a total of eight pounds on the diet, but somehow ended up looking even fatter than when I started. While the scale said yes, my jeans with the 30-inch waist said, “Back off, tubby!” Wait, no, that was my wife. Anyway, I concluded that all eight pounds must have come from my self-esteem. Three months of being silently judged by food service employees will do that to you.
“No bun on your burger?” the confused McDonald’s employees would gasp.
“That’s right,” I’d say.
“No bun at all?”
“Nope.”
“Just the burger, without the bun?”
“Yep ...”
“Supersize the fries and milkshake?”
“Of course.”
“Apple pie?”
“Two, please.”
Of course, as soon as I quit the diet, every restaurant on the planet added Atkins-approved items to its menu. That’s like spending three months in jail, only to discover upon your release that it’s since become completely legal to shave your neighbor’s cat. For example.
It’s possible that the fault is mine that the diet didn’t work. I’ve never been very good at things like “avoiding sweets” or “easing up on the carbs” or “not eating cake for breakfast.” I’m just a man, after all. A man with child-bearing hips.
Dieting just wasn’t doing the trick. I knew that in order to lose weight I would have to do something I’d been meaning to do my entire life. Iron my shirt? No, that’s not it. Stop my hairline from receding? No, but thanks for noticing.
I had to exercise. This wasn’t going to be pretty.
Late at night, after my wife was sound asleep, I raided her closet. Headband? Check. Sweatpants? Check. Dignity? Nowhere to be seen. I was ready to go!
Down the stairs I crept like a spandex bandit and quietly popped my wife’s yoga tape into our VCR. On the screen appeared a perky, unitard-clad woman smiling from cheek to cheek as she slowly started folding herself in half and stuffing herself into her own purse.
“Namaste!” she exclaimed, pretending to just then notice there was a camera in the room. “Welcome to the new you!”
The new me! Yes, today was a new beginning! The world was going to see a brand new Jeff, a slim Jeff, a Jeff who could no longer use his own belly as a TV tray. I plopped myself down on my wife’s yoga mat and waited for the magic to happen.
“OK, we’ll start with some simple warm-up exercises,” the instructor said. “With your legs stretched out before you, bend over and touch your toes.”
So far, so good. I mean, I could only reach my knees, but I could already feel what professionals call “the burn.” I figured I had probably already lost a pound or two. Exercising is fun!
“Now,” said the instructor, “lift your body off the mat with your tongue and do 10 push-ups. Lower yourself back down, do a split, and rotate your head 360 degrees to the left, like this. Good. Now clap your hands in salutation to the sun and remove any excess wax from your ears with your pinky toes.”
That’s when things started going downhill. As it turns out, not only do I have the upper-body strength of a Twix bar, but my sense of balance falls somewhere between that of a drunk toddler and a one-legged cat on a treadmill.
Approximately 30 painful minutes of yoga later, I lay paralyzed on the floor, panting and drooling like a teenage boy at the Super Bowl halftime show. Fortunately, my dogs were there in my time of need to provide a number of helpful services, like trying to perch on my forehead and bury their noses in my most private of places.
The pain I felt where my “abs” were supposed to be was comparable only to, say, shoving a jalapeño pepper up your nose. But I wasn’t discouraged. I could hardly wait to drag myself to a mirror and inspect my new, chiseled physique. My wife would hardly recognize me in the morning. “Don’t be scared, honey,” I’d have to say, “It’s me, your husband.”
“Jeff?” she’d gasp in wide-eyed wonder. “But you look so ... so ...”
“I know,” I’d say with an alluring smile, flexing my enormous quadriceps and then reaching out to steady my swooning bride.
Once I was able to feel my legs again, I brushed the various cats and dogs off of my lap and rushed to the bathroom mirror to admire the fruits of my labor. Imagine my disappointment when all I saw staring back at me was my old body, only redder and puffier after being subjected it to a half-hour of positions that I’m pretty sure are outlawed in several states.
Clearly, exercise was not for me. Like Anna Nicole Smith and literacy, some pairings just aren’t meant to be. For 30 long minutes, I gave my all to exercise, and exercise gave nothing in return. I knew I could never be happy in a one-sided relationship like that.
But at least the night wasn’t going to be a total bust. If I stayed awake for just a few more hours, I could be first in line for fresh Krispy Kremes!
For example, there is my inability to throw out a tissue, because maybe, just maybe, there is a useable inch on it somewhere that might come in handy later.
And there’s my mental blockage that prevents me from putting my clothes into the hamper. Instead, I’ve created a clothing purgatory on the floor where the clothes that are not-quite-dirty but not-exactly-clean have piled up into a monstrous heap that has sprouted arms and legs and I’m pretty sure is responsible for the mysterious disappearance of our cat.
And then there’s my inability to ever (Ever!) remove my socks. (I know what you’re visualizing right now. Stop it.) I can’t help it. I need them. My wife married me, socks and all, and it’s too late now to ask me to change. My socks. (Riotous laughter.)
But I admit that I probably am to blame for the thing that bothers my wife the most. Namely, my irresistable compulsion to make fun of her while she’s doing yoga. I should probably mention that my compulsion also involves lying down on the couch with a bag of potato chips and giving play-by-play color commentary.
“Whoa! You’ll feel that one tomorrow!”
“Those unitards really ride up on you, huh?”
“Wow, that’s not a flattering position!”
“That one should be illegal!”
“Smile for the camera!”
It’s really nothing personal against my wife. I’d pretty much make fun of anyone I caught rolling around on a rubber mat in a Spandex suit in the middle of my living room. Especially if that person was Anna Nicole Smith.
Now, I understand that everyone has his methods of relaxation. What I don’t get is why my wife’s method has to involve a video tape featuring Captain Banana Pants giving yoga instructions in nothing but a pair of immodest purple tights.
“Begin,” says the Captain, “by lifting both legs over your head, like this, and placing your right elbow into your left ear, like this. Good. Now, yank your own head back by the hair and firmly insert a finger into each of your nostrils. Advanced students may opt to insert the entire fist. This position is called Beautiful Flower Drinking Rainwater.
“Now, point two fingers directly at your eyes. Slowly bring your fingers in towards your face. At the last minute, raise your left hand and hold it in front of your nose, thereby blocking your fingers from poking you in the eyes. This is called the Nyuck Nyuck position.
“Lowering yourself to the ground, slowly coil your body into the Cobra position, unhinge your jaw, and swallow your own leg up to the knee cap. And remember, folks – relax! That’s what this is about, after all!”
As the Captain speaks, his students writhe around on the floor, contorting themselves into positions normally reserved for people being eaten by a dinosaur. Meanwhile, my wife is managing to make the whole painful process look easy, gracefully shifting her body from the Spitting Camel into the Surprised Chipmunk with the greatest of ease.
Nobody enjoys my wife’s yoga sessions more than the dog, who always manages to squeeze in a round of his favorite game, King of the Mountain, on my wife’s head. One minute, I’m watching my wife stretch out on the floor. The next thing I know, our little Jack Russel is perched on the back of her head with a look that says, “Look what a good dog I am!”
“Mmmph!” my wife yells.
“What?” I say.
“Mmmmmmph!!!!” she yells.
“I can’t understand you, there’s a dog on your head,” I explain.
And then we laugh. Well, I laugh.
I can usually lure the dog off my wife’s head by waving one of my potato chips around in the air for a few minutes. I’d get off the couch and help, but I don’t want to get my socks dirty.
Another hazard of my wife’s yoga is our cats’ drive-by rubbings. The cats, who have been lying in one spot giving themselves a bath since 1998, decide that now is the time to show how much they love my wife by running up and flopping all over her feet. Which is OK if she’s standing up straight, but a little precarious if she’s in the middle of a One-handed Inverted Moose, for example.
I think the most unsettling thing about her yoga has got to be the breathing exercises, which involve the kind gutteral snorts and phlegmy growls one might expect to hear from a congested grizzly bear. The first time I heard it, I thought an angry rhinocerous had somehow meandered its way into our living room. I ran in from the kitchen with a flyswater and a frying pan, ready for battle, to find my wife in a leotard with her leg wrapped around her neck three times, a cat stuck to her shin, and our dog perched on her forehead.
Who said that yoga wasn’t a spectator sport?
