My Revolutionary Indulgence Diet

At my age, I shouldn’t worry about how I look. It’s futile and undignified. And yet, I do.

When I’m feeling fat, I tell myself that my weight doesn’t matter. So long as I am fit and healthy, I should be happy. But I don’t like feeling fat. I know that from how I clothe myself at the beach. Above 220, I wear a shirt. Always. From 210 to 220, I will reluctantly take it off and suck in my belly. Below 210, I want to disrobe.

After 20 years of trying and failing at the weight-loss game, I gave up.

But then, several weeks ago, I woke up with an idea.

I had been telling myself that I was too busy to diet. Too stressed to take on more stress. That had been my excuse for indulging in three bad habits that were almost certainly contributing to my struggle with weight: drinking alcohol, eating starch, and smoking cigars.

I didn’t feel the need to eliminate any of them entirely or permanently. But I knew it would be good to cut back. So, here’s what I decided to do: Rather than attempting to cut out or cut down on these three vices, I’d resist only one of them each day. And here’s the genius part: I would give myself permission to completely indulge in the other two.

On no-alcohol days, I can eat starches and smoke. On no-smoke days, I can eat starches and drink. On no-starch days, I can smoke and drink. On my no-alcohol days, for example, I not only give myself permission to eat pasta and smoke cigars, I allow myself to eat myself sick and smoke my tongue off.

In other words, I don’t think about what I can’t do. I relish what I can do.

I realize how mad this sounds. But it seems to be working. In three weeks, I’ve lost 10 pounds, which is the “right” amount of weight loss for someone my size. But what I’m happiest about is how easy this system is to follow. Since the day I started it, I haven’t cheated once. Because I’m focusing on the two bad habits I can indulge in, the giving-up part is easy.

I’ll keep you informed on how it’s going. In the meantime, don’t try this without consulting with your doctor. And perhaps your therapist.

What I Believe: About Wars

Proxy wars don’t work: Since the US military industrial complex was established after WWII, its lobbyists, in collusion with Congress, have kept America in nearly continuous wars (Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan) for 70 years. None of these, we know now, were about defending our borders, let alone defending our principles or anything else. They were proxy wars, which can be put into place without Congressional approval, and the accounting for them can be easily obscured. None of these wars made America any safer. None made her any stronger. All of them, however, were massively expensive – both in terms of dollars and lives.

Neither do ideological wars:  In 1964, President Johnson initiated another kind of war – the ideological war. His was the war against poverty. Since then, we’ve had the war against drugs, the war on terror, and, most recently, the war against COVID. Like military wars, these wars have been costly and ineffective.