Warning: Diet and Exercise May be Hazardous to Your Health (3)

I sense no one else is going to speak; since I have the floor, let’s explore what may happen if you do everything right. Someone should have warned me years ago about the risks of healthy living.

Let's say you quit smoking, which makes you a nervous wreck of course. You used to have a nice hobby, smoking, which helped you to relax. (I stopped smoking over the 4th of July weekend of 1988; it was three days of headaches and dizzy spells. It was so hard to quit I’ve never been temped to take it up again.)

So you replace that habit with eating everything in the kitchen when you go home at night. You will soon be dragging around an extra twenty pounds if you work it right. Then you may the have related problem of high blood pressure, which is not helped by the gallon of coffee you drink daily, or those salty snacks you inhale straight from the bag.

In time—it only took me two years--you may lose the weight you gained, and then where will you be? If you are of a certain age, losing weight makes you look--brace yourself--older. Your skin is looser; all the better to highlight those lovely wrinkles your flab used to conceal.

I seriously considered putting on a tie again, after not wearing one for twenty-five years, to hide my ugly neck wrinkles. So losing weight isn't a panacea either, for you could find yourself looking like a geezer.

And what about exercise-- that supposed cure-all for every ailment including flab? Let’s say you ride a stationary bike for several years before learning it’s not the best thing for guys as it interferes with, shall we say, their waterworks?

Not that I’m speaking from personal experience of course, but I do think exercise bikes should have a warning label: "Guys do you value your waterworks? Think twice before jumping on this equipment”.

Had I known how much fun the “diet and exercise combo” was going to be I would have first gone out on a bender. Well, not out except to the kitchen to wolf down every salty thing I could have found. Next I would have topped that off with a gallon of ice cream eaten straight from the box while standing up over the kitchen sink.

Am I addicted to junk food? No, I can quit any time. Actually my wife has to hide all the snacks before we go to bed. She claims I get up and eat in my sleep. She also says I wake her up banging the kitchen cabinet doors at night in my search of the edible. Sometimes all I find are doggie treats—not bad, really, if you’re asleep, that is.

After a bender my wife will ask me the next morning: “Did you have a snack attack in the kitchen last night?” I’m always given away by the trail of cookies crumbs. Not a pretty picture, but it beats the heck out of one taken recently which highlighted my scrawny chicken-like, old neck.

Here’s the sorry truth: no one said healthy living was pretty.