LAND OF THE FAT
Ads About Weight Loss
How Just Looking at Them Makes Me Gain Weight
I am at a stage of life where I think about things I can do with the last 15 or 20 years of my life. That’s sort of depressing. I should just keep my eye on the ball and do stuff instead of wondering what’s going on up in the bleachers.
One thing I stared at a little longer than usual this morning was an advertisement about having a Gummy Bear before bedtime, and in three days, my pants wouldn’t fit. Shoot, that’s why I wear knit pants with elastic waistbands and muumuus.
First of all, I would never eat just one Gummy Bear unless you’re talking about the calcium ones I put in with my vitamins and meds every morning. Just thinking about a Gummy Bear makes me drool, which, I swear, triggers the little fat cells under my skin to go, “Let’s grow! Let’s double! Let’s Get a Move On!”
I’m sure there is something in that Gummy Bear that must help with weight loss, but the only other kind of Gummy Bears I know about are the ones with CBD in them. Edibles. That’s a dumb word. But then, that’s just my own opinion.
I’m pretty sure they meant your pants would fall down around your ankles if you stood up too quickly. If I ate Gummy Bears before bedtime, my blood sugar would be higher in the morning, and my pants would be tighter.
I didn’t bother clicking on the ad because I knew damn well I was going to be faced with more ads to look at with two lines of copy underneath some guy with a clipboard referring to his copious notes to enforce the idea that what I was reading was the truth and I’d die if I didn’t pay attention.
Hey, I’m going to die anyway, and I didn’t want to spend $125 for some Gummy Bears. If you’ve seen that ad, can you comment and let me know what it was? I just didn’t want to spend the necessary 20 minutes to find out. I had a feeling it was not going to be worth my while. Writing this piece was a better choice.
My friend in the culinary industry said with authority that fat chefs are fat because they are constantly taking tiny samples and tastes of what they are cooking. Some of our most celebrated chefs are overweight, or they used to be. They also smell the dishes to determine whether the seasoning needs to be corrected.
It’s those fumes that will also activate and agitate the fat cells in your body. She said even the fumes that are absorbed through your skin just from being in a kitchen all day would also set those fat cells clamoring and multiplying.
I looked it up on the internet, and it did say that the University of California at Berkeley (read Berzerkly as we so fondly refer to Berkeley) had actually done a study. I’m not going to cite it here because it might not be true, but there were pictures of two rats, one fat and the other skinny, who ate the same diet. The skinny one did not have a sense of smell. How they managed that I do not want to know.
Shoot, what if you were to invent a facemask just for your nose that had a pocket to put some intense-smelling thing, like maybe Vicks VapoRub to mask the smell of the good stuff and help you lose weight? I suppose you could just rub some on your upper lip and dispense with the nose mask altogether. Maybe peppermint? Supposedly, smelling peppermint sharpens your focus and clarity and helps you to lose weight. That would be a good thing for any writer in the world to do.
Next step: I just put some peppermint essential oil in my Amazon cart for just under $10. Google said I could mix it with a carrier oil if I wanted to put it on my skin. I discovered that the Canola Oil we use for cooking can also be used as a carrier oil if I mix the two and apply it to my upper lip. And, if I want to use the peppermint straight up, I can put it on a cotton ball or a Kleenex and set it somewhere nearby on my desk without needing to purchase a diffuser.
I wonder if fat cells get bigger or just create multi-generational fat clans on your thighs? What if they start moving around in your body? “Hey, you! Yeah, you. Wanna go up north and get settled in the left boob? I know a bunch of cells that went up there in the spring. Supposedly, you’ll see more of the world.”
What if they are the same size all their lives and they’re only multiplying and taking up more space, or do they just get bigger like a grain of tapioca or rice? Plump. 125 extra pounds plumper.
Okay, this is weird. Now, I’m hungry too. I wonder if I can get by with a nice glass of water.
Fat cells.