Ten (plus) Tried and True Rules for Losing Weight

Rule 1: Never step on a scale away from home. Buy an old scale for home that will reflect changes of 5-10 lb., but is never accurate on the single lb. scale. Weigh yourself every day. If the scale shows a 1 or 2 lb. change, pass it off as an inaccurate scale. Don't get excited until you see a greater than 5 lb change.

Here's what a good scale looks like--this one is at least 40 years old.

Rule 2: Never buy any food that comes in a box. Cans and glass are OK. So is fresh. Plastic is OK as long as it isn't the plastic liner inside a box.

Rule 3: Infest your cupboards with pantry moths. Write the date of purchase on any baking goods. Don't use them unless they are at least three months old. By that time, they will be fouled with weevils, or weevil husks, and will be so disgusting that you will abandon your plan to make cookies or pies or breads.

Rule 4: Grow a garden and only shop for groceries once a month. When your cupboards are bare, you will be compelled to make dinner with only those things you can get from the garden--if your larder is bare enough, your garden will become your dining room. You may find yourself tempted to use weevilly stuff to complement the garden produce, but the wriggling wormy things in the flour will solve that problem in a nanosecond. (If you are tempted to use your sifter to take the nasties out so you can use the product anyway, remind yourself that eggs and weevil poop will not be strained out by the sifter.)

Rule 5: Before you go grocery shopping, take double your daily dose of Vitamin B on an empty stomach.

Rule 6: Develop gall stones so that when you ingest more than a gram of fat, you become deathly ill. (I haven't tried this yet, but I hear that it works!)

Rule 7: If you eat nuts, don't chew them fully. Fully masticated nuts are fat; partially masticated are fiber.

Rule 7: Eat edamame, only, until you are stuffed two nights in a row at least twice a month--a very effective bowel cleanser.

Rule 8: If you go to bed and realize you are hungry, substitute Gaviscon for a bed time snack.

Rule 9: Get a 3-year-old black lab with separation anxiety--the kind of anxiety that compels him to tear your house apart one piece at at time unless he is exhausted at least once every day. It is cheating to use a method of exercising him that does not require YOU to move at least 1.5 miles to achieve any level of black lab exhaustion.

Rule 10: Wreck your car so you are forced to use the bus. Pick a route that requires you to walk at least 1/2 mile at the start and end of the route--both for your work and the grocery store. Also, the longer transit time will give you less time to grocery shop--this only works if you have convinced yourself (true or not) that the longer you are gone, the greater the chance that the lab will get anxious about your extended absence and will start demolishing the house.

Rule 11: Feed the birds. The seed will cause the spontaneous appearance of mice. Get a cat to keep the mice under control. Make sure the cat obeys its primal urge to butcher anything with fur or feathers that is smaller than a cat. Allocate one room in the basement to the cat for a torture chamber. Only enter the chamber if you have an uncontrollable urge to eat.

Follow these rules, and you can plan on dropping1 pound a week--I guarantee. (It may be that most of the weight loss will be due to increased focus on something besides food. If that's true, I will add more rules as they are revealed to me.)