The sex-me-up diet

Recent statistics reveal that a significant percentage of Americans are getting very large. These stats have, predictably enough, inspired waves of columnists to tell portly people how to change their lives so they might eventually get slim enough to at least have a chance to experience mind-blowing, chi-draining sex with rippling, muscular, curvy, young humans.

Well, hey, super. Health tips, yeah. Like most columnists, I think mine are a fool-proof path to living so long that by the time you’re 96, you’ll beg for a loved one to poison your iced tea. Of course, I am also the guy who just last week wrote a column about the subtle pleasures of raging bronchitis …

1. Drink buckets of water. Every year, I return from Burning Man with that whole “piss clear” ethic lodged in my head. Why live that philosophy only one week a year, I wonder, as my pee slowly works its way back to a solid yellow groove? The answer is simple: It’s hard work to drink enough water to piss clear all the time. Out on the dang playa, you don’t have to go to work or do chores around the house, so you get plenty of time to drink bottle after bottle of frickin’ water. And the inspiration to hydrate, during daily 101 degree dust storms, is very much there. As a result, it’s the one week of the year that burners are properly hydrated. Which is one more week than people who don’t go to B-Man. Anyway, the point is, to really be hydrated, you gotta work at it. It’s not easy. But if you do it right, you’ll be so sloshed full of water that you’ll find it quite easy to pass up that second stack of pancakes.

2. Chew the food. We Americans wolf our food. Ever notice that? Like when you’re done with that meatloaf dinner in four minutes? And that includes the salad and baked potato and the roll and the bowl of beans on the side? The notion here is, if you take the time to really mash and molarize the food you load into ye olde pye hoal, you’ll eat more slowly, you’ll savor it more, you’ll be more satisfied, and you won’t eat a bear-gagging pile. Plus, if you really molecularize the stuff while it’s in your mouth, you’ll make life real easy for your stomach and your intestines.

3. Avoid little chocolate doughnuts. These are just not right, no matter how much you chew them, and no matter how much water you use to wash ’em down. They’re great for skipping across ponds, like little chocolate rocks. Or for use as little chocolate skeets.

4. Never believe a fast food company when they say their food is good for you. Case in point: KFC. For them to claim that two pieces of their chicken had less fat than a Whopper was accurate, I’m sure. But still … that’s like saying eating a stick of butter is better for you than eating a small bucket of lard.