Barf yourself thin

By DARREN HANDSCHUH
It may not be the best diet plan in the world, but I have to admit it does work.
After the excessive eating of the holiday season, there is the typical groan as I step on the scale.
The first groan is from the creaking floor under the scale as I attempt to see just how much more of me there is to love. The next groan is from me when I find out there is a lot more of me to love.
Following a typical holiday weight gain comes more time on the treadmill, more veggies, salads galore and no more sweets as I make an effort to drop the pounds I had gained and bring myself down to an acceptable level of flabbiness.
This year, however, things went a little differently.
I only hit the treadmill twice the first 10 days of the year because I came down with a nasty case of the flu and spent several days doing absolutely nothing.
But thanks to that pesky little flu bug, I managed to lose every pound I gained over the holidays.
I am still as flabby as I was Dec. 1, but I am no more flabby, which is good enough for me, and I missed the whole painful routine of trying to shed the holiday pounds the old-fashioned way.
Instead of sweat, the pounds were dumped through starvation because I was too sick to eat.
It may not be the most enjoyable way to lose weight, but it worked.
I was thinking of marketing it as a revolutionary weight loss program.
“Feeling fat? Haven’t seen your toes in months? Can’t be bothered with all that pesky exercise? Well, have I got a solution for you. For one easy payment of $99.99 you too can get the flu. That’s right folks, you too can barf yourself skinny.”
I could sneeze into an envelope or something and mail it as fast as I can and, voila, a new diet fad is born.
It’s nutty enough to work, problem is, someone has already come up with a similar plan, except weight loss through this method happens at the other end.
It is quite possibly the dumbest weight-loss idea to ever be devised by the human race.
The creators of the now-defunct diet scheme called it the amoeba diet.
That is where you intentionally ingest the parasitic organism and then you let the little blighter do what it does best – which is to provide its host with a case of the screaming poo-poos.
All that running to the bathroom coupled with the massive expulsions from your posterior region is the key to losing weight.
When the desired weight is reached, you take the appropriate medicines and rid yourself of the organism. At least that’s the theory.
I am serious. I saw a news report on the amoeba diet a couple of years ago. At the time, much like now, I thought you have got to be a special kind of stupid to try something like that.
In a quest to get to the ‘bottom’ of the story, I went to the knower of all things worth knowing: Google.
I could not find the amoeba diet specifically, which I found strange. I cannot imagine why such a brilliant plan would fail to catch on, go figure.
But amoeba lovers of the world need not fear, the bug still has some marketable value as a colon cleanser
Perhaps it is the same person, but some guy is now toting the benefits of the single-celled organism as the best, and fastest, way to cleanse your colon.
Thanks, but I think I will stick to eating more salads.
But anyone thinking of utilizing the amoeba to enhance their social well being are warned, there is a deadly fresh-water amoeba lurking in some waterways of the United States. The organism swims up a person’s nose and infects their brains, causing death.
While most politicians would have little to worry about, I think it is best to stay away from all amoebas altogether and spend a little more time on the treadmill.
shoenews@shaw.ca