Weight Loss Icon: John Warner

Today I have the distinct pleasure of inaugurating Sen. John Warner (R-Va.) into the chamber of Weight Loss Icons. While I was somewhat hesitant to praise a Republican politician again, it would be unpatriotic for me to filibuster Warner's nomination. The senior senator from Virginia's contributions to the spirit of weight loss are enough to allow for temporary bipartisanship. I must say that as Warner is eighty years old, his icon status has a somwhat Kennedy Center Honors-esque "praise 'em now 'cause they're about to die" feel to it.

Some of you may be wondering what put Warner on the ballot. He was never particularly fat, nor did he ever lose any weight to speak of. What John Warner did do was far more unique. "The following Inside-the-Beltway" tale shows just how dedicated and cunning Warner is when it comes to weight loss.

Around 1980, John's then-wife, Elizabeth Taylor (yes, that Elizabeth Taylor), was trying to lose weight. Elizabeth was unsatisfied with the progress of her diet, as she had only lost fourteen pounds. While others might have been appeased by that amount, Elizabeth was savvy enough to realize that any number that left her above 105 was nothing to smile about.

With a pout on her face, Elizabeth accompanied her husband to a grocery store near their Georgetown home one afternoon. Soon after they entered, John handed his wife a turkey, and disappeared with the cart, employing his conservative powers of stealth. With the turkey still in her arms, Elizabeth ran around the store searching for her husban Elizabeth was in in hysterics, crying as she looked for her husband, struggling to carry the heavy bird.

After a few minutes of this the senator emerged from the maze of the supermarket, and found his wife in tears, still holding the turkey.

"How could you leave me with this turkey?" wailed Elizabeth. "It's so heavy!"

"Oh, really?" said Warner, with a knowing smile. "It's only fourteen pounds."

Then, realizing that the fourteen pounds she had lost was more than she had thought, Elizabeth smiled.

This story beautifully illustrates what makes John Warner such a role model. In tricking Elizabeth into carrying the turkey, not only did he calm his whiny wife, he also gave her a wonderful weight-training workout. While his gesture could have appeared selfless, it benefited him in a number of ways. Not only did it make his marriage more pleasant, it also slimmed his wife and saved him money on her clothing (most textiles are sold by the yard). Warner harnessed the duplicitousness that has kept him in the senate for 28 years, and used it in the even higher calling of weight loss. Warner's deed had a masterfully hidden agenda, like a piece of legislation that hides a pay raise for congressmen on the end of a bill banning Neo-Nazis from teaching in public schools.

Those of you thinking that Elizabeth could have done it on her own are mistaken. Once her marriage to Warner ended after six years (making it the longest of her seven marriages), Taylor's weight ballooned again. This regression shows just how instrumental Warner's coaching

For his mentorship and deceitfulness, I am proud to confer the award of Weight Loss Icon upon John Warner. His marriage to Elizabeth may not have lasted, but his legacy as a Weight Loss Icon is certain to last forever.

Weight Loss Icon: Nicole Richie

I chose this week's Weight Loss Icon, primarily, in an effort to clear up some of the confusion caused by the always well-intentioned (if somewhat careless) paparazzi. There have been some horrible mistruths uttered with regard to this week's Icon, Nicole Richie. These lies are likely the result of envy, the second worst deadly sin (distantly trailing gluttony). Here is the truth about this truly iconic woman:

After having spent 5 seasons on The Simple Life with the far skinnier Paris Hilton(left), Nicole has shown that thinness can be contagious with prolonged exposure. She is no longer the fat girl in overalls, but rather the pleasantly skeletal girl who the press can't get enough of. All the manual labor she was forced to do by Fox on The Simple Life whipped her into shape, and she appreciated the diet so much that she decided to continue with it even after she and Paris refused to be in the same room.

Tabloid headlines had lauded Nicole for her new figure, saying things like "Nicole is a Skinny Bitch." Apparently even those who seemingly don't like her can't deny the fruits of her labor. Unfortunately, the lovefest with the media isn't lasting.

Photos of Nicole have recently popped up which show her wielding a fairly large belly. The media has misdiagnosed this as "pregnancy," a scathing label that suggests that the delightfully skinny Nicole is being forced to eat for two.

Since I know Nicole would never let that happen to her body, there is only one possible explanation for her recent inflation: kwashiorkor. This condition, which is most commonly associated with children in famine-ridden African countries, is the result of excessive dieting. Nicole's "pregnancy" is simply the result of being a little too much of a go-getter when it comes to dieting. It's merely an overexertion injury, like carpal tunnel or tennis elbow. The photographs may also merely be photoshopped, as I can't fathom that a person as in control of her physique as Nicole would ever drink non-diet soda.

Now that that silly misunderstanding has been cleared up, I hope that we can all go back to being awed by Nicole's beautiful transformation, instead of wondering who the father of her hollow stomach is.

Frequency Change

As previously alluded to, my posting likely won't be as consistant in this go-round as it was previously. Days will be skipped, but hopefully not too many Weight Loss Icons or Diet Spotlights.

This week will be especially light, as most of my writing energies will be devoted to a blog I'm doing from the Legg Mason Tennis Classic, which you can find at my new site, Washington Tennis .

Once the tournament wraps up, I hope to increase the frequency at which I post on this frequency.

It isn't all bad for my dear readers. The tournament is played in incredibly hot and humid weather, so I'll be sweating quite a lot. There is also no reasonably priced food, so I won't be eating anything. Hopefully I'll be able to lob a few pounds off my frame.

The sweating has made a difference already. I weighed in at 185.4, which, while not below par, is certainly a step in the right direction.

Day 204: 185.4

Diet Spotlight: The Drinking Man's Diet

"Did you ever hear of a diet which was fun to follow?

A diet which would let you have two martinis before lunch, and a thick steak generously spread with Sauce Béarnaise, so that you could make your sale in a relaxed atmosphere and go back to the office without worrying about having gained so much as an ounce?

A diet which allows you to take out your favorite girl for a dinner of squab and broccoli with hollandaise sauce and Chateau Lafitte, to be followed by an evening of rapture and champagne?"

So begins a wonderful pamphlet I stumbled upon not long ago, entitled "The Drinking Man's Diet." The diet is easily summarized as a restriction to no more than sixty grams of carbohydrates (or "carbos" as the pamphlet calls them) per day. As most non-malted alcoholic beverages contain little to no carbohydrates, alcohol is not restricted from the plan. Put another way, the Drinking Man's Diet is the Atkins Diet with a three-drink minimum.

The tiny pamphlet (only a dozen or so pages of text) was first published in 1964, and has sold over two million copies in thirteen languages. The author of The Drinking Man's Diet is Gardner Jameson, who, still quite the lush at age 90, is described as a "jaunty San Francisco bon vivant," which, more than likely, is a very prolonged way of saying that Mr. Jameson is gay as sin.

The suggestions Jameson makes in his pamphlet suggests that his intended reader spends nearly as much on food and drink as most people spend on their mortgages. As he puts it, "most of the things you like best don't have to be counted at all: steak and whisky, chicken and gin, ham, caviar, paté de fois gras, rum and roast pheasant, veal cutlets and vodka, frog's legs and lobster claws." Maybe it's me, but I don't find it particularly enticing for a diet to be bragging about allowing for the consumption of amphibians.

Despite my attitudes toward Kermit consumption, the diet was a huge success in the mid-Sixties. Comedian Allan Sherman even wrote a song about the diet, which included these lyrics:

With every Manhattan
Your stomach will flatten
If pounds you would burn off
Then turn on your Smirnoff.

The diet is clearly the saving grace of all those beer-bellied individuals who want to keep the booze but lo The pamphlet is adorned with blurbs of the previously blubbered, who have all drank the Kool-Aid for this diet, chasing it with their cocktail of choice. Geoff D. says that "the only drinks [he] missed are the ones [he] spilled." "Single working mom" loves that the diet allows her to keep chugging her "two 6:00 p.m. tension-breaking martinis."

A friend of mine (who I'll refer to as "Drunk Girl") has her own adaptation of the Drinking Man's Diet. Drunk Girl has a different way of incorporating alcohol into her weight loss regimen. At parties where she is consuming alcohol, Drunk Girl ducks into the bathroom to throw up. She isn't throwing up because of the alcohol--she is throwing up because of good ol'-fashioned bulimia. Alcohol is the perfect decoy for Drunk Girl's bulimia; instead of her peers thinking that she has an eating disorder, they think that she's just a girl who likes to have a good time. Instead of saying "[Drunk Girl] needs to get help for her problem," they say "We should invite [Drunk Girl] to our next party! And then she should get help for her problem." As the social acceptability of alcoholism far exceeds the social acceptability of bulimia, Drunk Girl's strategy is indisputably a brilliant one.

Some would say that, like the fine wines it espouses, the Drinking Man's Diet has gotten better with age in the forty-three years since it debuted. If you decide that you want to uncork this vintage method, bottoms up to you. Just please remember to find a designated fat person, as dieting and driving can be a serious offense.

The Remission Statement

Hello again, beloved reader! After wandering in the desert for 100 days, I have returned, eager to share some of the wisdom I have gained during my hiatus. I have new icons to idolize, new diets to prescribe, and more of the same other stuff. There may even be a new feature or two. The sky’s the limit.

What is limited is time. I probably won’t be able to post with the same frequency as I did previously, which will make my work less plenteous, although less diluted. I am not entirely certain how exactly these cutbacks will materialize, although I’m fairly certain that days with special features (Monday—Weight Loss Icon; Thursday—Diet Spotlight) will no longer have daily logs, unless something super duper noteworthy happens.

Now that all the housekeeping notes are taken care of, you’re probably wondering “What did Benjamin do on his summer vacation?” The answers to that question are, sadly, not very interesting.

To make a short story shorter, I didn’t do a whole lot, especially when it came to my efforts to lose a Benjamin. Outside of the occasional game of croquet or ping-pong, I didn’t ever exercise to speak of. I didn’t watch what I ate, rather shoving whatever was placed before me down my gullet without a thought as to how much more blubberous each calorie was making me. I avoided weighing myself for fear of lowering morale.

Getting back on the scale today, I was saddened, but not surprised, to see a horribly porky weight of 187 glaring at me. In the time since my last official weigh-in 100 days ago, I’ve gained 5.5 pounds. Having been as low as 180, it’s a pity to see myself back under a Jackson in total lost pounds. It’s as if tapestry I had weaved with arachnid-like skill has disintegrated to threads (or at least 28% of the tapestry). I could blame someone else for this catastrophe (Sanjaya comes to mind immediately), but pointing the finger at another would leave three chubby little fingers pointing back at me.

But enough moping. I have to rededicate myself to losing this godforsaken Benjamin. This valley I’m in may make the mountain I have to climb even larger, but the larger the mountain, the more calories I’ll burn climbing it.

How will I do it? While I could try one of the suggestions I made so long ago, I’m going to rely on sheer willpower for a while. If I get into a thin mindset, I trust I will be able to get into thin clothing. Best of all, merely thinking about becoming thinner doesn’t require me to get out of this recliner. Which is awesome, because I’m pretty comfortable at the moment.

Day 200: 187

Benjamin On, Benjamin Off

Today is the long-anticipated Benjaminth day of my endeavor. Whether or not this anniversary is something to be celebrated is debatable. I would have liked to have lost a Benjamin by now, but I suppose that weighing 181.5 on Day 100 is far better than weighing 205 on Day 1. I’m not trying to be glass-76.5%-full, rather glass-23.5%-empty, as a 100%-empty glass is my ultimate goal.

As this is as much of a red-letter day as I’m going to get anytime soon (Day 105 notwithstanding), I figure this is a good time to take a break. I will return in a Benjamin (Wednesday, July 25), to give my loyal readership more of the quality prose they have come to demand. The Daily Logs, the Weight Loss Icons, and the Diet Spotlights will be back, and there may even be some new stuff.

Without my postings to occupy its time, the world will certainly find other things to do. America will vote Sanjaya the winner of American Idol; Rosie O’Donnell will eat Elisabeth Hasselbeck; ESPN will spend 21 hours per day making erroneous NFL draft predictions and overhyping Brady Quinn; and, if we’re lucky, Paris Hilton will be given a life sentence for crimes against humanity.

See y’all in a Benjamin.

Day 100: 181.5

Weight Loss Icon: Missy Elliott

This week I have the pleasure of awarding the title of “Weight Loss Icon” to Missy Elliott. Her weight loss accomplishments made her a unanimous choice to be inducted into the pantheon of weight loss greats.

Before her illustrious, industrious rap career had even began, Missy lost control. She gained exorbitant amounts of weight, relegating her to wearing velour sweatsuits on red carpets. She was to become the female Fat Joe or Big Pun of the rap industry, although less successful, as society has the good sense to use tough love against overweight women by encouraging them to fit acceptable body types before allowing them to become successful. If this system were used on men as well, we’d see a lot more thin men. Or, at the very least, more fat ones who were unsuccessful.

Thankfully, Missy “Misdemeanor” had the good sense to improve upon her felonious weight, improving her sales and critical acclaim in the process. Quicker than a one-minute man, Missy lost 70 pounds, using a diet that mandated several glasses of watah per day.

As she learned how to pass on that Dutch Apple Pie, Missy’s popularity was flipped and reversed. Folks gossiped about her new and very improved look, then bought her albums. NARAS soon followed suit, giving Missy Grammys.

Yet for all her weight loss, Missy never stopped wearing those velvety tracksuits. They still are a fixture of her wardrobe, often framing a loose t-shirt airbrushed with the image of the recently deceased, such as Aaliyah, Lisa “Left-Eye” Lopes, and perhaps even Gerald Ford. Her look was seen as “unique” enough to make her a spokesmodel for The Gap alongside Madonna, both of whom were chosen for the company for their “unique styles”. Because when someone wants to look different from everybody else, they go to The Gap.

Despite her questionable endorsements, Missy is clearly an exemplary representative of weight loss greatness. She is indubitably a heavyweight force in the dieting arenas, and for that she will go down in history.

Carrot No's

As you may have gathered from my ambitious decision to lose 100 pounds, I am someone who is willing to take on a challenge. That’s why today, April 15th, I decided to take on something far more taxing than a W-2.

It was a bowl of grated carrots. While that mountain may seem like a molehill to many, I find carrots completely disgusting, almost the same way others feel about pickles. I decided to challenge myself with a bowlful of carrots, in an effort to rid myself of my disdain and to take advantage of the carrot’s reported negative calorie power.

So what’s so bad about carrots?

• Eating too many of them turns people orange. I’ve never heard of any other food which has the ability to hijack a person’s body, which shows their scary potency. It would be sort of cool if other foods made people change colors, like Skittles or something, but with carrots it’s just creepy.
• I once heard someone refer to carrots as “nature’s Cheetos,” and I don’t like Cheetos either. Cheetos get all over the eater's hands are 50% styrofoam
• Carrots grow underground, likely in Hell. I don’t understand how it was decided that they should be eaten, given the lack of appeal subterranean foodstuffs have to me. I suppose I should be grateful that other erroneous designations of edibility haven’t been assigned to dinosaur remains or worms.
• Carrots are a filler food. They are used in dishes in which they shouldn’t be included just because they’re cheap and colorful. This is especially irksome in more ethnic foods, such as Thai and Greek, because carrots are not a part of native Thai or Greek cuisine. I think my disdain for the carrot first escalated when it dominated this Greek Pita thing I used to order from Wendy’s, who I had previously held to a high standard of maintaining cultural authenticity with its ingredients.
• They have a gross porousness that makes them sort of like a petrified watermelon, except not as sweet and not as fun to spit.
• They grow surrounded by dirt, and are often insufficiently washed. It's said that humans eat pounds of dirt every year, and I'm sure most of that comes from carrots.
• As a red-haired person (not all of my head is red so I don't say “redhead”), I find the term “carrot top” wholly dumb. While I don’t think my hair color dictates my personality as other red-haired people say, I do have to deal with people who consider it my only feature of note. I can’t tell you how many people upon meeting me have asked if they could call me “Red” or something, feel very clever, and then never call me “Red” again. Inasmuch, I resent the term “carrot top,” as I do not want to be associated with the disgusting vegetable. The term “carrot top” is also very misleading, as the tops of carrots are green.
• Carrots are the only vegetable ever introduced into the dessert arena. I cannot stand when people try to pass off carrot cake as a dessert. When I went to birthday parties as a kid and was served carrot cake, I should have had the good sense to take back my gift and demand extra goody bags due to pain and suffering.

Masochistically, I finished the bowl of carrots, complaining all the while and likely annoying the Vitamin A out of my tablemates. It wasn’t worth it at all, as the carrot eating only yielded a net weight loss of a half-pound, putting me at 182. While I do want to lose weight and all, some things just aren’t worth it.

Day 99: 182

The Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How

While becoming acquainted with this blogosphere over which I reign, I noticed a common trait of many blogs. They are topped by a header article or blurb which explains the purpose of the blog and the identity of its author to the reader. I thought I would do one of these too, as I pride myself on being nothing if not susceptible to peer pressure. There’s no better time for an introduction than ninety-seven days in, after all.

So here are the answers to some basic questions you may be wondering about this scripture known as “Losing a Benjamin.”

Who a Benjamin?
I, Ben, am the author of this zero-calorie chicken soup for the soul. I am a student at the University of Michigan from Washington, DC.

What a Benjamin?
A Benjamin equals 100. As Sean Combs/Sean John/Puff Daddy/Puffy/P. Diddy/Diddy could tell you, it is all about the Benjamins, baby.

Where a Benjamin?
The Benjamin is being lost wherever I roam. The losing of the Benjamin is tracked using one scale at a University of Michigan gym. All weights measurements taken on other scales are undermined with asterisks. There will be a new official scale some time around the beginning of May, when I go back home.

When a Benjamin?
The Benjamin started losing itself on January 7, 2007. This was denoted as “Day 1,” although some would argue that it should have been called “Day 0,” because on “Day 5” I had only been trying to lose a Benjamin for 4 days, and so on in n-1 fashion. This discrepancy reminds me of the contention over whether the new millennium started on January 1, 2000 or January 1, 2001, which was one of the more useless distinctions over which mankind has ever gotten worked up. I still remember that on January 1, 2001, a local news team in Washington covered a crowd of about six people commemorating the beginning of a new millennium outside the atomic clock display at the Naval Observatory. It looked like a shindig with all the raucousness of a PTA meeting, with an even higher proportion of math teachers. Today is “Day 97,” and I am sad to say that the end (105 poundage) is not in sight.

Why a Benjamin?
A Benjamin is a nice round number. 100 is also a wonderfully convenient number for converting things to percentages. A Benjamin pounds lower than my original weight of 205 was going to put me at 105, which seemed like a challenging, yet reachable goal.

How a Benjamin?
I have not yet come up with one solid method for losing weight. I’ve been ellipticalling frequently, which I do without shame even though it’s a girl machine. I’ve also been known to run at odd hours and to throw up.

That should answer any questions any of you may have. If any more linger, do not hesitate to comment or to send an email to losingabenjamin@yahoo.com . But since I’ve already covered the five W’s and the H, I can’t imagine that any uncertainty remains.

Today I (who) weighed in at 182.5 (what) on my usual scale (where) at around 10:30 PM (when). I did so because I weigh myself every day (why), and I stayed at 182.5 by not changing my weight any from yesterday’s identical amount (how).

Day 97: 182.5