Learning to love those love handles - The soup diet

Five years ago, I was living in New York City and in the best shape of my life. Maybe it was all the stairs I was constantly climbing up and down to get to the subway, or the fact that I would follow an intense free-weight workout with a full hour of cardio three times a week. I was 15 pounds lighter than I am now, but I still had issues with my body. Basically, I hated that I didn’t have and couldn’t get six-pack abs. Stupid, I know, but I was convinced the only thing between me and endless nights of coital bliss in the city that doesn’t sleep was my insufficiently sculpted stomach. These days, I’m more likely to find a washboard in the laundry room of my apartment building than I am to develop one in my abdominal region, but I’d still like to lose the weight I’ve put on since I moved out West. So a few months ago, I set out to get in shape for summer.

The key to effective weight loss isn’t complicated, it takes the right combination of strength training, cardio, and nutrition. But I was determined to re-invent the wheel. I wanted to drop the pounds without spending too much time in the weight room and doing as little cardio as possible (my gym doesn’t have TV’s on the treadmills). So I focused on nutrition. My best friend’s parents had recently lost about 30 pounds each by spending a month on something called “the soup diet.” This sounded really promising to me because they’re both in their sixties, so I know they weren’t lifting any weights. I figured with my workout routine and the soup, I could shed 15 pounds in about two weeks and have the bod ready for the beach by Memorial Day.

The soup diet is something hospitals use to get patients to lose weight before surgery. Essentially, it calculates your nutritional needs over a seven-day period and provides your body with just enough of what you need to survive while eliminating everything else. So there are no carbs, no sugars, almost no fats, and no alcohol – though you can stuff yourself on vegetable soup and you get to eat steak on the fifth and sixth days. It works, too. I lost 12 pounds in two weeks and the only cardio I did was walking to and from work.

The only problem was that food is everywhere, especially on TV. I was watching the Food Network constantly (for the commercials as much as the cooking shows) and I discovered there was a particularly cruel hour of the night when I was at my weakest and the fast-food places were all advertising the fact that they’re open late. The 24-hour Jack in the Box on Santa Monica Boulevard gave me nightmares. Jack and his gigantic head would appear to me in my sleep saying, “wouldn’t you love some spicy chicken bites right now, Kenny?” It was horrific.

When the diet ended, I was so happy that I could eat whatever I wanted that I ate whatever I wanted. Soon after, I realized that I’d only lost water weight and started to put it back on. By the 4th of July, the scale was saying the same thing it said before I choked down all that soup and I was back to hating my midsection. Until I randomly spent what my friend Madaket would call a “totally warm & fuzzy” night with a beautiful girl who I’m sure wasn’t attracted to me because of my abs. I know this because I didn’t suck in my stomach while we were spooning and she didn’t run screaming from my apartment.

I used to be in love with a girl who was about five feet tall and 95 pounds who, ironically, thinks she’s out of shape when she gets too far over 100. She used to ask if I thought she needed breast implants. I’d always tell her that she’s a whole person, not a collection of parts, and I loved all of her. I’ve decided I’m not a collection of parts either, so I’ll be okay if I never achieve abdominal nirvana or the hormonally crazed hard-bodied hotties that come with it.

After all, there really are only two body types: Underwear models and everyone else. The only way to get an underwear model’s body is to work out like crazy while removing carbs, oils, fats, and sugars from your diet for the foreseeable future. That’s impossible; I love delicious food that tastes good. As I told a retired NFL lineman (who told me, “I played in my 70’s, I can’t tell the wife I hit 299”), I’d much rather have a piece of cheesecake than a six-pack.