JOHO is proposing a new fitness theory: Blogging makes you fat ...

"I went to the gym today for the first time in over 18 months. I used to go before my kids got up, but now I blog instead. As a direct result, I've put on decades of blogfat, giving a new meaning to 'blogroll'"

David adds that, as a vegetarian, he can't even resort to the standard issue hipster diet so to the rescue, since I'd been meaning to blog this bit for weeks now since it's invention, maybe this my own untrained and by far the more irresponsible fitness theory may charge in unsolicited to JOHO's aid in all our bulgical battlements.

Introducing ...

The TeledyN 50-50 Diet™

Ok, many people know me as the Eternal Rail, and most look at me and say things like, "Oh sure, like you really look like someone who could lose a few pounds," but be that as it may when I cut with the smokes, whatever mechanisms kicked back and pow, I sank 15 pounds into my midrift faster than a cat under a lawn sprinkler. I wasn't freaked by the mass so much as the rate-of-climb, and thought maybe I should do something.

And the gym, as those who know me well know, is certainly and absolutely out of the question.

Life is too short and fragile not to enjoy it, and the only exercise I'm game to get either involves an electric guitar or a fiddle, or my sweetie and a cosy spot, and occassionally all three. And if they want my beer, they'll have to pry it from my cold fat dead fingers.

So I appealed instead to those subjects I know best, science and mathematics, and thus from the forge of the mind of TeledyN was conceived and born the amazing and revolutionary TeledyN 50-50 Diet™

As with any great science, it needs a firm and believable foundation in factoids, and that affine affront of a foundation lifts factually from my own academica and the 1970's obesity research of one Professor Peter Newman in the psych department of the University of Toronto, mindfully melded to my undergraduated dabbling in the stellar physics of Professor Ernie No-UFO's-Please Seaquist.

So much for credentials, on to the practice because Survival means "putting into practice" and Joho and I, we aren't gettin' any leaner.

the goods

TeledyN delivers the goods and here they are, goods by me, TeledyN, about my theory, my diet theory which is to say a theory by me, scientific and foundationalized, a theory about dieting and this theory is to say that this is what it is, in a nutshell, succinctly put, a dietary theory, by TeledyN:

Whatever you wish to eat, measure out on your plate how ever much you would usually measure out, then put half of it back

That's it. Half for me, half for who ever else is waiting at the table, which could be me, later, next time, whatever, just one handy and portable rule of thumb: Eat 50% and don't eat 50%. 50-50. It's easy.

And be damned if it don't work too.

You can apply it at the pool hall, in the pub, at the pancake breakfast, in the donut shop. No more puppy whining that you can't find what you're supposed to eat, because you can always accept half of whatever it is your fine hosts have graciously offered, only just decline half of it.

Have-a half-a -- there's nothing to it. No fuss, no muss. No special portions, no non-biodegradeable packaging, and no ugly awkward pauses.

"uh ... dear, your ... ah ... partner ... does he eat mongoose?"

He'll have-a half-a 'goose, ma.

Done. Deal. tip tap tup and you see my friends, we can't lose. My 50-50 Diet is rooted in an ancient and unshakably infallible Universal and totally incontrovertably Law of Science that states, more or less on the lessons of less and more, ie that "if the amount of energy leaving a system exceeds the amount of energy entering the system, the system will lose mass."

Shocking and counter-intuitive as this may seem, this bizarre hypothesis was born out by Dr Newman's 30 year old result that, put under careful observation and scrutinous controls in a hospital, even the most hapless failed dieter loses weight.

Bisect, dividiate, halve, cleave, divide.
Repeat as necessary.

Unfortunately, great and landbreaking advance that it is, it seems really unlikely that I can expand this into a dietary best-seller ...

Chapter 17: Theorems for Bisecting the Hotdog ...
Chapter 23: Dividing the Triple Scoop Ice Cream ...

And it is just as inescapably certain there is not the slightest chance of even the least drop of real money to be made in marketing $3 candy bars that are only half what the local smoke shop sells two-for-a-dollar, but all that is simply my bad luck alas, and probably the reason why my mortgage is approaching three months overdue. None-the-less undaunted and unshaken in my resolve to de-fat the world into a slim, sleak, lean and Better Place, I hearby do claim that intellectual property under my usual license and cast this pearl out into the mercy of the blogcourt.

Besides -- I'm maintaining 155 lbs, which is the main aim and objective of the thing, right? And, thanks to the Miracle of Blog Science, now you can do it too. Me and you, 50-50.

Say it with me, now: 50-50 ...

kinda rings a bit, don't it?