When I am King: Operation: Diet

When I am King...

Losing weight will be an easy operation.

I had surgery recently and lost ten pounds in the following week. This is not even including the weight of the appendix that the surgeons removed. So we’ll round it off and call it an even 50 pounds.

All I had to do to lose the weight was sleep peacefully while surgeons gave my insides a manicure with a buzz saw. Then I took some prescription drugs for a few days.

Meanwhile, traditional dieting is difficult. Who wants to eat fiber when there’s ice cream in the fridge? Why wouldn’t you have a beer if all you need to do is open the fridge, see there’s none left, get in the car, drive around to find a store that’s still open, realize they don’t sell beer, drive around some more, finally buy a 6 pack, drive home and open up a bottle? And who in their right mind orders a salad with light dressing at a restaurant that also serves anything else?

But give someone drugs with instructions like, “Do not drink alcohol while taking this drug or YOU WILL DIE” and, “Consumption of dairy products or anything similarly tasty will inhibit the effects of this drug and YOU WILL DIE” and a diet becomes somehow easier and more palatable. Add to that the fact that, for reasons I don’t fully understand and are probably highly complicated and explained by Latin words, you really have no appetite after surgeries like this. Apparently your insides feel rather petulant and sulky after someone has been in there exploring with a camera and a swiss army knife. So even when you find a food that won’t kill you but that you think you can muscle down past your taste buds, you realize that you’re not really hungry after all.

When I am King, diets will become much easier. Instead of depending on complicated and completely undependable factors like motivation and willpower, dieters will have an operation and drug regimen to help enforce the rules. Having problems controlling the sugar intake? Maybe a procedure that messes with your blood-sugar ratio will help. Can’t resist the double-fudge sundaes? Try an operation and antibiotics that prohibit dairy. Too difficult to keep your hand from picking up another bottle of beer? Try amputating the hand.

This approach has the added benefit of immediately removing items from your body, freeing you from the weight they take up immediately. An appendix is small potatoes, but consider what you could lose overnight through removing larger organs, or whole limbs. A hand may not be worth the trouble for its weight, but consider the 10-20 pounds an arm would bring. Or double that for a leg. The head is quite dense and gives great immediate results, although you should consider this option carefully while you still have a brain because you won’t live long enough to enjoy the benefits.

So next time you want to lose weight, consider surgery ... if you have the guts.