Mel and I had another one of our interesting conversations last night. In this new family practice venture, he's being asked to put some people on diets, and he's working on a plan of action. I think I've been on every diet known to woman in all my years of fighting weight. Mel has never been on a diet in his life unless I put him on one--in fact, he rarely eats unless I feed him, because with our food issues, he can't trust anyone else not to poison him, and he does not cook. No, wait, I think he cooked two eggs five years ago, and I nearly fainted.

But who is it who gets asked to help with diets? The Mighty Doctor.

"I don't want to prescribe diet pills," he said.

"Honey, some people need help curbing their appetite."

"The drugs for that can be too dangerous. Remember that fen-fen fiasco a few years ago?  People got heart damage from that."

"Then maybe you can give diet plans that will help curb appetites. The Paleo diet works well for that, though it's a little drastic for most people, going off all those carbs."

"I haven't read up on that."

I suppressed a grimace. Of course he hadn't read up on that. He never read about dieting. I DID. "I was on it, you know. I even had you on it, remember?"

"I'm convinced diet isn't the answer."

"Oh, yeah? So you're saying something else will help people lose weight?"

"Cyanide."

I sat back and studied him closely. He'd been doing some strange things lately--putting a toner cartridge in backwards, checking the Monday appointment schedule to see if he had patients, when the clinic isn't even open on Mondays--but I didn't think he'd totally lost it. Until now.

He caught me staring. "Think about it, the way cyanide kills is by shutting down every aerobic function of the body. It kills in seconds. That's how aerobic our bodies are. A person can walk for miles and not rev up her metabolism for the long haul. However, when you throw in anaerobic exercise, your body has to hustle to keep up. It's very hard, but I think that's the answer for increasing the metabolism. Short bursts of hard exercise that gets you sweating."

"So diet is just an afterthought?"

"Both together, I think, is the answer."

"Wow. Diet and exercise. Who'd'a thunk? Cool, Honey. I might just try that."

He nodded, pleased with the decision. "Yeah, I think that's the answer."

Labels: diets, humor