Free Monkeys Wearing Pants by Jon Waldrep Page A

into the all-you-can-eat
Chinese buffet.
    3. I will get offers to be the “before”
picture for the latest diet pill.
    4. The only pants I’ll be able to wear are my
faux sweat pant jeans.
    5. The bungee jumping company will have me
sign a release and sell me life insurance before I jump.
    Will the gremlin that is sneaking into our
house and systematically taking in the waists on all of my pants
please cease and desist? C'mon!
    Holy Crapola...when did I gain all of this
weight? One day you look in the mirror and see a distressing
version of the Michelin Tire Man looking back at you. Where once
you might have been lean and mean, you now find that your gut hangs
over your belt like a deployed airbag and your ass has become an
overfilled waterbed mattress that rolls in and out like the
tide.
    I love those 100-calorie packs of cookies,
crackers and sweets. I think they are a great way to satisfy your
sweet tooth without overdoing it. And the cool thing is that you
can keep track of the calories just by doing some pretty simple
math. Every day, I eat exactly 100 of those bags because I know
that’s only…hang on…carry the 1....100 of those bags is
only…hmmm…wait a minute! OH CRAP!!! CRAP!!!! Seriously? OH
CRAP!!
    Reading food labels will kill you. Everyone
is always freaking out about food labels. Why? Because every few
weeks, the media launches a new blitzkrieg about the newfound
dangers of some food additive or some ingredient that is up to no
good. Saturated fat? That stuff will kill you faster than a gang of
truant East LA teenagers. Cholesterol? Might as well stick a cherry
bomb with a short fuse up your ass. Gluten? I don’t even know what
that is, but I’m guessing it’s better to freebase crystal meth that
has been deep fried in peanut oil. People want to know if they
really need to read all of those labels. They think they should,
but then confess that they have no idea what any of that stuff
really means. They ask hard-hitting questions. What’s a serving
size? How important are things like calories, fiber and sodium? And
what the heck does “natural” mean? OK, here’s my take.
    Food labels are like the fine print on your
mortgage, your pacemaker service contract, that new car warranty or
your prenuptial agreement with Miss Tater Tot 2004…that is to say,
not very important. Manufacturers put stuff in cans, boxes and
Ziploc bags. We open those and eat the stuff. Rinse and repeat.
There’s no rocket science involved unless you are actually eating
freeze-dried space shuttle food. Still not convinced? Really? I’m
pretty sure that ingredient labels are really just filler that’s
used when the manufacturer runs out of pretty pictures. Having said
that, here’s the Cliff Notes version of what the things mentioned
above really mean.
    Serving size: Take whatever the package says
for serving size and throw it out the window. The correct serving
size is however much it takes to fill a medium-sized salad bowl.
There are two exceptions. The first exception is popcorn. For
popcorn, you find and fill an industrial-sized trash bag the size
of a twin mattress. The second exception is tofu. For tofu, you
fill a thimble, eat half, spit that crap out and throw the rest
away.
    Fiber: Varying degrees of fiber in your diet
are like different road construction workers. If you eat a lot of
fiber, you are on the concrete crew, building those solid barrier
walls. If you just eat a little fiber, you’re laying down asphalt,
hot and gooey asphalt. No fiber? You’re the old, gimpy guy that
comes along last with the sputtering garden hose. Also, look at
nature. Beavers eat branches and bark, and they poop out Lincoln
Logs. To get enough fiber, you should probably eat, not read, the
label. You’ll know if you are getting enough fiber. If you’re
pooping out something akin to a three-day-old Jamba Juice that’s
been left in a hot car…not enough fiber. If you’re pooping out an
erector set building with a miniature