Slender Reassignment

Hello. Welcome back to the Weekend Gene Pool, which may finally be getting too big for its britches. I mean this personally. I’ve gone four pounds over the weight with which I am comfortable, so have embarked once again on a solution. No, I am not exercising more: I remain devoutly sedentary. (My basic athletic regimen, my default state of exercise, is the ordinary daily walking up and down two flights of stairs in my house. So, no. Instead, I have once again gone on a nutcake and / or pitiless diet.)

This is a new one I learned from Rachel, and it works. It was designed for performers who get a role and must lose some avoirdupois, pronto. It’s basically eliminating all fat and carbs, which is a full-frontal assault on the concept of taste. Only egg whites, no bread or pasta, no fatty meat, no tasty, oily fish like salmon or even raw hamachi, no parts of a chicken except breast meat trimmed to be wanly fatless. No fruit. A single maraschino cherry is forbidden. Only some veggies — the lame-tasting ones, mostly. No butter or cooking oil except a modest spray of PAM. No dairy of any sort. It sucks. It is so nutritionally dramatic that you can only stay on it for two weeks. But it strips the flesh off. So.

As you know, the Weekend Gene Pool is about my giving you challenges, and your responding, and my using your answers as fodder for the Gene Pool next week.

Today’s challenge:

What is the oddest or most regrettable or most desperate thing you’ve done to get your weight to be closer to what you want it to be? How did it go? Weird is good. Funny is better. Both at once are great. If you include your name, make sure to tell me, in the text, if you want your name used.

As always, send it here:

Today’s Gene Pool Gene Poll is a well-worn staple of advice columnists, but we will deal with it in a new context: It will be linked, if obliquely, to the shocking subject of next Tuesday’s poll and to the spirited, vicious debate that will no doubt ensue.

We know that specific facts behind the following scenario may push you one way or the other, but in general:

Please also consider sending in additional observations about this poll for the next Gene Pool. Because it is fud for thought, the same orange button applies:

Adding this based on a reader comment: Yes, if you would confront the cheater and give him or her an ultimatum to confess, or you will go to the spouse … for this poll, that qualifies as informing him/her.

—

Alert: Conversions to “paid” are increasing for The Gene Pool. We don’t know why, other than that some disturbance in the zeitgeist is persuading people that full immersion is indispensable. Are you ready to drown, too?