Fit, strong and well as possible

On Thanksgiving Eve, I made a rare guest appearance at a popular shopping mall looking for a warm long-sleeve shirt which I never bought.

I also wasted time meandering the mall’s vibrant “retailscape” dotted with shoppers out and about doing both real and window shopping.  Eventually, I found my way to a Barns & Noble bookstore, a place that used to be my “public library”.

“Wow” I privately thought upon learning it was still there, bursting at its seams with books galore and a modest count of shoppers inside.  I guess people still buy real books but I can’t imagine all the books there will eventually find a home with a buying reader.  

“Where do these books go when nobody buys them?” I thought to myself.

Quickly walking down aisle after aisle surveying my window shopping choices, I eventually found my way to diet books.  I was curious about the current flavors of this subject.  What I found was a selection so vast that I wouldn’t know where to begin if buying a diet book was my goal.

Many of these books had an attractive, smiling and young woman on the cover with titles likely to get the attention of females. There’s a reason for this, I thought, because women probably buy more diet books than men. 

Several of the diet books targeting men had titles and book cover images catering to our unique “macho-syncrasies” and some promoted a Paleolithic (Paleo) diet which is so popular nowadays. 

This diet is also called the caveman diet, Stone Age diet and hunter-gatherer diet with its "meat-centric" message appealing to our manly testosterone-laced steak and bacon hunger appetites.

Later, in trying to confirm my hypothesis that women buy more diet books than men, I was unable finding an American statistic supporting it but discovered women buy two-thirds of diet books sold in Great Britain.

I learned men and women diet and lose weight differently with men preferring diets offering a simple message such as “eat this and avoid that.”  Women, on the other hand, want to know more about the ins and outs of nutrition science.

I also learned men tend to lose weight more quickly and find it easier sticking to a diet than women.  They prefer looking at their journey as “getting in shape” while women are more likely to share they are dieting.

Male pride doesn’t allow us men to freely make an announcement to the world that we are on a diet.  That’s a tad too submissive for us. 

All this diet stuff overwhelms me so buying a diet book isn't on my buying short list this Christmas season.   I’ll stick to my own way of doing it which focuses not so much on what I eat but when and how much I eat. 

When I’m on task, I eat little as possible yet enough fueling me to be as fit, strong and well as possible.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum