Don't Think I'll Try It ...

A couple of days ago I was paging through Cleveland magazine, something I do once a month when it comes. It's one of those subscriptions I maintain for purely sentimental reasons. I remember the infancy of Cleveland--and I still appreciate (and am baffled by) Cleveland's decision to name me one of its "Most Interesting People" for 1995. (It must have been a very lean year on the North Coast.) (Here's a link to an earlier post about that experience.)

Most of the magazine is quite irrelevant to the Me of 2014. I don't go to night spots (except my own bed); I'll not be buying a million-dollar home in the southeastern suburbs; I'm not going to benefit from beauty products; I'm not going to dine in a classy restaurant (I'm too tired); I'm not going to buy matched sets of furniture that would not even fit in the wee rooms of our century home.

But this month a full-page ad on page 35 stopped me ... cold. In the upper left quadrant is a picture of someone (a woman, I think--a little hard to tell) squeezing a chunk of flesh at her side--a "love handle." Just above her hand, these words: If you can squeeze it, we can freeze it. A little lower in the picture: Freeze your fat away. It was an ad for SPA West and a trademarked process called VenusFreeze--Freeze Time Reverse Aging.

Now I've written here before about my perpetual struggles with weight control, struggles that began in, oh, about 1965 (I was 21) and have persisted until ... today. There is a gene in the Dyer material whose instructions are very basic: Make this person fat. A Dyer family reunion, always fun, is also an occasion to figure out who that person over there is: It sort of looks  like Uncle No-Name--but a much heavier version of him--like an inflatable-doll version of him.

Over the years I've tried about every diet there is. I've eaten nothing but meat; I've been a Scarsdale boy; I've cut my calories to 900/day; I've eaten mounds of grapefruit; I've eaten like a Neanderthal. About the only diet I haven't tried is the new "wheat-belly" thing: I make sourdough bread every week, and I would rather be fat and/or dead than give it up. (No doubt I'll soon be both.)

I've also not tried surgical or pharmaceutical remedies. Well ... not surgical. I did eat lots of that unfortunately named diet candy--Ayds; I did drink my breakfast for a while--Slim-Fast. But I never took pills. I have standards!

And now I see I can freeze my fat. I just now hopped on the website for coolsculpting via VenusFreeze (just a thought--would Venus/Aphrodite have frozen her fat? or would she have had to employ Iceman? or the breath of Superman? or consulted a Norse god?), and here's a link to it. There are some photos on the site, and I found some others on Google--see below. I'm guessing the tattoo is not part of the procedure--at least I hope not. That looks like one place I do not want needles and ink and the eyes of Another.

I've sojourned enough in Dietland to know that, for me, all results are temporary. The only sure way--for me--to lose weight is cruelly simple: exercise, no seconds, no desserts, no snacks; keep daily calories close to 1000. But the second I reach my ideal weight (which I've not done since, oh, the mid-1990s) and begin to eat "normally" again, the pounds return from their vacation and move right back in. I can almost see sneers on their faces, hear their sardonic words: I see you didn't really want me to go, did you?

And soon--my self-respect having plummeted to its nadir (I seem to find a New Nadir each time)--I'm back on my routine of self-denial. I'm pretty sure I'm not going to go for VenusFreeze, though. It sounds too much like a sexy ice-cream cone (too many fats and calories). And, of course,  overriding question remains: Is it cool to freeze your fat?