I Will Teach You To Be Rich (2009)

I Will Teach You To Be Rich (2009)

WOULD YOU RATHER BE SEXY OR RICH?

I’ve always wondered why so many people get fat after college. I’m not talking about people with medical disorders, but regular people who were slim in college and vowed that they would “never, ever” get fat. Five years later, they look like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man after a Thanksgiving feast, featuring a blue whale for dessert.

Weight gain doesn’t happen overnight. If it did, it would be easy for us to see it coming—and to take steps to avoid it. Ounce by ounce, it creeps up on us as we’re driving to work and then sitting behind a computer for eight to ten hours a day. It happens when we move into the real world from a college campus populated by bicyclists, runners, and varsity athletes who once inspired us to keep fit (or guilted us into it). When we did the walk of shame back at school, at least we were getting exercise. But try talking about post-college weight loss with your friends and see if they ever say one of these things:

“Avoid carbs!”
“Don’t eat before you go to bed, because fat doesn’t burn efficiently when you’re sleeping.” “If you eat mostly protein, you can lose lots of weight quickly.”
“Eating grapefruit in the morning speeds up your metabolism.”

I always laugh when I hear these things. Maybe they’re correct, or maybe they’re not, but that’s not really the point.
The point is that we love to debate minutiae.
When it comes to weight loss, 99.99 percent of us need to know only two things: Eat less and exercise more. Only elite athletes need to do more. But

instead of accepting these simple truths and acting on them, we discuss trans fats, diet pills, and Atkins versus South Beach.