Summer is fast approaching and we all know what that means — swimsuit season! For some of us, the mere thought of piling ourselves into a swimsuit sends a shiver of fear down our spines. I happen to be one of those people. I never worried about what my body looked like until I hit about 37 years old; that’s when IT happened. I don’t know if it was the hormone pills I was taking, a natural gaining process due to age, or if someone put a hoodoo curse on me, but something made me start gaining weight. Not only did I gain weight, but I’ve managed to successfully keep it on ever since then. Swimsuit season isn’t anything I look forward to, so I’ve set about coming up with the perfect diet. And I’m pretty sure I’ve found it. Almost.
My new diet plan requires almost no effort and guarantees weight loss. I don’t have to worry about sweating at the gym, either. In fact, I can sit on the couch for the next month and still be ready for swimsuit season. I don’t even have to watch what I eat. I can down all the cheesecake I want and still watch the pounds melt away. So what’s my diet plan? A tapeworm. All I have to do is contract a tapeworm, lose the weight I want, go to the doctor to have the worm removed and then enjoy the hell out of swimsuit season!
Sounds awesome, doesn’t it? Well, like all diets that sound too good to be true, there is a small problem or two. The first issue I ran into with my diet is that I wasn’t sure how one goes about obtaining a tapeworm. I didn’t know if I had to just eat some bad beef, or if I had to go to a third-world country and lick a goat’s ass or maybe step on some freshly squeezed dog poop with my bare feet. Little did I know that there are actually people who sell tapeworms online! Then I discovered that you had to ingest the tapeworm for it to get into your system. Yes it’s gross, but no grosser than licking a goat’s butt. But then I found out that you just had to swallow a capsule. That’s better, right? Who knew there were tapeworm pills to be had?
Of course, then I discovered other potential drawbacks to my diet. For starters, there’s the fact that the FDA has banned the tapeworm capsules, which would mean I’d have to resort to other means to get my little gut worm, and I really don’t have time to go traipsing all over third-world countries hunting down goats. Another drawback is that I’d probably regain the weight after kicking out my little worm friend because I’d still be eating for two. There are also some pretty nasty side effects to hosting a tapeworm. The nastiest one being that a tapeworm infestation can be deadly.
Well, that’s a downer. The bright side is that once I’m dead, my skeleton will be positively svelte! The craziest thing I discovered while researching my tapeworm diet is that while I may be joking about it, there are actually people who use tapeworms as a weight loss method. What is wrong with people? Can’t their doctors recommend something safer, like cutting off a limb to shed some pounds or maybe sewing their mouths shut?
If you’re still being an idiot and thinking about adopting my tapeworm diet, I have to say that I don’t recommend it to anyone who is pregnant, nursing, could become pregnant, males with hair, hairless males, females who have a pulse or anyone who is currently hosting some other type of parasite.
Rachel Birdsell is a freelance writer and artist. You can drop her a line at rabirdsell@gmai.com.
20 Feet to a Bikini Bod
Summer is fast approaching and we all know what that means — swimsuit season! For some of us, the mere thought of piling ourselves into a swimsuit sends a shiver of fear down our spines. I happen to be one of those people. I never worried about what my body looked like until I hit about 37 years old; that’s when IT happened. I don’t know if it was the hormone pills I was taking, a natural gaining process due to age, or if someone put a hoodoo curse on me, but something made me start gaining weight. Not only did I gain weight, but I’ve managed to successfully keep it on ever since then. Swimsuit season isn’t anything I look forward to, so I’ve set about coming up with the perfect diet. And I’m pretty sure I’ve found it. Almost.
My new diet plan requires almost no effort and guarantees weight loss. I don’t have to worry about sweating at the gym, either. In fact, I can sit on the couch for the next month and still be ready for swimsuit season. I don’t even have to watch what I eat. I can down all the cheesecake I want and still watch the pounds melt away. So what’s my diet plan? A tapeworm. All I have to do is contract a tapeworm, lose the weight I want, go to the doctor to have the worm removed and then enjoy the hell out of swimsuit season!
Sounds awesome, doesn’t it? Well, like all diets that sound too good to be true, there is a small problem or two. The first issue I ran into with my diet is that I wasn’t sure how one goes about obtaining a tapeworm. I didn’t know if I had to just eat some bad beef, or if I had to go to a third-world country and lick a goat’s ass or maybe step on some freshly squeezed dog poop with my bare feet. Little did I know that there are actually people who sell tapeworms online! Then I discovered that you had to ingest the tapeworm for it to get into your system. Yes it’s gross, but no grosser than licking a goat’s butt. But then I found out that you just had to swallow a capsule. That’s better, right? Who knew there were tapeworm pills to be had?
Of course, then I discovered other potential drawbacks to my diet. For starters, there’s the fact that the FDA has banned the tapeworm capsules, which would mean I’d have to resort to other means to get my little gut worm, and I really don’t have time to go traipsing all over third-world countries hunting down goats. Another drawback is that I’d probably regain the weight after kicking out my little worm friend because I’d still be eating for two. There are also some pretty nasty side effects to hosting a tapeworm. The nastiest one being that a tapeworm infestation can be deadly.
Well, that’s a downer. The bright side is that once I’m dead, my skeleton will be positively svelte! The craziest thing I discovered while researching my tapeworm diet is that while I may be joking about it, there are actually people who use tapeworms as a weight loss method. What is wrong with people? Can’t their doctors recommend something safer, like cutting off a limb to shed some pounds or maybe sewing their mouths shut?
If you’re still being an idiot and thinking about adopting my tapeworm diet, I have to say that I don’t recommend it to anyone who is pregnant, nursing, could become pregnant, males with hair, hairless males, females who have a pulse or anyone who is currently hosting some other type of parasite.
Rachel Birdsell is a freelance writer and artist. You can drop her a line at rabirdsell@gmai.com.