I did it! I made it to the star!

40 minutes up, 35 minutes down. An hour spent in the top, smoking a cigar, drinking diet green tea and, may the Flying Spaghetti Monster help me, writing actual poetry. No one warns you about these ugly side effects of getting in shape. Pros: longer life expectancy, more choices in ill-advised bathing costumes. Cons: poetry.

Oh, don’t worry. I destroyed the evidence. I’m not that far gone. Should have just smoked two cigars. Would have been a better use of my time.

Although, having written that, I can predict some of the comments I’m going to get, both from local readers and slightly less local well-meaning relations; “If you’re getting so healthy, why don’t you stop smoking? It’s sooooo much better for you...and while you’re at it, you can lay off the drinking too...and tuck in your shirt while you’re at it!”

I may have editorialized that a bit, but it does give me an opportunity to address a secret menace of the casual fitness enthusiast (and I’m not, believe it or not, talking about poetry here); sanctimony.

Yes, there is no more sure deterrent to weight loss than the sanctimony of others. I have it on scientific authority that it’s a greater pubic health crisis than foie gras, bacon double cheeseburgers, and all-day Battlestar Galactica season marathons COMBINED. Because, unlike those things, you fall prey to the dread depredations of sanctimony whether or not you keep to your fitness regimen. Allow me to demonstrate:

Me, scenario 1: I broke my diet twice this week and ate hot wings, plus I only got to the gym once. (Translation: What I did last week). Hence, I lost no weight.

Sanctimony: Oh, gosh, THAT’S OKAY. I mean, I know how hard it can be, keeping to those pesky diets...well, actually, no I don’t, being as I’m a lacto-ovo-vegan who survives on a nutritious cud comprised of legumes, wheatgrass, and my own sense of self-satisfaction.

Me, scenario 2: I did really well! I went to the gym 4 times, plus I invented a really good dessert with 90 calorie rice pudding and dried cherries! (Translation: me the week before).

Sanctimony: Well, that’s just so special, but...dried cherries? Really? I mean, you DO know that the caloric content in a dried cherry is enough to save a Rwandan voting district from malnutrition, right? Oh well, guess you’ll just have to work EXTRA HARD to lose that cherry, won’t you?

The permutations just go on and on. You can’t talk about your moderate exercise; they work out harder. You talk about the insane workout you did three days ago; they do it every week. You try South Beach; they’ve been doing Atkins. Etc. etc. And, oddly, you can never, ever claim that you are trying to lose weight because you want to look skinnier. According to sanctimony, that is indefensibly shallow and cosmetic; the only acceptable reason to diet and exercise is to avoid the inevitable death by dry-land lung pressure asphyxiation that will surely befall all their portly acquaintances by age 50.

These are the sort of people who invite their extended family over for Thanksgiving and serve low-fat carob pumpkin bars. They are the sort of people who WRITE FITNESS COLUMNS IN LOCAL PAPERS. They must be stopped.

Fortunately, I am nothing, nothing, if not shamelessly hypocritical, and I have used my firsthand knowledge of sanctimony to develop responses to it.

1. The Lebowski Gambit. No matter how unassailable their criticism is, claim it’s merely a matter of opinion. When feasible, invoke ‘doctors.’ Bonus points of you can highlight a heretofore-unrecognized health benefit of whatever it is you’re doing.

“You know, you really shouldn’t eat an entire cheese pizza in one sitting. And wash it down with a gallon of chocolate milk.”

“Actually, doctors are divided on whether or not pizza promotes weight loss. And chocolate milk is a better source of riboflavin than pears. But you know, I can understand if it doesn’t work for you...”

2. Cleopatra’s Defense. This strategy revolves around grapes. Grapes are the Johnny Depp of the food world. Everybody loves grapes. They’re cheap and ubiquitous, they still seem a little luxurious, and they actually have a lot of good nutrition in them. However, sanctimonious people have a tortured relationship with grapes. They love them, but they can’t eat them without thinking of the fact that grapes have an incredibly high sugar content for their weight (hence their being so good at making wine and raisins). Yet, because they’re fresh fruit, they’re not so obviously unhealthy that the sanctimonious person can call you on eating them. The entirety of Cleopatra’s Defense, therefore, is to buy some really fat delicious-looking grapes and eat them in front of the sanctimonious person until it breaks their spirit.

3. The Band Camp Stratagem, also called Alyson Hannigan’s Law. Central to the delusion of the sanctimonious person is the inverse relationship between how boring their life looks, and how rewarding it really is. Sure, they might be unable to lay on their stomachs without suffering internal bleeding in the hip region, but come the inevitable day when Lance Armstrong knocks on their door and says, “You up for a four-day game of touch football?” by God they’ll be ready. This is the same sort of your-reward-will-be-great-in-heaven thinking that gets the Holy Land redecorated every few months, and it can be cured with a judicious application of FUN. Take the sanctimonious person out and make them actually have a good time; it’s pretty much guaranteed by the fifth Jack and Diet they’ll be too busy dancing repressed boogies to care what you do. A couple shots of tequila later and they’ll probably be offering to buy the group an Extreme Chipotle Nacho Deluxe.

Of course, there are some things you should never, ever do in response to a sanctimonious person:

1. Get mad. Unfortunately, since at least the 1950s there has been a curious cultural mental disease in America that says it’s all right to be rude to people if you’re doing it for their own good. This, of course, is what allows perfect strangers to come up to you and tell you that cigarette you’re smoking is going to retard their as-yet-unconceived child, spill catsup on your 50 year old Salvation Army fur coat, or use their RA key to break into your dorm room at 8:30 on a Sunday morning because they think you have a bong. (It was a flower vase. With flowers in it. And yes, this really happened to me in college). Because this rudeness is covered with a chocolate candy shell of concern for your well-being, getting angry merely proves that you’re in denial and probably need some kind of televised intervention where you cry and admit dad always wanted a boy. So if you get mad at someone telling you how to eat and what to do on your leisure time, it doesn’t mean you’re a responsible adult and deserve respect. It means you’re fat. No one in the whole of human history, not even Karen Carpenter, has been thin enough for this logic to not apply. You’re not thin enough either, so don’t bother.

2. Make up a fake name for your fat. This includes anything that has ever been co-opted by the Women’s Insecurity Brigade, and is not limited to: Curvy, chunky, zaftig, Botticellian, plus-sized, pleasantly plump, ‘a real woman,’ or God help me a BBW (Big Beautiful Woman). This is an acronym for being fat which includes a W, people. There are sea mammals that start with that letter. Use a little common sense. At the moment, squishy is still okay (it’s not been on the View yet anyway), as are round, apocalypse-proof, and callipygian, mostly because no one can spell it well enough to mock it on internet.

But honestly, why not just reclaim ‘fat?’ We could call it the Randal Graves Maneuver. As far as terms go, it’s not that bad. One of the many adjectives which describes your physique shares its name with a nutrient necessary for health. It’s a quality cherished in babies, desired in desserts, lauded in snow tires and wallets, and comes as a result of doing some very fun things. It comes, in the end, of loving life.

I love life, too much sometimes. I always want MORE. I can’t start a hobby without having delusions of international expertise. I learn voraciously, I believe in the decency of humanity, I think the world is an awesome place and I can’t walk down the street without falling in love, twice. And if I wear some of that intensity on my frame, fine. It’s not the end of the world, really. I mean, what would you rather me be? Sanctimonious?

Please.