Tell Stories, Get Fit: A Guide for Six Packs, Thigh Gaps, and Shoulder Caps

I tend to look at everything as a story to be told. It’s the gift and curse of being a writer, depending on who and when you ask. 

If you ask my wife, it’s a gift when I write her notes that reflect on our courtship and engagement. But it’s a curse when I recount on Facebook her knack for committing egregious social blunders, like the time she talked at a ten-year-old boy on Halloween for a good three houses worth of trick-or-treating before being tipped off by the boy’s deaf father that the boy was also deaf. To which my wife replied—after a long uncomfortable pause—“Awesome!” 

When you see everything as a story, you develop a strong sense for what makes a good story and what’s compromising a bad one. The shortest distance between a good story and a bad story is the raising of stakes. If a Newport Beach lawyer gets disbarred and fired, nobody really gives a shit. But if he gets disbarred and fired just as his daughter’s recent lip fillers become infected and they’re out of medical insurance, people will lean in to see how far sideways the story’s gonna go. Will she lose her lips and blame her father? Will her father take her across the border for new lips on a budget? Will an ex-con who was cleared by her father launch a Go Fund Me for a new set of lips? Ah, the suspense is lip-smacking deliciousness. 

There’s a lesson here. The elements of storytelling can solve problems in profound ways. The problem I’ve heard too much about is weight loss. Nearly everyone I’ve ever met has tried to lose weight or get fit, and most of their stories are tragedies. But they’re not particularly good tragedies, usually because the stakes are too low. If a guy doesn’t get his shoulder caps, then he wears t-shirts instead of tank tops. If a woman doesn’t get her thigh gap, then she orders a pair of Spanx a size smaller than what’s comfortable. 

Who cares? There’s nothing real at stake. By contrast, consider MacBeth. He wants to be king of Scotland, and at the suggestive prophecy of a trio of witches, he takes action in pursuit of that goal, putting his everlasting soul on the line—not to mention the soul of his wife, his moral integrity, and the stability of the entire damn country. 

So if you want to lose weight or get in shape, you should set the stakes high.

Witchcraft is optional, but following the steps below will properly adjust the stakes to optimize your health and fitness goals:

1. Go home and strip down to your junkyard. If you want, keep your socks on. If you’re a man, sock garters are also acceptable. But nothing else. 

2. Remove any makeup and don’t bother shaving. We’re after realism, folks. We want scruff on the chins and a five o’clock shadow on the ham hocks.

3. Make sure the lighting is harsh. Stand beneath the sort of light a mechanic might hang from the hood of a Honda Civic while changing the air filter.  

4. Set up a low-angled camera. We want the lens to see the nooks, crannies, folds, and crevices that escape you in the mirror or, ya know, in real life.

   

5. Begin posing. I suggest advanced yoga flows. It doesn’t matter if advanced yoga is beyond your current ability. In fact, it’s preferable. Lean into bodily awkwardness that borders on traumatic injury. The goal is for you to capture the opposite of elegance. Really make a run at exposing the anatomical wasteland you’ve made of your body. I write these words without judgment and in solidarity. 

6. Once you’ve got your ideal “before” picture, attach it to an email and send it to a friend you trust. I’m happy to be that friend for any ambitious people out there who want to change their lives. In the email, detail your goal: to shed forty pounds, to fit into your wedding tux, to deadlift your ex-boyfriend’s car and drag it into the L.A. River, and so on. 

Finally, we arrive at the stakes.

If you have failed to meet your goal by a specific time and day, instruct your friend to open your attached photo and do one or all of the following:

• Print the photo and scribble the following across the top: ‘Lost: Dignity and Self-respect.’ Make thousands of copies, and staple them to every telephone pole within a twenty-mile radius of your home.

• Use the photo to start an Only Fans account and apply any subscription fees collected to the inevitable cascade of therapy invoices you’re sure to rack up.

• Send the photo to the ASB president of your high school to be used for the next reunion invitation.

• Post your photo across all social media platforms using the following hashtag: #AllKindsofFunny.

Now that the stakes are raised, you can decide what kind of story you’re telling, hopefully an underdog triumph instead of a tragicomedy. If you ever find yourself short on motivation or tempted by a box of Thin Mints, revisit your picture and think about your high school English teacher seeing it, or maybe your pastor, or the girl who crushed on you, the one you never gave the time of day—imagine she sees it and thinks, “Ooh wee! Dodged a bucket of regret with that one!” This will likely trigger anxiety, maybe even tremors, and I’m no trainer, but tremors probably burn calories.     

Before I close, let me get out in front of any incoming self-righteousness. This is not about body shaming. If you’re happy with your body—skinny, fat, swole, diabetic, or otherwise—god bless. You are my brother, you are my sister. I have no interest in people feeling bad about themselves (unless they’re pharmaceutical lobbyists, in which case I hope they have Freudian nightmares about their parents running amok in a brothel run by clowns). I do, however, have interest in people telling—and living—great stories. So if it’s not an underdog triumph, make it a coming-of-age tale about self-acceptance. Own your skin and bones, own your fat and muscle, your gray hair, those love handles, that crooked smile, or that third nipple… Turn it into a conversation piece and tell me all about it. 

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