The Unemployment Diet

As I have mentioned previously, while I struggle in the Seamus Heaney bog that is un/underemployment, I have lost weight.  I have stuck to a very particular formula that requires: 

*Longterm un/underemployment and the psychological challenges that go along with it

*Half marathon training

*Appropriate running gear

 Here’s the formula: 

1.     Sign up for a long race, preferably over 10KM, while you are still gainfully employed.  If you are especially optimistic about your future ability to obtain employment, sign up for a race in another country.  Hell, choose one with an unfavorable exchange rate, like nearly anywhere in Western Europe.  

2.     Become unemployed. Move across the country to a city that is walking friendly.  Make sure to save $1.70 in bus fare by walking ¾ of a mile to the grocery store with your LL Bean Backpack and several reusable grocery bags.  Load up on 10-20 pounds of groceries and walk home. 

3.     Get a program from your amazingly generous college coach, who has been designing programs for you gratis even ten years out of undergrad.  Follow this program as closely as you can and join several running groups to help you along. 

4.     Remain unemployed and become discouraged, stressed and depressed. Lose your appetite. Keep training. Seek out/make tasty things in an attempt to increase your appetite. Eat so that you can train. 

5.     Get a service job that requires 7-9 hours on your feet each shift and little time to eat. Snack on soup or granola when you get the chance.  Eat something ridiculously fatty after you finish your shift. Keep training.

6.     Get strep throat and be unable to tolerate swallowing anything but smoothies and chicken soup. Take off a week as instructed by your doctor. Lose several pounds of muscle.

7.     Get over the strep and rediscover your love of potato salad, especially when you make it with Zatarain's crab boil (Amazing y'all). Keep training. 

I wonder if I can patent this... Can you imagine the infomercial?