welcome to the fat farm

When you're alone, driving stakes into the ground in a middle of a 6-acre corn maze, you have a lot of time to think. Possibly too much time to think.

Today as I was sweating under a hot, blazing sun wondering where the rain that we were supposed to be getting was, I came up with what is surely a brilliant idea.

We are on year 5 of the corn maze and for all these years, I have referenced the "corn maze diet". The diet isn't really about food; it's more about exercise, which I get entirely too little of during most of the year.

And then those few weeks before the corn maze come around, and I put in a lot of hours of sweaty physical labor. The year's accumulated weight falls off and I can see my clothes loosening their tight grip.

I know the Corn Maze Diet works because last year, I didn't come home until after the corn maze started, thereby missing those pre-opening weeks that are crucial to the success of the Corn Maze Diet and I didn't lose any weight at all.

This provides - for me anyway - the empirical, scientific evidence that the pre-opening weeks and the physical labor attached to them are the key. The food part of the diet takes care of itself. You're either too tired to eat or your metabolism is working so well from the exertion that you can eat what you want and there's no gain.

So here's where the brilliance comes in. We could run a fat farm for 2-3 weeks every September. If you were looking to lose weight, you come to West Farm and we help you take it off. It might not be pretty and there will be a lot of dirt involved. You'll sweat more than any class at the Y; the hours will be long and arduous; you'll sleep well without the assistence of Tylenol PM (except you might need it to dull the muscle aches); you'll do weight training, resistance training, interval training without even realizing you're doing it; and everything will hurt, be blistered, bleeding, nicked, or cut at some point during those few weeks. BUT your shorts will be loose after just two short weeks.

Best of all? You don't even have to pay for this boot camp. We'll let you come for free.

Is this not brilliant? We get our corn maze prep work done and you (that's a royal you, not a "you" you) get the fat farm for free.

Of course, the drawback is that we (and that's the "we" we and not the royal we) get fatter and lazier and our pants get tighter.

Clearly, I need to spend more time in the corn maze alone....