By Tanya Laing Gahr

Guys, I think my health and fitness plan is trying to kill me.

Last year, on a trip to California, my husband and I decided to go on the kilometre-long zip-line at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park. We were one of the last scheduled flights, as they call the ride, which meant that we had several hours to wait before takeoff. The temperature was approaching nuclear meltdown, so we tried to cool the core by liberally applying ice cream, popsicles and beer. (Did you know you could get beer at the San Diego Zoo? Disneyland may have to forfeit its claim to being the happiest place on earth.)

When it was time to harness up for the ride, the first thing we were made to do was stand on a scale that would help determine, I suppose, the gauge of harness necessary to keep one airborne and the park lawsuit-free for another day.

You know those pivotal moments on which everything turns? Standing on that scale as it flashed numbers to everyone within the general screaming vicinity, numbers that I hadn’t seen since I was approximately 11 months pregnant with my first son, I had an epiphany. That epiphany was that perhaps my suspicion—that malevolent practical jokers were sneaking into my home and painstakingly shrinking my clothes while I was out having dinner—was, in fact, way off base.

I was so upset that I could barely finish my second banana split.

The humiliation was enough to motivate me to do two things when we got home: read all the weight loss-related material I could get my hands on and enrol in CrossFit.

CrossFit, for anyone who doesn’t know, is a system of torture whereby you hand over money to a trainer who will then set you on a program of exercise that is designed, no joke, for active police officers, firefighters and U.S. Navy SEALS.

That’s correct—I am doing the same kind of exercises with the same intensity as the guy who shot Osama bin Laden. Probably. (I mean,probably the same exercises rather than probably bin Laden was shot, because I don’t have nearly enough room to get into conspiracy theories today. Stay tuned.)

One of the goals of CrossFit is to increase strength. This is what I know: I have the most amazingly ripped arms I’ve ever seen. I have ab definition. I make random strangers feel my thigh muscles and demand they be impressed by the rock hardness of them. True story. Also true is that after a workout, I make myself a protein-and-Ibuprofen smoothie. I have to ask for help to lift my hands up to my keyboard. I’ve stood at the top of stairs that my legs absolutely refuse to go down, wondering if I’ll ever see my husband and kids again if my legs don’t start working again.

The most baffling part is how addictive it is. (Though it’s probably because of the random stranger/thigh thing.)

More baffling are the conflicting bits of information on the Interwebs about what foods to eat—and not eat—in order to lose 30 years worth of chocolate chip cookies. My first was mistake was trying to combine all diets—Atkins diet, vegan diet, low-fat diet, high-fat diet, Master Cleanse diet, the Gwyneth Paltrow diet (very GOOPy), starvation diet, deny yourself nothing diet (I might have made that one up), and the carb-heavyFrench Women Don’t Get Fat diet. My daily caloric intake was approximately 13,000. This is, apparently, unsustainable—for both me and for the planet that has to feed me.

Since then, I’ve moved to elimination diets. First wheat, then sugar. After that, it was coffee, then dairy. At this point, I am restricted to eating grass I have grown myself (organic, of course) and as many bowls of steam as I want.

Of course, once you’ve started to give a damn about physical fitness and the stuff your body is trying to digest, then you start worrying about every action/inaction. Let’s take wine, for example. Oh, wine—is there anything* you can’t fix? According to the Internet experts, of which there are many, wine is both the cure for and cause of weight gain. It’s also a marvellous sunscreen guaranteed to prevent skin cancer (assuming you’re sitting in the shade of the barrel, presumably), great/horrible for your heart, social lubricant and destroyer of relationships—and should be restricted to between 0-10 glasses a day.

I’ve decided to apply it liberally. Besides, as I have CrossFit in the morning, I can always justify it as a muscle relaxant.

*Besides alcoholism, dementia, cirrhosis, hepatitis, pink elephantitis, lampshade cranium, excessive drooling, migraines and many more unpleasant conditions.