Obesity Poem by Herbert Nehrlich

For those of you who are obese,
who never know just when to cease
obsessive and incessant stuffing,
who walk upstairs with lots of huffing,
you may be wondering just why
the doctors and the books all lie.

You've tried the Atkins and the Eades,
have eaten rabbit food and weeds.
Have starved yourself for many days
and jogged and exercised in ways
that should have made you pencil-thin
and planted on your face a grin.
Instead, you ate ten diet cakes
and drank four artificial shakes.

And when you next stepped on the scale
you stared and turned from pink to pale.
You pulled yourself together soon.
(And purchased a much smaller spoon) .
You did consult a dietician
to help you with your fat-loss mission.
She told you that you were a glutton
while staring at your belly button.
Advised to cut the calories
watch your potatoes, even peas.

Drink water and diluted tea
to help the body fat to flee.
But nothing worked and you got fatter,
and soon it had become a matter
of life and death due to the weight,
you were in a precarious state.

One day you floated in a stream
at dusk, bathed in the sun's last beam.
Displacing so much water (thanks
to all your fat) , above the banks.
A gentleman, about to cross
the bridge had stopped, was at a loss
to understand the flooding waters.
He held the hands of his two daughters.

And soon, he spotted down below
the instigator of the show.
He asked her, would she be so kind
to leave the waterway behind.
She did, and in her suit of rubber
he now observed her ample blubber.

'I am a scientist, my girl,
be glad to give your plight a whirl! '
She told him of her years of pain,
that in the end she'd always gain,
that all the experts were no use,
they charged a lot but had no clues.

The learned man explained the science:
'Your body's running in defiance,
you are not feeding what it needs
and lack of nutrients soon leads
to faulty cell metabolism,
it's an internal nihilism.

Your body needs foods of tradition,
it's programmed for the days of fishing
and hunting, daily, true wild game,
today the world is not the same.
But all the cells must be well-fed
if not they sicken, soon be dead.

So throw your diet foods away
and start your healthy life today.

Fresh cream and butter, pastured eggs,
fat meat and liver, emu legs.
What God has made, it is for you,
so skip the cola chemist's brew.
Eat foods as close to its true source
and always eat a second course.

It's only man-made, processed fare,
those items wrapped in glitt'ring flair
that steal the nutrients from you
(they feed them better at the zoo) .
Obesity', the man did add,
'is nothing but a silly fad.'
He stood and smiled and then they crossed.
She sat in awe, no longer lost.