New Year’s has just passed.   Now imagine your next ten years.   Will you sport an Indie 500 pinup body or a Papa John’s Pizza belly?

I’m a fan of Danica Patrick.   Her abs, that is.   Okay, and her racing.

Papa loves races.   He buys sports cars, tweaking mufflers so they rev with “bite.”  He even took me to the Indie 500 when I was a tot.   As for Danica Patrick, Papa won’t comment on her abs, but he might collect her calendars—the ones with red corvettes, not dung-powered eco cars.

Besides Danica’s abs, I admire her diet—the one she suggests in her fitness book titled Pretty Intense.   Diet like Danica to rev a sleek internal engine.

Unlike Danica, I dined out nightly, snacking like Rosie O’Donnell and Michael Moore on bottomless plate-dates.   My former colleague, a Rosie lookalike, warned me that dining out bulges butts and bellies.   She slipped me lists of superfoods.   Heeding her advice, I sipped carrot juice instead of cola.  I also stocked Kmart sweaters—for men—that fit me twenty pounds both ways.   And crossed my fingers.

Within a year, I got skinny—unhealthy skinny.   I drank sugary teas and nibbles of fats, failing to get fit.   My staples?  Sausage, cheese, cheerios.   Steadily, I grew tired and nauseous.   I felt so sick I couldn’t read.   I couldn’t eat.   I couldn’t keep my eyes open.   Instead, I whimpered while peering into the potty.

My doctor warned, “Change your diet and get fit.”  Everyone respects doctor’s orders, right?  Surprisingly, the doctor’s orders didn’t dullen life.   No.   The doctor thumbed-up playtime: I finessed my fitness routine with twice-a-day training and Brazilian butt cooldowns.   Plus, I plan to rekindle my passion for cycling starting springtime.

And I now devour super-foods.  Breakfasts of bran, banana, and soy taste better than DQ.   Dinners of spinach, yam, and kidney beans—with dabs of hot sauce—taste better than Papa John’s Pizza pie.

Thanks to fitness and raw foods, I halted my hurls and sleep-a-thons.   Oodles of medical tests revealed only healthy organs.   My self-diagnosis?  Prediabetes.  Or chronic fatigue syndrome.   Or, worse, hypochondria.   All reversed.

But back to Danica’s abs.   My two favorite tricks to gaining a Danica bod?  First, download the Cronometer app—to chart calories and nutrients.   Second, download the Fitify apps—to sculpt Danica abs, Brazilian butts, and more.

Oh and third, get a gym membership—renewed every year until you die.

Or better yet, diet like Danica.    Danica Patrick and Stephen Perrins show how to get Danica’s diet in their book titled Pretty Intense:

• Healthy home cooking dwindles flab: “Learn to cook at home.  You can lay the foundation for the body you want in the gym, but no amount of intensity is going to overcome a poor diet” (p.  170).
• Don’t dine out; restaurants make your belly like butter: “Restaurant food all tastes the same because most restaurants use the exact same tricks: fat, salt, and sugar” (p. 170).
• Cooking at home fosters fit abs; dining out fattens guts: “Here’s the difference between cooking at home versus eating out at one of these popular restaurants … [First, homemade] grilled chicken breast with green salad [has] … 465 calories … 9 g fat … 100 mg sodium.   [Second, restaurant-made] boneless buffalo chicken salad [has] … 1020 calories … 72 g fat … 3480 mg sodium” (p.  171).   Eat at home!  If you dine out on chicken salad coupled with a whipped cream latte, then one bit more turns midriffs into muffins.
• Smarten up in the kitchen: instead of dining out, “use cookbooks …. watch cooking shows ….  take cooking classes” (p.  172-173).
• Slather your food with spices—spices tease taste buds, cutting down the need for salt: “Spices improve your health by making real food taste better, but they also have specific benefits of their own … [such as the ability to] cut … sodium use by an average of almost 1000 milligrams a day” (p.  179).

The New Year’s here.   Now hide your salt shakers, stick to home-cooked, and seek out Danica vintage calendars.

Danica’s Christmas calendars won’t sport her in curlers, puffing Player’s Light, whimpering while peering into a potty.   Not unless Papa John’s Pizza sponsors her Christmas campaigns.