The 8 People Who Will Ruin Your Attempt to Lose Weight

These people aren't doctors and don't even play them on TV, but they still authoritatively dispense advice about how our bodies were made to handle all-meat diets or all-grain diets and outline detailed eating schedules they claim will trick your body and increase your metabolism.

What happens is they read a blog or watched Dr. Oz or a P90X commercial, and are now regurgitating their confused recollection of it as if it were fact. They don't remember half the details, they just remember how excited they were to find out something boring they previously took for granted (eat less and exercise more and you lose weight) was really untrue, and something unexpected and exciting was true in its place! This is, after all, Cracked's secret to success.

Strangely enough, it seems to afflict moms more than any other segment of the population, probably because women are more interested in health news, and moms are more interested than any other population group in giving advice and meddling in people's lives (their kids' lives, specifically).

If you can't tune these people out, it can really take the wind out of your sails when you're starting out on a simple diet and exercise regimen and don't see much progress at first (which is normal), and start to doubt if you're on the right track. With people spouting specialized theories at you about how weight loss "really" works, and why what you're doing is never going to work, it's pretty easy to just stop going to the gym the first day you feel tired.

Everybody knows that society is oppressing us with ridiculous standards of body image, especially when it comes to women, and that we all need to do our part to reverse it by making normal-sized people feel confident in themselves and stop them from thinking they are fat.

That's totally correct, but all good things can be taken too far. Some people think that it is always 100 percent wrong to ever admit anyone is fat and have a confused notion that to ever agree with anyone that they are overweight is to become one of society's oppressors. If someone who is actually overweight says, "Oh man do I need to lose some weight," these people's knee-jerk reaction will be, "Oh no! What are you talking about! You're totally fine the way you are!" without even looking at them.

This happens the most when someone is just slightly overweight, like by 25 pounds or so, because that segment of the population -- slightly overweight women -- is the one we think needs the most coddling in terms of self-esteem, the most prone to spiraling into self-hate and anorexia at the slightest provocation. For some people, body image is a very sensitive thing, and a lot of tact is needed, but many people are actually capable of talking about being overweight as a matter-of-fact problem, like if their roof was leaking or their car broke down.

It can be a bit condescending when this kind of handle-with-care attitude comes from people who should know you really well and know you're not a fragile flower who needs any comment about their appearance addressed with gentle euphemisms and patronizing reassurances.

In practice, it's a big pain in the nuts when people exchange meaningful looks when you order a salad for lunch and tell you with misplaced concern that you're just fine and try to pressure you into getting a burger. It might be appropriate concern in the case of an actual anorexic, but not for someone whose doctor has told them they are 30 lbs. overweight and their cholesterol is in the danger zone.

That's why when a "friend" says, "Ha ha, you dipshit, what good is that one stone going to do you?" you want to clock them. And maybe you should, that will burn a good five calories.

Once in a while, spontaneity is great, but too many free spirits, helpful parents and poor planners in your life can add up to four pig-out nights a week, a month of missing kung fu classes and a completely sabotaged diet.

On the other hand, the places that meet your diet plan are places like Subway, and forcing a spouse to eat at Subway with you counts as domestic abuse in many states.

If you cook at home, it's not really practical to make separate dishes for each person, so in reality, you pretty much get to go vegetarian with your spouse or your spouse doesn't go vegetarian. Even if you're just cutting fat, you can't cut the heavy cream out of just your bowl of clam chowder and not the rest of the pot. (Note: If you can think of a way to do this, please let me know.)

It's not completely impossible to switch to a healthy diet without your family taking one for the team and sacrificing some delicious foods from their diet, but being able to do it usually takes some convoluted planning or just black magic.

I'm not saying it's wrong to make fun of people for doing Jazzercise, Tae-bo, Zumba, yoga, powerwalking, soccer, pole dancing fitness or martial arts as an adult, and we as Americans have a duty to come up with humorous quips about our friends' manhood or coolness or funny-looking neon-colored exercise gear, in order to save our declining mainstream sports.

But if your friend is a perennial couch potato who's finally found the motivation to exercise through country line dancing aerobics, after failing to stick with jogging, walking, MMA and any other cool-people-acceptable exercises, you might want to think twice about whether you might be sabotaging his last chance to not die early of heart disease.

Or if, hypothetically, your doughy, physically inept girlfriend takes up kung fu, maybe you shouldn't greet her with, "Oh look, it's Jackie Chan!" and pretend to be scared of her. Because she might unleash a spinning tornado kick at you. And miss, and hurt her back, and then she can't exercise for two weeks. Is that what you want?

Personally, I was making a lot of progress in my weight loss over the past week, ever since that big biohazard emergency. I guess the mandatory quarantine has helped keep out distractions so I could really focus. The weight has literally been falling off of me, like in actual chunks of flesh, which is a little weird, but I guess that makes sense, how else would fat people get thinner?

The only problem is that lately I just keep running into really delicious looking people, just really pink and fleshy, with brains that just melt in your mouth. They have to be like, a million calories. I guess I just need to start avoiding bunkers and fortified buildings entirely, since they're always chock full of tempting, tasty-looking people.

Damn these people, it's their fault I can't go anywhere these days. Well, that and the fact my feet fell off.

For more from Christina, check out 5 Reasons Riding a Bike Is The Most Humiliating Exercise and 5 Weight Loss Tips for Cynical Bastards.

Check out Robert Evans' A Brief History of Vice: How Bad Behavior Built Civilization, a celebration of the brave, drunken pioneers who built our civilization one seemingly bad decision at a time.