Lawpsided Reason #1 to Love Layoffs: The Recession Diet

If you've recently been laid off or fear that you will be next (i.e., you are a young lawyer in a large law firm), then take heart.  There are some plusses to being "downsized," if you will only look at it the right way.  After all, as author Aldous Huxley once said, “Experience is not what happens to you. It is what you do with what happens to you.” Of course, unlike the rest of us, Huxley actually had a real talent to fall back on, but I digress ....

In times like these, it's important to remember that you choose our attitude.  You can either look at your bank account as being almost completely empty or almost completely not full.  The choice is yours.  Likewise, you choose whether to endure lean times or to become lean and mean as a result of them.  This is true both figuratively and literally.

Let's face it.  If you're like most of us, you spent the last few years being fat and happy; once again, both figuratively and literally.  As a result, you probably no longer fit into, say, your wedding dress, tuxedo or maybe even, your first apartment.  The good news is that your weight is about to drop just as fast as your credit score.  The even better news is that it isn't going to take willpower or discipline to whip you into shape.

For example, you've probably been out to dinner with friends and thought, "I really should just have the salad."  However, the fried calamari looked so good.  And you'd heard such good things about the pork tenderloin and garlic mashed potatoes.  And, of course, you had to wash down your meal with a bottle of wine.  Finally, you topped off the outing with the tiramisu (just to balance out the saltiness of the calamari).  And then 7,000 calories later, you could just kick yourself for not ordering the salad; well, assuming that you could lift one of your elephant-like legs off the floor.

Well, this kind of guilt and recrimination is a thing of the past.  From now on, you will be able to stick to your diet.  You won't have any other choice.  The only item on the menu in your price range will be the salad -- the house salad.  And needless to say, wine and dessert will be out the question.  Just think how much your friends will envy your resolve to have just a salad and a glass of tap water.

Of course, a healthy diet is only half of the weight loss picture.  The other half is exercise and here is where being unemployed is worth your weight in gold.  While in the past you might have achieved limited results with pilates or yoga, you're about to be enrolled in the ultimate workout program -- poverty.  After all, with those other plans, you go to the gym what -- two or three times a week?  That's for wimps!  The poverty plan is an everyday all-day workout and trust me, you will feel the burn.

You'll feel it as you run for the bus each morning.  You'll feel it as you lug your clothes to and from the laundry mat.  And you'll feel it in a hundred other ways as you are now forced to do the things that you used to pay people to do for you.  Before long, you will be transformed from a soft and gelatinous mass of humanity into a lean and mean fighting machine (which will come in handy during your morning bus ride).

Just think, you will once again have the body of a 17-year old.  Of course, you will also have the net worth of one, but you can really put a price on youth?  My attorney says that you can't.  However, what does he know?  He got laid off yesterday too.