Dear Steve,

I am writing to profess my love.  No, not in a carnal way, you are nice looking and all, but are not my type.  I am also happily married, or as happily married as any 40-ish mother of two small children can be.  This also isn’t one of those Mac vs. PC things.  I must apologize in advance when I tell you that apart from the fact that my MacBook has no right click and the key to the universe is not CTRL-ALT-DELETE, I do not have the foggiest idea about the difference between the two.  As long as the screen comes on and my documents are where I left them, I am happy.

No, I love you because you invented the iPhone.  And not because I talk on my cell very much, or listen to music, watch videos, or play games (although I do admit that light saber applet is way cool!).  I love you because the iPhone is helping me lose weight, and before you even ask the question, yes, for every 40-ish mother of two it all boils down to the muffin top.

With a few swipes and taps I can track calories, exercise, and chart my progress (oh yes, there has been progress!).  Sure, I am the one lugging my ass out of bed three mornings a week to hit the gym, but until you came along my efforts at tracking food consumption usually ended around 10 am.  I have known all along that journaling is one of the keys to weight loss, but those little pieces of paper were so conveniently easy to loose.   Studies (and I am a doctor, so I read the studies) show dieters consume 1,000 more calories a day when they don’t write everything down; it is easy to eyeball incorrectly (sure, that’s only a half a cup of pasta) and “forget” the handful of chocolate kisses.  However, my iPhone not only demands precision, but entering the data is easy, and trust me, I am not going to loose it.

The iPhone has also helped me in ways your probably did not foresee.  Let me give you a backstage pass to the world of the overweight.  We don’t eat because we are hungry, if we actually got hungry we probably wouldn’t be fat.  No, for most of us eating is an interjection.  A thin person views emotions like this: Happy! Sad! Mad! And those of us with muffin tops see this: Happy (donut). Sad (chips). Mad (chocolate).  Pausing to reflect on why you are actually eating is the Holy Grail of weight loss. And Steve, stay with me here, because this where your iPhone really delivers.  To check my calories I have to get past the little black screen, which doubles as a great mirror.  It forces me to look deep into my soul, or at least at that hint of a double chin, and think just a little about what I am doing and why. 

And then, of course, there is the piece-de-resistance, the nifty little camera.  I took a picture of my muffin top on day one and when I really get the urge to stray I whip that baby out for good measure.  It is hard to believe, but it looks worse on the screen.

You have helped me so much I want to let you in on a little business secret; although I think you do pretty well for yourself (I hear you own, like, half of Disney).  The money we mothers drop to keep the little darlings happy with Disney and Pixar toys is nothing compared to what we will pay to lose weight. 

So please keep those wheels-a-turning.  I will check in with an update from time to time.  Here’s to a long relationship!

Warmly,

Jennifer Gunter

Labels: Apple, iPhone, Jennifer Gunter, MacBook, Steve Jobs

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# posted by Writing Mamas Salon @ 12:01 AM