Week 23: up 2.5 pounds (-21 pounds total) Boo!!!
Hey ya’ll. Happy Monday. I’m alive and mildly healthy, although the voice is still hoarse and the cough still nasty. I pushed myself to be active and social this weekend and was sad to discover I am nowhere near 100%. Ugh! My health, my health, a kingdom for my health!
As you can see, this illness has also thrown me WAYYYYY off track, HMD-wise. I haven’t exercised in weeks, I couldn’t tell you what a vegetable looked like if it hit me in the face, I’ve been through more drive-thrus in the past two weeks than I have all summer and apparently everything now tastes better than a Hot Man feels! Add Halloween to the mix and we have a code blue, people!! Hot Girl down! Hot Girl DOWN!!!!
I am SO one step away from losing a grip on things, I’d best figure my shite out now 
before I get in too deep. Let’s get back to basics, shall we? Let’s get back to Hotness! To start, I must remember this: Nothing tastes as good as a Hot Man feels! So clear, so wise, so TRUE. The epicenter of all things HMD, this saying has been lost in the midst of all my boy drama over the last month. No more! I reclaim you, Hotties of the world! I reclaim you as mine own. Just look at at this pic to the left and tell me it can’t be done. What wonder! What glory! (Don’t recognize this Hot Man? Keep reading, HMD’ers, keep reading!)
Two other basics I’ve lost along the way - exercise and my veggie challenge. The former was the one thing I always had going for me, even when times were rough and snacking was plentiful. Starting today I will get back to my exercise schedule, even if my consumption prevents me from starting at full tilt. Baby steps, people. This one’s about baby steps. The veggie challenge was something I began in July and was quite good at for a few months. It couldn’t be easier, I simply need to eat my damn veggies! And fruit, too, but veggies are the really hard part of this equation. We all know the deal - 3 to 5 servings of vegetables per day. It’s on, people! It’s so on.
Now we get to the less-obvious part. I know that many of you were wondering how I achieved that 5 pound weight loss in one week (see Great Sexpectations). Well, I developed some tricks that I believe were responsible for that big jump down. Let’s put ‘em to the test, eh? The best part - with each trick comes a treat! I’ve got two tricks. I’ve got two Hot Men. For each weight loss tool there is a Hot Manspiration to keep me inspired and on point. This is the very essence of Hot Man Diet. When you are weak, when you are tempted - remember the Hotness and RESIST! The reward is soooooo sweet…see below…remember…resist…reward…
Hot Manspiration/Trick #1: I like to call this one The Weekday Wagon. In an effort to curtail some of my drinking (and all the calories that come with it), I am enforcing the following rule - every Monday through Thursday I am on the wagon
and off the hooch. This one is REALLY hard to implement, but man, is it worth it. Friday, Saturday and Sunday - all bets are off. But during the week I must abstain. My hips will thank me, my liver will thank me, my wallet will thank me, my mother will thank me.
James Denton, will ya help me with this ‘un? You’re just the kind of Hot Man I’ve been going for lately - all tatted and built, with the kind of arms I dream of swinging from. You’re rugged, you work with your hands, you look like you drink milk and you know how to fix shit. Fix me! Work me with your hands! I need it. Cause when I’m wrapped up in those arms and this chest, I can assure you that the LAST thing I’ll be thinking about is a margarita! (And if you know me AT ALL, you know that is some serious stuff I just said right there!) So smile away, James Denton. Smile your cute smile and sit on your cute butt and leave those skinny bitches from Wisteria Lane so Her Hotness can show you why it’s good to have some cushion for the pushing (damn!). You, me and the non-alcoholic refreshment of our choice….ahh, a match made in heaven!
Hot Manspiration/Trick #2: I call this one Carb Free After Three. It is what it says, after three pm I avoid foods that are high in carbohydrates. Obviously, this is my 
own perverted spin on Atkins, but it seems to work. It helps with the veggie challenge, as dinner essentially becomes just meat and vegetables. It also keeps the evening sweet tooth at bay. The one exception to this rule - starchy vegetables. This is my way of eliminating unnecessary breads and sugars, it is pretty easy to follow and it yields good results. I’m in!
HMD’ers, I’d like to introduce you to Rodrigo Santoro. Isn’t he a DELIGHT (both clothed and unclothed above)?! Say hola, everyone. If he looks familiar it is because you’ve all seen him before. He was that ridonkulously good-looking man that Laura Linney obsessed over in Love Actually (and let’s face it - we’ve ALL seen Love Actually). He was also in 300 with HMD fave Gerard Butler, but I think he understands that we were all too pre-occupied with the uber-built Spartans to see much of anything else. Now Rodrigo is on Lost, so we can see him every week in the privacy of our own living rooms! Rodrigo - you are quite a find. Turn around for me, dearest. Excellent. May I touch your arms? Excellent. Speak to me, dearest. Say my name with your Brazilian tongue. Excellent. What? You say your love is carb free? Excellent, dearest. Excellent!
Mother-trucking Craig, get your Hot Arse out here! While 
Men deserve to be Manhandled, whilst the two of you test the limits of that small truck cab, and sure, maybe someone’s leg comes crashing through one of the windows, but won’t it be worth it? Won’t it be worth it for the moments after, when you down two Bud Lights and try to figure out how many stranger’s eyes were subjected to the intimate moments of your Manhandling, and his hair is sweaty and sticking to his brow and yours has grown to five times its normal size (which was big to begin with) in all the heat and your odd positioning means that the car shift is coming perilously close to making an illegal backdoor entry and you wonder how long you can enjoy such uncomfortable post-coital comforting. So then you do it again, you know, because it is more comfortable that way and because who cares what strangers think and because why not, it is Matthew freaking McConaughey!! Yummmm…..
SIN to cover up the sexy British accent…while I am not an avid House watcher, I’m sure I’d check in more often were my favorite accent on full display. It makes a Hot man Hotter, it just does. For proof, see below.) and the 
missing some. The daytime soaps run amok with Hot Men…certainly some of them are neurosurgeons of the 
wens of this world. I can’t help it, I’m a Shakespeare geek with a Jane Austen complex and a Merchant Ivory fetish. I’ve got a soft spot for period pieces, BBC comedies and Bond, James Bond. I spent a summer studying in Oxford and, apart from a rather disastrous 
the house…I guess I was unemployed at the time, otherwise how the hell did I pull that one off ?). Ewan has been on my Mandar since Trainspotting, when he was the hottest heroin addict this side of 
Ahh, Hugh Grant. You want some brown sugar? Come here, cause I got just what you want. I’m a hot cup of silky chocolate. I’m a steaming mug of cafe au lait. I’m the caramel to take care of your sweet tooth, baby, ’cause when the rest of the world was pissed about your 
isn’t having the smoothest foray into fatherhood, so I thought it only fair to give him an HMD moment that was independent of his baby mamma drama. (Also, I think this Stetson ad illustrates EVERYTHING I’ve been saying here about men who drink milk.) Another Hot Man who fits this bill to a perfectly snug tee is Jeffrey Dean Morgan. If you don’t recognize the name, I’m sure you’ll recognize the face from Grey’s Anatomy (back when it was good). Yes, he played Denny, the Hottest terminal patient ever! I mean, I’ve already talked about the extreme Hotness of today’s crop of tv docs, so imagine how Hot a man has to be to stand out in such a setting? He was bed-ridden and pale, yet he still looked virile as all get out. He barely kissed Izzy, yet he still left us all bewitched, bothered and bewildered. Soon he’ll be starring in a movie with Gerard Butler (here’s the trailer for 
possible), that I really liked his tv show In The House even though it was a pretty blatant rip-off of Charles in Charge (back when Scott Baio wasn’t 45 or single or creepy), and that sometimes, when I’m home alone and the Sass-o-meter is turned up high, I blast “Mama Said Knock You Out” and rap along with him word for freaking word! (I LOVE that song, so much so that if I was a professional baseball player I would totally make that my coming-up-to-bat song and I’d hit it out of the park every time!) LL - you’re a really good looking guy with a really ridonkulous body. I’m sorry to have overlooked your dimples and truly warm smile in my heated lustiness. You must forgive me, it was Thanksgiving morning and I needed to haul out the big guns to defeat sucka turkey man.
name Javier Bardem, prepare to be Manspired. He is of the smolderingly sexy character actor ilk, and he is uncommonly talented. That he also happens to be in two movies currently (or soon to be) in theaters is a pre-Christmas gift from the heavens above. I personally fell in love with him in Before Night Falls, a movie I CANNOT RECOMMEND ENOUGH! You, however, can fall in love with him in Love in the Time of Cholera and get a taste of his incredible range and talent in No Country for Old Men (warning - do NOT base your opinion of his Hotness on his appearance in this film…Coen brother films are NOT about making Hot Men Hotter, they’re about making great actors greater - see Clooney in O’ Brother, Where Art Thou for further proof.). You will also get plenty of chances to see him tuxedoed and Hot (here’s a