Not many people know this, but once upon a time, I took stand-up comedy lessons from Beth Lapides, who is a comedian in Los Angeles. She also appeared in an episode of the infamous Sex and the City series.

The truth is, comedy is a lot harder than it looks. You have to explore yourself in ways you’d rather not. Then, share it — for laughs.

Sort of like this photo. Quelle horror!!! One day this week, I put on a pair of jeans and realized, egad, my daily chocolate and corn chip habit isn’t doing me any favors!

Honestly, I was horrified standing there looking at my considerable muffin top, poofing over the jeans.

Then, I remembered Beth. The club where I did open mic night a few times. I thought, wait. Let’s have a laugh over this. Why be so droll. It’s a pooch, not a ton of poundage.

So, I grabbed my iPhone and started snapping. Sadly, I deleted the worst offenders and this image doesn’t fully capture the godawful girth! (In fact, this is a completely different pair of jeans).

I posted the worst of the images on a Facebook story and texted it to a few of my friends. I chuckled just doing it.

Before long, I got return messages with the shocked or the scream face emoji.

It made me feel so much better and lighter. Sadly, not in the waistline, but you know what I mean!

A problem shared is a problem halved.

I got a grip, put the offending jeans back into the bag to ship them back to White House Black Market and laid off the chocolate for a couple days.

Girls, if you’re healthy, happy and somewhat sane in this currently cuckoo world, a puff of a paunch is merely a pain, not a pitiful problem.

https://www.bethlapides.com/