Each spring, when I fly north from Florida with the rest of my Snowbird flock, I look forward to becoming reacquainted with the small-ish town where I alight in order to escape the sultry Florida summers.

I’m always curious to discover which establishments remain precisely where I left them last fall,  which have closed up shop, and what new restaurant or clothing store has cropped up in its stead.   My small=ish town abounds in restaurants and clothing stores.  Which is somewhat reassuring.  As long as you have some money in your pocket, and have not overdrawn your credit card(s), you need never go hungry or naked, or any combination of the two.

This year, on my jaunt around town, I was not terribly surprised to discover that three out of the four yogurt stores that had existed within two miles of each other, had closed.  Not that I’m happy about anyone losing their business, but I admit to having been somewhat perplexed about how a town of our size could possibly support so much frozen yogurt.

But  apparently we did. For a while, the town had seemingly inhabited an early Seinfeld episode, the one where Jerry and his friends OD on low-fat frozen yogurt because they become convinced it will have no consequences.  I conclude this because this year’s proliferation of new establishments was something called “Medical Spas” or “Cryotherapy” Centers, each promising methods to shed  “excess, unwanted body fat. ”   (Is there such a thing as “excess wanted body fat”?)

I guess we really had gone overboard with the yogurt.  Because for each fro-yo store that had packed its toppings and moved on, a salon offering “Coolsculpting” had opened.  Apparently,   frozen dessert had been replaced by frozen fat!

I, too, had been caught up in the it’s-okay-because-it’s-not ice-cream deception.  And as I stared down at my own tummy flab, I considered that I might be a good candidate for the big chill.

But not without first doing some homework.

What I read on the internet gave me a bit of a jolt.  The fact that fat freezes and disappears was an accidental discovery by someone who had observed that young children who consumed a lot of popsicles developed dimples due to fat loss in their cheeks.  Who would notice this? Someone who spent a lot of time around children and popsicles, I supposed.  Was “Coolsculpting” really invented by the Good Humor man? Or perhaps some shady character in a rain coat with a pair of binoculars, spying on the playground beneath his third floor window?

The truth is none of the above.  The technique of  cryolipolysis, the scientificl name for freezing fat, was developed by a pair of doctors from Boston.

Convinced that it was indeed a legitimate procedure, I entered one of the many spas, nee yogurt stores, in my small-ish town to acquire more information about atoning for my sins, and came away somewhat impressed.

While not a quick fix, it could take at least four weeks to see results after I was sucked and frozen, I did stand a reasonable chance of ultimately wearing 25% less tummy.  If I acted quickly, I could flaunt my newly contoured svelte-ness at the beach before the end of the summer!

But stop.  There was an alternative to the expensive spa treatments. I could acquire one of the surprisingly large number of DIY kits and freeze my fat in the privacy of my own home. The selection of products on Amazon alone filled my entire screen.  Now there’s a project for a rainy day.

And no, unfortunately one cannot simply fill the bath tub with ice cubes and get the same results.

This season’s jaunt about town has certainly been educational.  Even for someone who thought she had finally made peace with her belly fat, there’s a lot to reconsider.

For now, however, I think I’ll go to the remaining yogurt store, squeeze out a small cup of vanilla, sit down, and seriously consider my options.

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