It has recently come to my attention that I need to work out. This was told to me by two of my roommates, Anthony and Jon, who just got gym memberships, as well as by my roommate Micah, who spent the weekend eating out of a tub of cottage cheese. Micah has his own workout plan, a rigorous hour of push-ups, crunches and heavy breathing which he made me sit through before we could get a lunch of dollar chicken nuggets at Wendy’s.

I do need to work out. Don’t get me wrong. The only exercise I have is walking to and from the grocery store, which probably justifies my recent purchase of a watermelon and the negligence of my forgetting of said watermelon, the rotting of said watermelon in my refrigerator, my lack of disposing of said watermelon, and the resulting fruit flies that have inhabited our kitchen. At the very least I had the exercise in carrying it home. Still, I don’t need to be reminded that my arms are so thin that I would probably find a good home as a child laborer in the midst of the Industrial Revolution where my arms could be put to good use grabbing small objects from behind dangerous machinery. I really don’t need to be reminded of that.

What most people don’t realize is that working out requires a major change in lifestyle. It’s a slippery slope. One second you’re finding time in your calendar to fit in a small trip to the gym, the next thing you know you’re at the beach playing volleyball for eight hours straight with a visor and your shirt off, wearing huge sunglasses and starring in movies such as “Failure to Launch” and “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days,” and then calling yourself Matthew McConaughey. Is that really what people want? To turn into Matthew McConaughey? Have they even SEEN “The Wedding Planner?” Lord knows, I have. It’s a sick world we live in.

What people need is a way to look like they’re working out, without actually ever working out. Some say the answer lies in pills or not eating. Hogwash, I say. The answer, in truth, is incredibly simple. Just wear increasingly smaller T-shirts.

Stay with me on this one. The instructions are simple. Go to the store and buy identical shirts, starting with Medium/Husky and working your way down. Every couple days just throw on a slightly smaller version of that. After a few weeks you’ll go from Large to Child/Infant sizes, and in the process draw undeniable attention to the few muscles that you already have.

Trust me, it works. My shirts are now so small that even the slightest accidental muscle flex or irregular breath will cause the shirt I’m wearing to violently burst apart at the seams, tearing into a thousand microfibers with a terrible ripping sound not unlike a shotgun blast. It is at opportunities such as this that I’m able to take advantage of my pseudo-musculature and scream manly phrases such as “Hulk ANGRY!”

The ladies can’t get enough of it. They even have to shield their eyes from my blindingly white skin complexion, no doubt in awe.

So don’t worry about long trips to the gym, bench presses or only eating meals if they come in the shape of a small rectangle. All that’s required is that you be yourself, and then you cover yourself — with an extremely small t-shirt. Just don’t let it get to your head, McConaughey.