Another good reducing exercise consists in placing both hands against the table edge and pushing back.

Quillen’s line is a dry, practical joke aimed at the culture of “reducing” (slimming) advice: it pretends to offer a simple exercise, then reveals it as merely pushing oneself away from the table—i.e., eating less. The humor depends on the double meaning of “reducing exercise,” mocking faddish regimens and the tendency to look for effortless tricks rather than confronting habits. In a broader sense, it satirizes self-improvement rhetoric by collapsing it into a blunt behavioral truth: restraint, not gimmicks, is what changes outcomes.