It leans heavily on frequent, low-calorie, nutrient-balanced meals. What I really want is one that leans
heavily on gobs of chocolate. Of course, that kind of thinking's what's taking me to one-size fits all to start with, so I guess I must accept it: I'm going to spend the rest of my life eating stuff I don't like because
I spent the first half of my life eating stuff I do like. There's probably some poetic justice in there somewhere, but I'm too hungry to worry about it right now. Anyway, I bought this diet book on the advice of
my doctor and I read it. It says I shouldn't eat cake, pie, pizza, cookies, candy, spaghetti, lasagna, french fries, steak, bacon or anything else that's good. Oh, and beets. They're out, too. Since I rank beets and
root canals about even on my personal ecstasy scale, I can live without them. But just reading about the rest of what I can't have sent me scurrying to the store, where I bought some nice fat jelly donuts, several of
which I consumed on the drive home. Then I started my diet.
Today is my first full day. It took me almost a week to figure out what I'm allowed to eat. I had to weigh and measure myself in places no woman
wants to and compute my body fat. I'm not going to say I've downed a few too many of those jelly donuts, but if I'd been on the Titanic, I would have popped back up like an oversized cork when I hit the water.
So, after computing my body fat, I went to the book to see what I could actually eat. The answer became quite clear once I finished with all that computation: not very much. Buzzards caught in a blizzard find more
to eat than I'm going to get on this diet. After all, even the frozen earth occasionally coughs up a worm.
The diet's author also shares his theory that food should not be treated as a grown-up binki. He
says we should regard it as medicine and put just the right amount in just the right combinations in our bodies at just the right time. Instead of reaching for a pint of ice cream when stressed, he wants us to grab a
powdered protein-fortified corn muffin the approximate size of a silver dollar. The muffin and the money also have the same flavor, by the way.
Last night I climbed in bed after ingesting my allowed nighttime
snack of a little cottage cheese and some olives. I imagined food to be the enemy and sensible eating the only thing standing between me and buying my underwear from a specialty catalog. I dreamt of a war between
chocolate eclair soldiers and a celery stick army. The stringy green guys won, but the kingdom was a pretty dull place after that. There's nothing worse than a whole world of things that are "good for you."
I wonder if it's too late to join the donut underground?
