Everybody I know is on a diet these days. Sugar Busters, Weight Watchers, Slim-Fast. I could never do that last one because I have absolutely no idea what they mean by “a sensible dinner at night.” Does that mean I have to eat while wearing low heels and, ha-ha, balancing my, whatchamacallit, checkbook?
My best friend is addicted to dieting. Right now, she’s dreading her twenty-fifth high-school reunion because she fears she will be the only one there who has (a) gained more than eight ounces and (b) now sees Woodstock as just a muddy mess of fornicating weirdos with too much armpit hair.
What can I tell you? She’s lost her soul.
Happily, she’s also lost about twelve pounds so far thanks to some awful combination of tomatoes, grapefruit, and beefsteaks the size of whale bladders.
“Tee-hee, I can eat all the meat I can hold!” she told me last week, while chewing on a leg of lamb and chasing it with a greasy turkey drumstick. In church.
The theory behind the eat-meat-diet craze is that you cut out all those nasty old carbohydrates, which lay hidden like Clinton conquests in an Arkansas trailer park until—gotcha!—they pop out, morph into sugar, and make you blubbery overnight.
Of course, there’s just one little catch.
“You can’t live without carbohydrates,” I told my friend. “They give you energy. I read that somewhere or maybe it was on Orca, I mean Oprah.”
But my friend had stopped listening by then. Exhausted, she dropped her head to her chest and began to snore loudly.
This is the worst thing since we were pudgy single-somethings who tried The Seven-Day Miracle Cabbage Soup Diet and both of us dang near exploded. Sure, we lost weight but no one—and I mean not even the loser guys who don’t take their ballcaps off in the Western Sizzlin’—wanted to be around us.
It’s a cabbage thing—you wouldn’t understand.
I’ll admit that fad dieting sounds great in theory. My favorite wacko diet claims you can take a little vitamin-packed pill at night that ACTUALLY CHEWS UP FAT CELLS AND SPITS THEM OUT WHILE YOU SLEEP.
I’m no genius but I believe the only way you can lose weight by taking a pill and going to sleep is if Jack Kevorkian’s in the room.
Pills don’t eat fat cells. The only thing that gets rid of fat is a low-fat diet and exercise. Of course, that’s bor-ing. It’s much more fun to envision yourself romping on the beach like Shari Belafonte after tanking up on shakes all day.
Another Slim-Fast spokesmodel is a Real-Life Mom, who whines that she couldn’t lose weight after her baby was born. The before-and-after photos are impressive but unrealistic.
There is no way you can lose weight with a toddler in the house. This is because whatever they don’t eat, you must finish. Heck, sometimes I don’t even wait.
“Hey! You through with that?” I ask the toddler while she’s guarding the last of her Easy Mac. “Don’t you have some TV to watch or something?”
Dieters recently had great news when the Associated Press reported that a study had found—and I am not making this up—PIZZA AND BEER ARE GOOD FOR YOU! I haven’t been this happy since my step class was canceled and we all went out for Taco Bell Grande Meals instead.
The story said researchers believe the tomato sauce in pizza can prevent prostate cancer and the, uh, beer in beer can prevent ulcers.
I can’t wait to tell my friend. If she ever wakes up.