I panicked the day I discovered the only thing that fit me
without cutting off my circulation were my shoes.
I panicked the day I discovered the only thing that fit me without cutting off my circulation were my shoes.
“Why are you eating your cereal standing next to your chair?” my daughter asked during breakfast. “Why aren’t you sitting down?”
“I can’t.”
She looked confused.
“I’m wearing my relaxed fit jeans which means I have to either stand or lean without bending my legs, and take no more than two shallow breaths every 10 seconds.”
“Then why don’t you go to the store and get some in a bigger size?”
“What do you mean? This is my size.”
After that conversation, I decided it was time to go to the bookstore and buy something with a title like, “The Joy of Dieting.” (If ever there was an oxymoron, it’s that, if you ask me). And after buying the book, I read how much fun and empowering weight control can be and how much better I will look and feel after eating nothing substantial for, oh let’s see, the rest of my life.
Then my friend Julie suggested that I keep my weight loss program simple, which is how I found myself going to the grocery store and buying a six pack of diet chocolate shakes. The first few days went great since meal preparation consisted of opening a can and inserting a straw. For variety I poured it into a Styrofoam cup and pretended to be eating at a fast food restaurant. Unfortunately, by the end of the week my teeth were bored and my body was yearning for something substantial.
I went back to the bookstore and picked out a few diet books with amazing proclamations in big letters on the cover. First I tried something called the “Diet of the Stars,” since it promised me a “lighter, brighter future” in just 30 days. It recommended eating foods in a certain order so my enzymes wouldn’t get confused and make my body turn everything into fat. For the first 10 days I could only eat fruit. It started with strawberry day, followed by prune day, and grape day and so on.
However, by day three I was trapped in the bathroom recovering from days one and two and barely managed to drag myself out long enough to go buy the book about the Custom Cuisine Diet, a strict food management plan with different menus I could sample and intermingle. For breakfast I combined the Gourmet, Money Saver, and International menu and ate half a hardboiled egg marinated in chicken bouillon. On the third day I noticed what the diet offered in variety, it lacked in fiber. I felt like a huge, bloated balloon.
Then my neighbor gave me the recipe for the long-since tired fad, the Cabbage Soup diet. Still, people once swore by it, and so why not try it? She promised I would see spectacular results if I ate nothing but the soup for a week. The first day (okay, morning) went great since I loved cabbage and was grateful for any diet that included fiber. But by lunchtime I decided to sass it up a bit by adding spices. Later, in the afternoon I progressed to eating cabbage and noodles and potatoes, and then I worked my way up to devouring a whole corned beef at dinnertime.
I don’t have to tell you that, by the end of the month, I still didn’t have the body of my dreams.
“I am a diet failure,” I sighed to my friend, Julie.
“Why don’t you just eat balanced meals and join the local gym?” she said. “Exercise is great for toning muscles.”
“What?” I cried. “Are you insinuating I’m FAT?”
After all, how am I supposed to raise my confidence and self-esteem levels high enough to achieve success – if I had friends saying things like THAT?
Debbie Farmer is a humorist and a mother holding down the fort in California, and the author of Don’t Put Lipstick on the Cat. You can reach her at fa********@oa***************.com.
