The Diet Game

My family may have experienced the shortest diet cycle in the history of caloric intake. We had decided to lose those pounds we put on in the 80s, so we went looking for diets. We wanted one where we could eat vast quantities of stuff that wasn't good for us and not have to deal with such inconvenient things as portion control and exercise. You see, we have new living room furniture that consists of 5 reclining places to sit and watch television. This furniture cost lots of money and getting up and exercising would be wasteful. If I learned anything from my dear departed mother it is not to waste what I paid for with hard earned money. So there we sit, day after day getting our money's worth.

Anyway, after careful consideration of an entire two diet plans, we opted for the Atkins Diet. From what we understood it basically consists of eating bacon, cheese and eggs until you're sick of them, then spending vast sums of money on “Low Carb” diet bars and pancake mix. The pounds are supposed to melt away as you order triple cheeseburgers with no buns and diet sodas. You can have salads in moderation with creamy dressings but no rice, bread, potatoes, fruit or sugar. No beans, Fritos, chips, battered stuff, French fries, sushi, ice cream or toast with butter. You can have the butter but you can't spread it on anything. One of the things that seemed weird was the idea of having all the condiments I could eat, but not being allowed anything to spread, squirt or slather them on. Licking mustard off your hand, while satisfying on a primitive level, isn't a very pleasant viewing experience by other restaurant patrons.

So we started the diet the way all people start low carb diets, by giving away our snacks and eating all the eggs, bacon and cheese in the house. Then we went to the supermarket and bought meat, cheese, eggs and condiments. For those of you who haven't tried this diet it's expensive. Meat costs more than bread and if all you can have is a large helping of steak and a small helping of a vegetable nobody likes, you end up buying a lot of meat. Our thin teenage son was appalled. Since I had been on cholesterol lowering medication for two years he didn't think I should be shoveling down bacon and sausage in a quest for better health. We soon ate all the eggs, meat and cheese and were faced with another supermarket trip. The first one had blown out our food budget for the month.

We held a family meeting and decided that we couldn't really afford the Atkins Diet if it meant buying $5 pancake mix and steak, so we switched to the Slim Fast Diet. “A delicious shake in the morning, another at noon and a sensible meal in the evening.” If the sensible meal in the evening included French fries and a bun, we were all for it. So we stocked up on Slim Fast. I have no intention of saying anything negative about these fine products. I really like the Strawberry and Chocolate Royal Shakes. They're very tasty. It is the sensible evening meal that quickly became the point of contention. The word “sensible” conjures up visions of committees of thin people and fat people sitting on opposite sides of a table hammering out definitions of what constitutes sensible and what constitutes tasty and satisfying.

So we had a shake in the morning, another at lunch, a “sensible” meal in the evening, a sensible snack later in the evening, and a sensible bowl of potato chips just before bedtime to take the edge off. This quickly degenerated into a delicious shake in the morning, a sensible lunch at the local Mexican restaurant where we would have cheese enchiladas, rice, beans, chips and hot sauce and repeat our evening eating process. So it's a week later and we aren't on any diet. We know that the best way to a slimmer us is through exercise and smaller portions. As soon as the new couches depreciate, we're in the gym.