First you must admit to yourself that your closet has not developed the power to shrink items of clothing. Then you need to look at yourself in the mirror and say,
“Who in the hell is that?”
Step two, (I can do this a whole lot faster than Dr. Phil.) Give all of your goodies to a growing, fourteen year old boy if you have access to one. If you don’t, call me. I can direct you to one.
Step three, put a sign on your refrigerator that says,
“Nothing tastes as good as being thin feels.”
Begin your diet by fasting all day the first day. Drink lots of water to flush your fat self out. By nightfall, wonder what on earth you were thinking. Skip cocktail hour and lie down.
Follow this procedure for the next few days, continuing to question your sanity. You will probably want to add a bit of tuna, cottages cheese, and brown rice to your water diet, however, not all on the same day. I don’t care what Dr. Phil says. One must deny one’s self and suffer when on a diet. I recommend suffering loudly. It just makes you feel better to shout,
“Dear God! I am starving! Someone just SHOOT me now!”
Now that you are on your way to being svelte, you may allow yourself to go out to breakfast with people-who-aren’t-on-a-diet. You smugly order a boiled egg and a small glob of cottage cheese. The others in your party order chicken fried steak, biscuits and gravy, and omelets dripping with cheese. You feel pious. Look at that gooey stuff piled on their plates! Don’t they know what they are doing to their arteries?
The biscuits and gravy look pretty good, though. You have been so good lately. You have a bite to reward yourself. Just a bite. You consider the event a success, because, as Dr Phil says, it’s portion control that is important.
After a few days, your sister comes to visit, bringing along a pecan pie. All of the fatsos in your family have a piece. You must absolutely not have any, as this would be the end of your diet and you know it. You watch them stuffing their fat faces with the pie. They are disgusting. You are just SO much better than they are.
The next morning you notice that what is left of the pie is still sitting on the cabinet. Someone has cut it crooked! You’d better even it up so it will look better. You cut off the crooked part and pop it into your mouth. You can’t just have a messy, uneven pie sitting around on your counter. What will people think?
Later, everyone decides to go out to lunch, claiming there is nothing to eat in your house. You order only a half order of the Chinese chicken salad, which you happen to know from experience, is huge. You still feel pretty good, however, because it is only a half of a salad, for Pete’s sake! Ordering a half order is called practicing “Portion Control.”
Go ahead, let these people, who keep trying to sabotage your diet, haul your behind to the movie. They get three containers of buttered popcorn that are the size of New Jersey. Let them try to tempt you. Of course, a couple of kernels won’t hurt. Popcorn is on many weight loss plans.
When all of the popcorn is gone, you condescendingly realize the others are just out of control and should surely join you on your diet, as you only had a small amount of it.
Later when you get home, you find that there is a hot blackberry cobbler sitting on the stove. Everyone digs in. That does it. You’ll just have a small piece. Hey, It’s fruit, right? Fruit is good for you. And since milk is good for you, too, you’ll just have some ice cream on it. You can’t have warm blackberry cobbler without vanilla ice cream on it. Oh, it’s delicious. That husband sure knows how to cook.
Uh, oh. Your cobbler is gone and you still have ice cream. You’ll just have to get some more berries to make it come out even.
Uh oh, your ice cream is gone and you still have cobbler. You must make it come out even. More ice cream. Portion control is a completely different skill when coupled with equality control. Perhaps Dr. Phil needs to address this dilemma in his book.
When you have finished eating, just go over to the sign on your refrigerator about nothing tasting as good as being thin feels, and add, “Except biscuits and gravy and blackberry pie.”
