I was walking along the other day minding my own business when all of a sudden my shirt split open, Incredible Hulk-style. No, it wasn't due to bulging biceps, but rather, I'm embarrassed to say, to a bulging belly, the result of a long winter spent lying on the couch, watching football on tv, and washing down tollhouse cookies with big gulps of eggnog. (Those tollhouse cookies do take their toll.) Holding the front of my shirt together, I resolved right then and there to shed those excess pounds. Hello diet. Goodbye Mr. Chocolate Chips.
       Oh, I had been on diets before. Many of them with a duration of about one meal. I would go out to eat thoroughly committed to my diet, order an excructiatingly nutritious meal, only to suffer a willpower outage at the last minute and for dessert order a Baked Alaska large enough to qualify for statehood. But this time I was determined to do it by the book--literally--so I headed straight for the bookstore to see what I could find that could help lead me away from the rocky road (appropriately enough) of love handles and spare tires and down the path of health and fitness.
       Gazing at the dozens and dozens of books in the "diet and nutrition'' section made me wonder if the whole country wasn't on a diet. There seemed to be a diet for everyone--the grapefruit diet, the liquid protein diet, the mango diet, the high carbohydrate diet, the low carbohydrate diet. I even came across a psychic diet in which you prepare your favorite dish--however fattening--and then, rather than eat it, you enjoy it by thinking about it. Sort of mind over platter. I guess this approach would work for some people, but, somehow, mind-melding with a meatloaf is not exactly my idea of a good time.
       And one book couched its weight loss program in almost religious terms, promising to slim down your soul as well as your body. A little too intense for me. After all, I was shopping for a regimen, not a religion. Besides, the reference to Joseph and his Coat of Mini-marshmallows was a bit tacky.
       Picking up one book after another and flipping through the pages, I began to get a clue as to why losing weight is so hard. One book had a chart breaking foods down into three groups: those foods you can never eat, those you can eat occasionally, and those that are "unrestricted'' (i.e., you eat as much as you want, anytime you want). The "never'' list boasted a line-up of such mouth-watering foods as pancakes, donuts, hot fudge sundaes, and banana splits, but the "unrestricted'' list offered such tempting treats as kale, leeks, chard, and chives. It read like a list of characters out of a Dickens novel--and mean characters at that.
       It was confusing enough that there were so many suggestions as to how to lose weight, but the experts couldn't even seem to agree on why so many people were overweight in the first place. One author said that most people's weight problems were related to bad eating habits developed during childhood. Probably true, but is it any wonder? When I was growing up, my parents--like most parents of the time--didn't know anything about nutrition. I remember as a kid, sitting at the dinner table and having my mother tell me, "Barry, eat your lard or no dessert.'' And, of course, they would also serve up a big helping of guilt at every meal, reminding us to "clean our plate" because there were children starving in China. Somehow I'm not surprised that after years of having that image drilled into my head, I don't feel like I'm through eating unless I've not only cleaned my plate but removed the top layer of enamel on the dish as well. (By the way, kids today don't buy that China line. I was at a restaurant recently and overheard a woman tell her son "eat your spinach because there are starving kids in China.'' His curt reply: "So, Fed Ex it to 'em.''
       Yet another expert pointed to fast food as the culprit in our national weight problem, going so far as to call it dangerous. I guess that's true. I did once almost give myself a hernia at Wendy's trying to drink a Frosty through a straw. But for people who don't cook--and I don't cook ever since a dinner I prepared ended with me carving the pasta--fast food is a godsend. That same book attacked the role snacking plays in the American diet, writing about it in conspiratorial terms as though Dolly Madison and Little Debbie had somehow gotten together and hatched a plot to undermine the health of United States citizens using Ding Dongs and Koo Koos. But I have to confess to being a snacker as well. Once, in a deadline-induced state of anxiety, I consumed an entire large bag of Cheetos. Cheetos are doubly bad because not only do you feel guilty about the massive number of calories you consume, but you almost have to floss with barbed wire to get the stuff out of your teeth. And then you have snack's evil cousin--midnight snack. Many's the night I've staggered out to the kitchen looking for something--anything--to snack on. There's something about waking up in the middle of the night that dramatically lowers your standards for what you find appetizing. I remember once getting up at 2 a.m., finding nothing in the refrigerator, and having to fight off the urge to go outside and do the Fosbury Flop into the dumpster to retrieve a stale wedge of carrot cake I threw out earlier that day.
       Finally, after several hours of looking at one crazy diet plan after the next, I left the bookstore. I came away feeling that maybe I didn't need a book to lose weight, after all. That maybe I could do it on my own. I stood ready to declare my independence from fatty foods.
       And I would have shouted it to the world, except that it's not polite to talk with your mouth full.

Photoillustration by Barry Willis

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