HUMOR
A New Year’s Resolution
A story with some weight
When it comes to New Year’s resolutions, resolving to go on a diet is probably among the most popular — though that word may be a misnomer since dieting is never popular. Nevertheless, it’s surely a resolution that many make. And I am no exception.
In America, dieting is a way of life. Nearly everyone is either on a diet or planning to be. Or should be. There is no shortage of ways to diet. You can join an organization where you’ll receive encouragement from fellow dieters, along with recipes and tips for achieving and maintaining your ideal weight. Other organizations deliver fully prepared meals to you. As long as you eat only these, you’re guaranteed to lose weight. There are dietary supplements designed to burn calories. Or meal replacements in a can, bottle or box. There’s the South Beach diet, the Atkins diet, the Mediterranean diet, the cabbage soup diet… The list goes on. The TV and magazines are filled with ads showing people before and after using some miracle weight-loss potion. I tend to be skeptical of any pitch that promises, “Now you can eat everything you want and still lose weight!” I have a long history of eating everything I want — and I can tell you that it has definitely not resulted in weight loss.
But I’m convinced I can do this dieting thing on my own without having to pop pills or follow some regimen of consuming copious quantities of cheese, bacon and butter, while steering clear of watermelon, bread or carrots. I have stocked my house with just what I need to lose weight. How do I know? Ah, because here in the U.S. we have package labeling to tell us exactly how many calories and carbohydrates our food has, as well as its content of fat, protein, sodium, fiber, vitamins and whether eating it will lead to a salary increase. Okay, I’m kidding about the last one, but just about everything else is clearly listed on the label.
The labeling, however, can also be misleading. On a recent trip to the grocery store, I noticed a drink I hadn’t seen before: coconut-flavored water. A quick glance at the label showed that it had, I thought, only one calorie. When I chugged the small six-ounce container, I was pleasantly surprised — until I put on my glasses and read the label more carefully. The ‘one’ was not the calorie count, but the number of servings in the container. It actually had 90 calories. I should have stuck with plain water. It reminded me of the time I purchased a small frozen pizza with, according to the label, only 300 calories. It turned out that this was 300 calories per serving. And this small pizza — clearly labeled on the front of the package as an individual pizza — was designed to serve three.
My friend Jane likes to try every new diet she hears about. The problem is that she often ends up combining diets. Her theory is that if one diet is good, two must be better, leading to twice the weight loss in half the time. I remember the year I visited her when she had decided to go on the cabbage soup diet. She spent the entire day on New Year’s Eve making gallons of the soup in anticipation of launching her diet the next day. However, when I came down to breakfast the next morning, she was eating bacon and eggs smothered in cheese. When I inquired about what happened to the cabbage soup diet, she explained that she was going to do that for lunch, but stick to the Atkins diet for breakfast. For dinner, she thought she might try the Mediterranean diet. The next time I saw Jane, several months later, she was trying yet another tack. She’d convinced her dentist to wire her jaw shut to prevent her from eating anything that couldn’t be consumed through a straw. At the time, she was enjoying a milkshake she had concocted in her blender that consisted of ice cream, cookies and a slice of chocolate cake.