Diets-CIA Sanctioned Torture

It seems wherever groups of women meet, the topic of diets isn’t far behind. Out of a random group of five women, one will be guiltily bingeing after falling off the wagon, two will be on such restrictive diets that they’re experiencing vertigo and their lips are turning purple and the other three are reading through a stack of weight-loss books to determine which diet they’ll try next. This above mentioned statistic may not be completely scientific, but it is how it feels whenever you’re around women. It’s the main topic whether you’re at play group, lunch with the ladies or chatting over a game of Canasta. So apparently we’re obsessed from the time we have to squeeze into a cheerleader costume until we have to rest in a coffin.


It’s sad, really that we’re so willing to put ourselves through excruciating torture. Because, make no mistake, it is torture. If the CIA were truly as smart as they pretend to be, then they would have perfected using diets to extract secrets from terrorists by now. Dangle a spare rib in front of a prisoner that you’ve put on a vegan diet and they’ll turn in their entire family for treason for a single bite.

Eating food is what produced the muffin top and the jello thighs, so what better way to cut down on our food intake than to think obsessively about food every second of every day? Because when you’re on a diet, that’s exactly what you’re doing. Vast amounts of time are spent carefully planning your next meal. You’re making sure that your chicken breast is no bigger than your palm and that your cheese is the size of two dice. You count your almonds and measure your milk. Your grocery trips take three times longer than normal because you have to read every label and hunt through dusty shelves to find the sugar-free ketchup. At night you dream of buffets and tanned men feeding you strawberries (and chocolate, and spare ribs.) And after being on a low-carb diet for three days you’re ready to mug an old lady for a Ritz cracker.

Why do we do this to ourselves I wonder? Do we really need legs like the Dancing With The Stars Pros to be happy? When we were children did we know that, as adults, our number one goal in life would be washboard abs? We must be doing it for ourselves or for each other because most of the men could care less. Okay, so they all like looking at the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders, but they don’t expect to marry one. When you talk to men, the truth is that they like our softness and our curves and, I don’t know about you, but once you take off your clothes they will never turn you down. Men also generally like us best without makeup, and fresh out of the shower when we’re wrapped in a towel (probably has something to do with the naked thing again.) They think the strange things we do to our hair (straightening, streaking, bleaching) is time-consuming and unnecessary. And, when fifty men were polled about what they liked best about their significant other, the answers were surprising. They listed things like, “she’s really smart,” “she’s unique—her own person,” and “she’s loving and likes to help others.” No one ever answered, “she wears a size four.”

It’s funny because the things that I like best about my friends pretty much mirror what the men said. So maybe it’s time we give up the guilt and quit making diet books into best-sellers. My bet is that we’ll be having so much fun living our lives that spare ribs will never have all-consuming power over us again. What do you think?