Another year, another diet to die for

The brownies were my Waterloo.

You see, I began the week - no, the month; no, the rest of my life - by starting the South Beach Diet. Again.

Everyone I know who's done it swears by it. Includ-ing me (that is, until I stopped doing it and gained all my weight back, and then some). I really needed to jumpstart my dieting efforts before it's time to wedge myself into a swimsuit. Plus I optimistically gave away all my fat clothes last time I did a low-carb diet, and now my thin clothes are too tight, and I look like a boa constrictor trying to digest a large mammal.

So today I started to eat healthy, mainly - truthfully - because my husband doesn't want to have a heart attack.

He doesn't actually need to lose weight; I'm pretty sure he can drop five pounds just by dreaming about it at night.

Nevertheless, he was convinced that this diet would motivate him to eat more nutritionally, to stave off that coronary.

I figured I'd humor him by joining along for the two simple weeks it would take to lose those 30 seriously unwanted pounds I've packed on (forgetting about the other 20 that are also unwanted but I suspect unsheddable).

He was referring to this as his "food management program." I call it forced starvation (or the Miami Death March), but I was fully prepared to make the sacrifice for my beloved spouse.

So I shopped for all the specific ingredients, spending a fortune at the store. My fridge is crammed with the requisite produce, plain chicken breasts and whatever other good-for-you items, such as imitation eggs and carcinogenic-sugar-substitute-containing Jell-O, that the book told me to get.

For breakfast I fixed up this muffin thing composed of egg substitute, spinach, reduced-fat cheese and some other unpalatable swill. By the time I finished assembling the ingredients, I didn't have time to even consider eating it before having to get the kids to school. Just as well, as I'm sure the only way the Day One breakfast was going to help me lose weight would be because it never quite made it to my stomach; I can't eat eggs unless drowning in gooey cheese.

So I skipped breakfast. I was in a hurry anyhow; I had to get to the gym. By the time I got back it was breakfast-for-lunch for me. I whipped up a little cheesy eggish thing (my own alternative version), while I prepared grilled chicken on romaine and sugar-free Jell-O for my husband. I was already one meal behind him just a few short hours into The Diet. This diet - I mean, food management program - was going to be a piece of cake. No, make that a piece of celery.

My afternoon snack was one sad little cheese stick.

My willpower began to sag when the kids came home from school and my daughter decided to bake brownies. With the perfume of baking chocolate wafting beneath my nostrils, I knew my stamina was faltering. My son actually called my husband at work to find out why mom was being so mean. My husband warned him to back off because I was suffering from diet rage.

By the time dinner rolled around, I was so hungry I was ready to eat one of the kids. The grilled salmon, fresh greens salad and broiled asparagus were dreadfully boring compared to those delectable cream cheese brownies that had just come out of the oven.

As I sat at the dinner table, picking randomly at my theoretically delicious and healthfully dietetic meal (which was actually just dried-out, bland and overcooked), I started to get cranky. I thought about the diet-approved ricotta cheese-with-flavoring that was to be my dessert. I glanced longingly at the brownies, cooling on the kitchen counter.

And that's when I readily convinced myself that life was too short for fad diets, even if they are good for you. Even if you do lose 10 pounds in two weeks. Even if I might look better in my swimsuit. You know what- I am just too damned savvy to fall prey to these desperate groupie trends. I know what I want and I want what I want. When I want it.

I know, I know, my clothes don't fit and I'm growing a double chin. My behind sticks out so far you could serve cocktails on it. My bras are so tight the underwire cinches me like a mouth gag on a POW.

Granted, these qualities aren't overly appealing. But in the bigger picture, I am standing up for my rights to not buy into societal demands for thinness, and sometimes personal rights are important enough to take drastic measures to protect. Right-

Well, now that I know this diet is done, I think I'll sink my teeth into something totally opposite of South Beach - maybe, say, the South Pole. Where it's cold. Where I'll need added fat layers to keep warm. How about Eskimo Pie- No, Eskimos aren't at the South Pole.

What I need now is the perfect foil to the South Beach-sanctioned, insipid, ricotta-cheese-mixed-with-vanilla-extract dessert that my husband is stuck eating tonight. I think I hear those brownies calling my name. - Oh, well, I guess that diet can start tomorrow.

Jenny Gardiner is a locally based writer and radio commentator.

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