Dieting Do's & Don't's

• Don’t keep anything in the house that would undermine your diet. A good rule of thumb is, if it looks, tastes, feels, or smells good, feed it to the peacocks.
• Do keep peeled, sliced cucumbers in a Tupperware bowl in your fridge. You will not be able to make yourself eat them (without sour cream), but they will give the appearance of healthy eating habits.
• Don’t, under any circumstances, bite your partner.
• Do imagine that you are so spiritually rarified, you no longer need food.
• Don’t attempt to become so spiritually rarified, you no longer need food.
• Do imagine yourself chained in a medieval dungeon. This helps you to be grateful for the morsel of dried toast you had ten hours ago for breakfast. And, the image of yourself as an emaciated feudal prisoner (in a new Land’s End swimsuit two sizes smaller than last year’s), will keep you going.
• Do remember that it could be worse: You could be a breatharian. You could be on the cabbage soup diet. You could have those three middle school girls following you around (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Knjf3ABPc0E).
• Don’t raise and lower the footrest of your La-Z-Girl ten times and call it “exercise.”
• Do perfect a low, resonant, guttural growl. This is an effective way to quickly signal extreme displeasure if your partner eats anything in your presence that is slathered with frosting, gravy, butter, or syrup.
• Do rig up a plywood Victorian bed partition if you have a tendency to dream of food or to eat in your sleep.
• Don’t record 37 hours of the Food Network to watch when the diet ends.
• Do buy all of your clothes two sizes too big, then whine constantly to coworkers about how you’re “falling out of these old things” and can't figure out why.
• Don’t imagine various implements of torture when your friend says she “forgot to eat today.”
• Do remember (seriously now) that you are gol dern lucky to have every bite of food you put in your mouth, unlike the 925 million people in the world who are hungry and would feed a family of five with your boiled egg and celery (http://www.worldhunger.org/articles/Learn/world%20hunger%20facts%202002.htm).