I overheard my husband, Bruce, tell someone, “Yes, my wife has been on a diet for 30 years.” I thought about it, and, by jingo, he’s right. Generally, I try to watch my mass consumption of anything white and/or with sugar. Note the word generally. As I write this, I am noshing on chocolate covered popcorn. Hey! It was a gift and, while I share, there is, at present, no one around to share it with. So, should the gift giver come back and see that I have not devoured their most generous confection, well, that would be less than gracious.
     Back to the diet. Since I get bored with the no whites/no sweets routine, I recently re-tried a 3-day heart-healthy diet where you can lose up to 10 pounds in a week. (I actually lost seven pounds the first time around.) I sent Bruce to the store. -He does all the grocery shopping because we fight over coupons. That’s for another blog.- He picked up an apple, half a banana, 2 eggs, 1 slice of cheese, green beans, broccoli, cantaloupe, dry toast, black coffee, vanilla ice cream, yes, vanilla ice cream, and the number one ingredient in this diet- TUNA. Thank goodness I like tuna. Drained, with only salt and pepper, I ate the stuff and everything else on the plan as directed. Never mind that eating flaky tuna is hazardous to your surroundings. I mean, the stuff stinks! (I am reminded of the scene from Philadelphia Story with Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, and Jimmy Stewart where the tween daughter says to her sophisticated mother, “That stinks!” The mother replies, “Now dear, we don’t say stinks. If we must say something, we say smells.”)  Well, flaky tuna smells up the joint. Plus, it's hard to eat and drops not only in your lap, funkifying your clothes, but on the floor. And then, if you’re eating at your desk while you’re writing a novel like I do, you roll over it with your chair, thereby grinding it into the carpet. I guess you burn some extra calories getting up and down and crawling around scrubbing the stench out of the rug and off the wheels.
     So I endured, no suffered through, consuming exactly the kind and quantity of foods listed for breakfast, lunch and dinner. The result? I lost half a pound. Would everyone say, with feeling, "Shucky darn!" 
     I return to telling myself to turn from the bread, push back from table and stay out of the kitchen after 6 pm. Not a lot of fun but I figure that a calorie saved is a calorie waiting to be  enjoyed come Thanksgiving!  And I do plan on enjoying as many of those suckers as I can stuff in my head.  After that, it's 30 years and counting and counting and counting...
 
(Here's a link to the Philadelphia Story, a classic, and one of my favorites with a wonderful cast -Cary Grant!!!!- and snappy banter.  http://www.amazon.com/The-Philadelphia-Story/dp/B001EC0OMM/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1353211415&sr=1-1&keywords=philadelphia+story )