JanDunlap.com

I have finally found the diet that is not only going to help me lose those five pounds I’ve been targeting for about the last decade, but will also make me incredibly wealthy, because this is the diet that REALLY works. I am going to package it and sell it and show up on Oprah and Leno.

I call it “The Rubber Food Diet.”

Allow me to explain.

Last week, I went with my husband to his consultation with a dietician for his diabetes. Ongoing education is a key element to successfully managing the disease, and since I am my husband’s biggest cheerleader for his good health (as well as his primary cook), I tagged along.

“Let’s review your diet,” Mary, the dietician, said.

My husband told her what he typically eats for breakfast and she took notes.

“How about lunch?” she asked.

He described his regular noon menu, but when he got to the bran muffin part, she held up her hand for him to stop.

“How big is this muffin?” she asked. “So many people eat these jumbo muffins you get at the store and don’t realize they are so loaded with carbohydrates, which you definitely have to watch out for.”

“It’s a small one,” I said. “We make them ourselves.”

My husband made a two-inch circle with his fingers and showed it to Mary. “About this big,” he said.

In the meantime, Mary had reached behind her and grabbed an item out of what I now recognized as a large plastic pyramid with shelves in it.

Aha! I thought. I know what that is! It’s the food pyramid! It looked just like the one on the magnet on our fridge that I stuck up years ago to remind myself to make healthy food choices. Mary’s pyramid, however, was about three feet tall, whereas mine was only three inches.

“Yours is bigger than mine,” I told her. That’s probably why it didn’t work, too, I figured. Three inches doesn’t have much authority, if you know what I mean.

And then my husband and I looked at what Mary was holding.
“That’s exactly the size of our muffins!” we both exclaimed. “In fact, it LOOKS exactly like one of our bran muffins.”

Small, dull brown, and unappetizing.

And rubber.

I had one of those moments of revelation you get a few times in your life: my bran muffins looked like rubber.

“That’s great!” Mary said.

Yeah, right. She wasn’t the one whose muffins looked like rubber.

“Let’s talk about portion sizes,” Mary announced, and then proceeded to place on the table in front of us rubber spaghetti and meatballs, rubber broccoli, half of a rubber sweet potato and rubber apple pie.

“Do you know how many carbs this little piece of pie is worth?” Mary asked, pointing to the little triangle that was pretending to be my favorite fall dessert.

“I’m afraid to ask,” I replied. “And I’m sure I don’t want to know, either.”

“It’s four carbs,” she said, shaking the little sliver of pie at me. “More than a fourth of what you want for the whole day.”

“Not any more,” I muttered. I turned to my husband. “After looking at this food, carbs are the last thing I’m going to want in the day. Heck, I don’t think I even want food anymore. You and I are both going to lose weight because we’re sticking to water, honey.”

I turned to Mary. “Thanks so much for sharing. My appetite has just gone comatose.”

And that’s when it hit me: the Rubber Food Diet. All I had to do was package assortments of rubber food and include instructions for use. “When hungry, arrange contents on dinner plate to suppress desire to eat…ever again. Warning: You’re not supposed to actually eat the enclosed rubber food, you idiot! It’s a preventative device, not lunch!” And I better get that disclaimer in there too – “This product has not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration because they are all still laughing too hard to read the warning statement, along with this disclaimer.” Then I could find a distributor, write heart-wrenching testimonials for the USA Weekend magazine that comes in the Sunday newspaper, and just watch the money roll in.

At least watching the money roll in will give me something to do, because I sure as heck won’t be eating anything for a while.

And I haven’t even described Mary’s piece de resistance yet – a rubber brownie that looked like…..