Free The Husband Diet (A Romantic Comedy) by Nancy Barone

approval or for a man. Think of a sexy dress,” Paul urged. “Think of Elaine Richman’s dress.”
    I snorted. “That was thirteen years and four dress sizes ago.”
    “But remember how beautiful you were? Remember how it made you feel?”
    I thought about it. “Pinchy? Pricked?” He’d borrowed the dress from the Wilbur Theater and put a couple of pins in it so my boobs wouldn’t spill out just in time for my end-of-date-one kiss with Ira. And I had to admit the dress had been my pass. I sighed. If I ever wanted to be a size fourteen again, and I was going to do this properly, it would have to be for a better quality of life in general. To finally look in the mirror and say to myself, My, aren’t you pretty? Where have you been all these years? But how did people manage to do it?
    Resigned to learn more about skinny people, like fascinated ufologists studying the possibility of extraterrestrial life out there, I subscribed to an online dieting service. Now, I’d heard of online dating services, but online dieting ?
    There was so much information on the Net—most of it discordant—and cartloads of (again) contrasting rules: don’t drink (water) anywhere near your meals; drink lots of water during your meals; drink only before your meals; drink only after your meals; and finally, don’t drink at all . The same went for fruit: eat fruit only two hours after your meal as it will otherwise ferment in your stomach; stock up on vitamins before your meal so your body won’t need much more; eat mostly fruit.
    Get out on your skateboard (huh?) the minute you finish your meal and burn those calories right off!
    Rest for twenty minutes after your meal so your blood will go straight to your digestive system and perform better.
    Chill out with your family before a meal so you don’t pounce on your plate the minute it’s set before you!
    First of all, nobody has ever set my plate before me. And by the time I’ve fed everybody else (they do the pouncing) mine’s frozen solid again. So don’t tell me to chill out.
    Who was a gal to turn to?
    And then one day, to make things clear, I received an email with The Golden Decalogue to Being Slim:
    Always plan meals. That was easy. I always planned very rich meals worth living for.
    Cut quantities by 50%. Yeah, and because you’re still starving, have a chocolate bar to fill the void and eat 200% more at dinner.
    Drink water a half hour before, not with your meal. Glad someone’s made up their mind.
    Drink water in the mornings and before going to bed (I can’t; I’ve got a bladder like a sieve and I can’t keep getting up in the middle of the night—I need my beauty sleep).
    Sit at a laid table. Haven’t you been listening to me?
    Chew everything 30-50 times. This actually works, because once you’ve managed that, you don’t want to swallow it anymore.
    Wine only with meals. No problem—I’ll have pizza along with my glass of Chianti between lunch and dinner.
    No eating between meals . Scratch out above.
    Eat everything in moderation. That simple, huh?
    Put knife and fork down between mouthfuls. That’ll be interesting to watch when you have two kids at the same table playing tennis with their food. It’s a question of when I can pick up knife and fork.
    So there they were—the ten things I had never, ever thought of and neither had any other woman on earth. Really , if I cut my intake by 50% I’d swallow fewer calories? The asshole that wrote this Decalogue was full of it, and certainly had never had to starve himself (a woman, even a thin one, would never have written such bullshit). What was he on, la-la drugs? Where did he live, down the rabbit hole?
    Determined to have a better understanding, I began to observe what thin people ate. Did they really eat less than me? Then how come everywhere I turned in the street there were slim Jims gobbling down hotdogs, ice-cream sundaes, nachos— with salsa —chicken curries, and all the food you could possibly