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

imagine? And at every hour of the day? Once I had had to run to the pharmacy in the middle of the night and had bumped into a man wolfing down something that looked disgusting but smelled absolutely delicious. I almost asked him where he got it.
    How was I expected to ignore the food that literally swirled around my head, filling my nostrils, day in, day out, from the doughnuts I found at work in the mornings, to the snack trays that passed me on their way up to the suites? Not to mention the dining hall laden with delicious, fancy foods.
    My boss, good old Harold Farthington and owner of Farthington Hotels, had given me access to the same food our guests were treated to. And everywhere else I went there was great grub—carts with hotdogs on the streets, pasties in window shops, mouthwatering fragrances wafting out of restaurants and cafés. Making it home clean and empty-stomached was impossible after being ambushed by drive-thru signs or plazas teeming with diners, bakeries and restaurants. This was, after all, the United States, land of plenty too much.
    Thus you can understand how grocery shopping was a real torture-treat for me. Since Paul was preparing snacks for the kids at my place, having picked them up from school, I almost always shopped alone. One word of advice if you’re on a diet: never shop alone. Food will ambush you. So bring your trusty backup, someone who will still love you after you’ve verbally assaulted them for not minding their own goddamn business. And always shop on a full stomach. Otherwise you’ll get all sorts of food fantasies and end up buying the whole supermarket.
    Once I had a dream that I got locked in this shopping center for a ten-week period of closure. They were the happiest ten weeks of my life. Aisles and aisles of everything I always (and constantly) wanted. Hot chocolate? Choose your brand. Reese’s Pieces? All you can eat. Don’t worry, the Plus Size department is on the third floor.
    So this new me, I’d decided, was going to eat properly. Not to attract Ira, but to look better and feel better about myself. No more caramel-coated popcorn, no more chocolate (I know it sounds heinous and unnecessarily cruel, but that’s how I did it the first time), no more bread and butter, no more mayo, no more fried stuff, no more desserts—no more nothing. Just good, wholesome food. Half the quantities I used to eat (see Golden Rule Number One). And a trip to the gym every other day. There was one in the hotel and I’d been given an honorary membership years ago when I went back to work after Maddy’s birth. Yeah, as if I had the time.
    Maybe someone should invent a washer-dryer that is pedal-powered, or maybe build a pedal-while-you-do-the-dishes thingie. That would break the world record of most bought and less used piece of shit ever.
    I squeezed my Kia van into a space big enough for a Mini Cooper right opposite Food World, debating whether to get a shopping cart. If I was going to buy myself some diet food and eat half as much (was I really sure I wanted to go through with this?) surely I didn’t need a shopping cart? But you know me—soon I’d be standing at the checkout, breaking my bladder for a pee and craning my neck looking for a basket, juggling my low- to no-fat items in my arms and evil-eyeing the usual old lady who had bought half the store and wouldn’t leave me an inch of space on the conveyor belt.
    I decided to do a dummy-run diet first. So I grabbed a small basket and picked my way through the Healthy Foods section which, in my local supermarket, was way at the back. In fact, I’d never even noticed it before. Right. Here I was. So. Low-fat cream cheese. Rice cakes for when I was sick of melba toast. Melba toast when I got sick of rice cakes. Parma ham? Are you kidding me—and pay twenty-seven dollars a pound when I could get it for free off my own dad? Yoghurt. Low-fat, of course. Cereal? Muesli, to help the digestive system, if you know what I mean. Which