Sorry Adults, the Coffee and Cigarettes Diet Just Won't Cut It Anymore

Now that summer is just about over, I'm a lot closer to my desired "beach weight" than I was a couple of months ago. As long as I wear a one piece bathing suit. And a sarong. Maybe a one piece with a skirt of some kind… 

I've been on a diet this summer. 

Somehow, I gained 10 pounds since last year. It just kind of snuck up on me. It snuck up on all of me actually: my thighs, my tummy, my…but, I digress. 

Obviously I was doing something wrong. I can't quite figure it out. The fact that I was eating whatever I wanted and spending half my life sitting in a car operating Mom's Taxi Service for two teenagers, a ten year old and a toddler might have had something to do with it… 

Gone are the good old days of easy, sudden weight loss. When I was in my twenties I had all kinds of special diets that worked. There was the Bran Muffin, Coffee and Cigarettes diet. I invented that one myself. It involved eating the occasional bran muffin, drinking a lot of coffee, and smoking a lot of cigarettes (hence the name). I wasn't particularly healthy, and I was a little wired, but I was skinny. 

In college, my roommates and I went on the TWA Stewardess Diet. As I recall, it consisted primarily of beets. I don't know why TWA stewardesses were flying around eating nothing but beets, but I tried it. A little problem: I hate beets. So I eliminated beets from the all-beets diet and ended up eating nothing. This worked for about one afternoon. Then I fainted. I promptly went off my all-beets diet and went out for a cheeseburger. 

So, this summer I knew I couldn't be trusted to do it all myself. I signed up for a well known alliterative program that involves going to regular meetings, but the thought of sitting in a meeting with other women talking about my thighs is about as appealing to me as…well, as sitting anywhere talking with anyone about my thighs. Which is to say, not too appealing. So I opted for the doing the program anonymously online. 

They've got a "points system." It takes a little getting used to. Every food has a points value and, if you keep to your number of points, over time, you lose weight. The first week I had to borrow points from the following week just to stay alive. 

A long-planned trip to Paris with my daughter (it was her sweet sixteen present) sidetracked me for a week. But, really, who wants to count points in French? 

Several buttery croissants later we were back in the U.S. and I got back on my plan. 

My husband calls the plan Pudge Pounders. I don't mind. Chubby people like him are jolly that way. 

Now he's sad because I lost 10 pounds and he didn't. 

He wants me to sign him up for the plan's special online program for men. 

"I want to lose 10 pounds," he says, "in a week." 

"You can't do that," I say. "It's not healthy. You have to exercise every day and limit ice cream to once a week." 

"Can I eat ice cream every day and limit exercise to once a week?" 

Helping him lose 10 pounds might be my greatest challenge. Pass the beets.