Review: Dieting
“Low fat is for fat people” – Paris HiltonI mentioned this to my mother, who doesn’t eat bread or potatoes and sometimes eats rice cakes with marmalade for breakfast. “She has a point,” she said.
Everyone knows that just thinking about being on a diet is enough to make you thinner. I am surprised I haven’t already lost a couple of stone just by thinking thin thoughts. I am not one of those people who wants to be thin “for myself”. I want to be thin for other people, so that they admire me and want to do me. If I were on a desert island, I would eat cream cakes, if I could find any. OK: if I were on a desert island with a patisserie, I would eat cream cakes. I would buy a big bag of cakes, eat some and set fire to the rest, so that passing ships would spot the smoke and rescue me.
As an incompetent dieter, I am caught between those people who look down on me for even trying – “ha, look at me, I eat hundreds of chips and can still wedge myself into these size eight jeans” – and people who look down on me for being crap at it – “ha, look at me, I eat nothing at all and can therefore wedge myself into these size eight jeans”. During my Thin Period a couple of years ago, everything went wrong when the bouncers at the club where I worked started buying me burgers. I’d tell them I was on a diet, and they’d look me up and down and say I didn’t need to diet. And I didn’t have the heart to tell them I looked like I didn’t need to diet as a result of careful dieting. Well, and I liked eating burgers.
The problem with dieting, as pointed out by Helen Fielding, is that you start to think that the optimum number of calories per day is zero and anything on top of that is just greed and lack of self-control. It’s like trying to play hard to get: you start to think that it’s best to show boys no affection whatsoever, so as not to seem weak, and then over several years work up to things like smiling thinly at them and letting them hold your cigarette while you take off your coat.
Dieting: If I read one more article about Polly Vernon’s anorexia, I will scream. 3 out of 10.
posted by Eskimo @ 3:50 pm
17 Comments:
Why set fire to the cakes? Why not remove the cakes, set fire to the patisserie, and ration yourself to repletion while waiting to be rescued?
the patisserie would probably be a hallucination produced by starvation and isolation. and you can't set fire to a figment.
but otherwise: good point!
... work up to things like smiling thinly at them and letting them hold your cigarette while you take off your coat...
Hussy.
where's the article about polly vernon's anorexia please? My blog's all about polly vernon this week too!
hi ed. i only ever see you online. where are you? shall we have a quick drink to check that neither of us has become disproportionately successful?
maus: every polly vernon article is basically about her eating disorder. i swear. once you realise she has an eating disorder, it all makes horrible sense. i find her unbearable, and not just because she's a woman, although she would say this is because she's thinner than me.
Ugh... dieting is SUCH CRAP. Mostly because I suck at it and, as a result have reached a pleasant plumpness rivaling one Ethel Merman.
Wait. Replace "pleasant" with "repugnant." Yes. That's much better
Of course you can set fire to a figment. Just use an imaginary flame thrower, as I did on my family and several schools.
Oh, my success is all in proportion. Hem hem.
It would be lovely to meet you. Email me at ejklake@hotmail.com.
Polly Vernon... ah! The Observer's Cocktail Girl - I knew I'd seen her name. What a dreadful twat. And I bet her breath stinks.
food is evil, it keeps us alive.
what is all this blog-based misanthropy? i like people. i am not about not liking people. i am about rolling back the triumph of irony, is what i'm about.
I'm not sure Paris Hilton should be a fountain of wisdom. Possibly a trickle. Or a low-frequency geyser.
a spurt
A drool
Oooh, you're talking about me. What fun. But loves, I'm not anorexic, not at all, I'm just kinda thin, and happy to be so, so do read my stuff more carefully next time. Although when I say 'stuff' I've only written about being thin once in fact. And it was a joke really. A joke I made two years ago. Although I am fascinated by the rabid reaction. And I don't assume that anyone who disagrees with me is fatter than me. I'm mainly intrigued by the intensity of the reaction. But I should possibly get over it I guess.
I think that dieting should be explained to all as just normal healthy food but not 0 cal per day!
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