MOUMITA'S MUSINGS: Diet dilemma

Un-dear people on diets: get over yourselves. Sure you want to lose weight, but if you’re going to do things like only eat three oranges a day, or avoid all carbs, or boil everything, or munch on one lettuce leaf followed by half a glass of water to avoid bloating, stay home till the mania passes. Do not even attempt to participate in a social life, or you will make enemies forever.

I say this because I am starving to death after a dinner out with a (now former) friend, who only informed me once we were seated that he is on a diet and can only eat raw salads. Considering we had met at a restaurant that specialises in meat, I was left with a dilemma. Should I order my favourite pork chops with mashed potatoes, extra gravy, and one julienne of carrot and one green bean (cos I promised my mother I’d eat my vegetables) as my (now former) friend sat across from me and gloomily munched his lettuce and carrot? Or should I not put temptation in his path, and eat rabbit food myself?

As you can tell by the hanger (hungry anger) in my tone of voice, I had the rabbit food, and I am a very unhappy bunny now, knowing that after I finish writing this column, I will have to have garlic-laden chilli chicken and capsicum-packed hakka noodles delivered, which means I’ll have paid for dinner twice, and been dissatisfied both times.

The social problems created by dieters don’t end there. For instance, I bet you’ve had those visitors for whom you’ve rushed around frying aloo tikkis and boiling cauldrons of masala chai, only to have them announce that they’re on Keto diet and can only drink half a glass of cold-pressed extra virgin coconut oil poured from a glass bottle, and maybe eat one slice of raw onion without salt. They can’t really say until they call their nutritionists.

You’ve heard of people who are out and proud, right? Well, I’m stout and proud. I’ve only been on a diet once in my life, and that lasted just for a week because I was so hungry that I chewed up my computer keyboard twice. If I’d continued the diet, I’d have had to buy a keyboard-manufacturing company to replace all the ones I ate, and frankly, I couldn’t afford it. 

But never once in those days did I meet my friends for a meal, which is why I still have friends. Because if I had met them when I was so hungry, I’d have eaten them. And boy! Would that have been a social problem.