FOUR FROM THE HEART

HOW DO YOU spell diet?

N-a-r-cs-ss-m, of course. Face it. Any diet fanatic can spew forth an ink-cloud of smoothly rational reasons for embarking on yet another diet, but it all comes down to self-love, pure and simple. But will they admit it? No-o-oo. Across the nation, diet dictators grind out (low-sodium) baloney about health and then drag in the dieter’s favorite whipping organ: the heart. Ah, yes, the heart. According to diet dogma, our hearts like us more when we weigh less.

But any stigma will do to beat a dogma. Actually, there’s not one ounce of scientific proof that hearts are even vaguely aware of pounds and ounces or, in metric lands, of kilos and grams. Why should the heart concern itself with problems cropping up way out there on the waistline? To the heart – that smug capital of the body -those globby saddlebags of fat swaying on your backside are as remote as Wolf Point, Montana, is from Washington, D.C.

As any true romantic knows, hearts mind their own business, and the business of hearts is love, not fat. At the heart of the matter, what matters to the heart are those affairs of the heart. Worrying is the brain’s job, and no smart heart will be flimflammed into taking up the brain’s workload. Hearts break, yes, but not from fretting over mozzarella-clogged arteries or a second helping of bananas Foster.

Still, the hard-core dieter (frantic to rationalize his love affair with a mirror) will have no truck with common sense. Nobody ever saw a heart with ulcers, but the legions of the lean continue their propa-gandistic campaign on behalf of the heart. These bleeding hearts love to depict this privileged, elitist organ as a downtrodden, cruelly used beast of burden. For them, the heart is the little engine that can’t, stoically toiling up steep grades while pulling boxcars loaded with quivering fat. According to this heartbleep, the poor heart worries and worries until…until…well, you know the rest.

In order to postpone this sorry fate, we are told, we must diet. That’s diet, like die with a t. And diets, despite their apparent diversity, have one thing in common: They’re all duller than asparagus. Between yawns, dieters love to talk about that mythical thin person inside each of us just yearning to break out. (But they never talk about the fat person outside each of us just itching to get in.) Beyond this, no dieter has anything interesting to say.

From Tarnower to Stillman to Atkins, the diet gurus make one big, fat mistake: They promise a leaner, fitter you. And that’s the rub. Even that leaner, fitter you will still have to mail out the bills and wash the car and listen to your brother-in-law talk about the new hot tub he just installed.

Secretly, we all want a diet that will let us be someone else, at least for a few weeks. That was the allure of the Sixties cliché “you are what you eat” -the belief that changing our diet might change our lives. So, for the sake of experiment, we offer these D Magazine Change Your Life Diets. Let us know how they work.



THE GREENVILLE AVENUE DIET



9 a.m.-5 p.m.: Nothing

Happy hour: 2 large olives from martini 3 celery stalks, 1 cucumber slice, 1 radish from Bloody Mary

1 lime slice from Perrier

1 maraschino cherry and 1 orange slice from pina colada

215 chips

2.5 jalapenos

(if pickup successful, follow Plan A; if unsuccessful, follow Plan B)



Plan A

Hot tub snack:: 3 Velamints

2 Mooseheads

Later: Major pig-out at Mariano’s

4 margaritas

Midnight snack: Chablis, brie, stoneground wheat crackers

3 Velamints

PlanB

Drown sorrows in I quart BlueBell Cookies ’n’ Cream ice cream and The David Letterman Show



THE SAM SLADE TOUGH-GUY DIET



Breakfast: 2 hard-boiled eggs

1 cup java from nearby hash house

1 slug of booze from bottle in hotel room

Lunch: 2 slugs of booze from bottle in desk drawer

Dinner: 1 greasy burger, gulped while waiting for suspect to emerge from Sans Souci

3 slugs of booze from bottle in glove compartment



THE REPORTER’S DEADLINE DIET



Breakfast: 1 1/2 donuts left from yesterday’s editorial meeting

4 cups coffee

Lunch: 2 Rolaids

4 cups coffee

1 pint complimentary icecream from Geláre

Dinner: 3 Rolaids

14 crab cakes, 12 canapés and 2 double scotches at pressconference for opening ofnew hotel

Midnight 1/2 donut left from yesterday’s

snack:editorial meeting



THE ROCK OF AGES DIET



Feast: 1 fatted calf, seasoned to taste assorted loaves and fishes sweetmeats wine manna, if available