How many of you have ever gone on a strict diet only to realize that it was making you fatter?
*shoots my hand up* Me!

What are the restrictions of my diet? No carbs, one serving of protein a day, no chocolate (real or fake), and nothing made almost entirely of sugar.
Pretty much a big fat NO to everything I enjoy eating.
So I’ve been surviving on salads (no dressing), fruits, bags and bags of baby carrots (I think I consume about a pound of baby carrots a day, no joke), and coffee (although I’m not supposed to, I often ask for my coffee with half hot chocolate – which tastes really good by the way! – but technically, I’m supposed to have either dark coffee or that Splenda fake sugar stuff).
Says the girl who’s wiping muffin crumbs off her mouth.

See, if I actually were on that diet, I’d probably be thinner by now. Instead… well, for example, yesterday I had a liter of ice cream (homemade chocolate ice cream!) and a bag of chips. And the day before that I had a chicken finger wrap and a huge platter of nachos.

You see, the problem is that just the idea of being on a diet makes me hungry. Not your typical hungry either, it’s that kind of “OH EM GEE I AM DEPRIVING MYSELF OF ALL THE BEAUTIFUL THINGS IN LIFE what wonderful and delicious things could I be feasting on right now!” craving for all unhealthy foods in existence. Sure, that happens to all of us once in a while, especially when we’re down and Haagen Dazs seems to have the answer to all of life’s problems. But imagine that kind of craving screaming in every inch of your being EVERY SECOND OF THE DAY.

Everywhere I look, my eyes seem to only pick up the closest edible item, and if it sees none, my nose leads me to where I might be able to find some (which, on campus, is not hard at all). Every time I close my eyes, I see truffles and chicken wings fly before me and my fingers itch to dial the number of the closest Chinese take-out.

Actually, I think I just realized why I’m having so much trouble sleeping.

The other day, I planned an entire five-course dinner party in my head while I was lying in bed trying to sleep. I really didn’t mean to. I was trying to think about something that didn’t involve food, so I was going over my to-do list and one of things was to finalize the lease and deposit on my apartment (which I’ll be moving into at the end of the month). And then I recalled how excited I was to live out of residence in an apartment with a real kitchen! And then I thought, wouldn’t it be wonderful if I invited my friends over for dinner when school starts next semester? And before I knew it, I had listed off about ten dozen things for every course1. I’d have to create a menu and get my friends to order from it before they even showed up!
Indeed, this was no ordinary dinner party, this was a feast. The mother of all feasts, in fact. This was the kind of feast that I could invite all of humanity to and subsequently use to wipe out the entire human population because everyone would fall down dead after eating everything I planned to cook for them.

But I digress.
My original point is that as soon as the idea of a diet enters my mind, I immediately reach for the nearest drumstick and tear at it with all the ferociousness I can muster. Because, this may very well be my last drumstick, right?
And then I start eating everything as if it’ll be the last time I’ll ever chew and swallow, and before I know it, I’ve consumed far more than I normally would. Instead of a diet, I’m fattening myself up like an animal would before hibernation. I’m stocking up like a crazed lunatic before the pronounced apocalypse that would mark the end of human existence as we know it.

Are diets really that scary? Apparently, in my mind, they are.

(Pretending to) Diet has really opened my eyes to a world of worry that I used to be completely oblivious to. I never used to look at the Nutritional Servings chart at the back of bags of chips, and I never used to realize how many calories are in items that are marked as “low fat” or “healthy” foods. I’ve also discovered handy-dandy hunger-quelchers like zero-calorie Coke and Nestea, and slimming yogurts that only have 60 calories per cup. Unfortunately, I just ignore all those things and eat what I want anyways, assuming it’ll be the last (until tomorrow that is), and feeling slightly guilty about it up until I bite into that delicious chocolate covered wafer with a creamy hazelnut filling (these new Kinder Bueno things2 I found that are absolutely heavenly – despite the childish packaging) and everything else in the world ceases to exist. It’s just me and the Kinder Bueno stick of love (and maybe the soundtrack to Love Actually playing in the background), and I can concentrate on nothing else but rolling my tongue over that creamy hazelnut filling and closing my eyes with every crunch of the crisp wafer and debating whether or not to eat the packaging in case there are any crumbs left that aren’t detectable with the naked eye. In other words, having an orgasm in my seat in the library after an exhausting day of Not Dieting and Not Studying (my two favourite past-times).

I’ve also started to acutely notice just how many people “do the diet thing” – eat salad without dressing or with “light” dressing, flip over every bag of chips on the rack to find the ones with the least calories, buy zero-calorie Nestea instead of regular Nestea, and pick rice off their food as if they’re allergic to carbs. And when I relate to my friends about my dieting problems, they all seem to be able to offer advice.
Good God, is the entire world on a diet? At least, the entire North American continent seems to be. Even my mom is on a diet (and sparing me no details about it), and she’s the cute (but plump) little Asian woman who urges my dad to cook enough food to feed the entire Chinese army – every day! Until this year, I’ve never gone near any semblance of a diet, and now that I have, it seems like everyone else was in on this secret society all along, while I’ve maintained a stead fast loyalty to Colonel Sanders and his chicken.
Maybe that’s why the majority of North Americans are getting fatter by the minute. It’s all this dieting, I tell you!

  1. I even wrote some of it down, because I AM ACTUALLY SERIOUS ABOUT THIS. Before you extend your sympathies to me for being the saddest creature on earth, have a look at what I’m going to make (with my limited cooking skills – which will clearly improve by the time I hold this dinner party).
    SOUPS: Miso soup, sweet and sour soup, pork and radish soup, egg drop soup, veggie tomato soup, wonton soup
    SALADS: Thai mango salad, garden salad with honey mustard dressing, caesar salad, fruit salad, potato salad, mandarin orange salad
    APPETIZERS: Edamame, spicy tofu and fish balls, kimchi, pickled radish, a variety of spring rolls, veggie and shrimp, fried dumplings, egg wrap, roast beef cold cuts, spiced seaweed and bean sprouts, thai-style veggie/chicken/shrimp skewers with peanut sauce, “pepper poppers” (peppers stuffed with… stuffing)
    DESSERTS: Bailey’s/Kahlua with french vanilla ice cream, mango/chocolate mouse cake, strawberry cheesecake, cherry pie, chocolate-covered strawberries/pretzels, yogurt sundaes with fruit
    I won’t list the entrees and drinks because that would just be too much. [↩]
  2. Turns out these do exist as real chocolate bars and not simply a figment of my imagination. I was terribly confused when I first saw them because the only “Kinder” I’d ever known were the Kinder Surprise eggs and I had no idea they made other products. Moreover, I am not the only person who enjoys Kinder Buenos (1, 2, 3) although I have no idea why they chose to market this premium product to kids. Clearly, depressed adults – especially ones on diets – would love to indulge in something like this. Discovering this chocolate bar is really a landmark moment in my life, for it fulfills all the characteristics of my ideal chocolate bar: a crispy wafer, the sweet taste of hazelnut, milk chocolate – but not too much, and a chocolate snack that isn’t too dense. [↩]