The BIG Diet (Or What Happens When You Deprive Yourself of Luscious Delights)--Week # 5

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I’m getting restless with the group therapy sessions.

When Brian–-he’s the cute therapist–-tells us to close our eyes and think about running on a warm, sandy beach, grains of wet sand stuck between our toes, all I can think about is a large, ripe banana, a brilliant yellow banana, just before it gets those brown spots.

I don’t even like bananas that much. But now they’re all I can think about.

I even buy a bottle of imitation banana extract and dump two caps into my shakes, but it isn’t the same; it’s not the taste I crave–-it’s the texture, the stringy, pulpy texture, the cool banana squishing between my teeth.

I call Diane, the nurse, and ask permission to dump a banana into the blender–-just this once–-and, of course, she says “No, that would compromise the diet.”

She’s right: I might lose control if I eat that banana, so I obey. I drink five diet sodas instead; by the end of the day, my body feels waterlogged.

Shel wants to make love, but he’s got to be kidding. I feel like a water bed about to explode.

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Source: “The Big Diet,” by Jennifer Semple Siegel, Are You EVER Going to Be Thin? (and other stories), 2004.

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© Jennifer Semple Siegel, 2004. This work may not be reprinted or reposted without permission from the author.