People who diet are facing themselves in a battle of desperation against an implacable foe. The survival instinct, honed by God or thousands of years of evolution, is pitted against fear of death and the need to look pretty. They wrestle over and over in the mind, as the gluttonous smorgasbord that is modern society trundles by around them. At a given moment, the fear of death wins, pinning its slathering foe beneath the boot of rational denial. But just as victory seems apparent, the irrational mind throws up a dust screen of distraction and when it clears the bewildered fellow finds his face smeared with Boston creme donuts and wallowing in a tub of frosting with two giant Twinkies outfitted in scanty swimwear. Such is the reality of the modern dieter, a creature so pitiful even Tantalus in his agony reaches out and plucks the forbidden fruit to offer sustenance to the sufferer.
But look! There on the horizon is another toned body, chiseled with rippling muscles. This genetic freak, this Darwinian throwback that would not have lasted a single hungry season, has news for the the desperate dieter. Eat this way, in this proportion, and you too can look like me! Honest, look at this science. Ignore all those other diets that don't work, mine will work because I have more pretty pictures of airbrushed bodies joyfully starving per square inch.
And at what altar does the dieter pray? No God affixes their altar. It is a humble object placed on the bathroom floor, worshiped and venerated beyond all else. Quietly the dieter approaches the object, stripped of all, cleaned inside and out, ready for the sacrifice. Trembling feet adjust themselves to cold metal, and the object speaks. It is a cruel God, dispensing grief and joy seemingly without justice. One day a slight down tick of its face sends the body into rapture. The sun is out and the birds are singing the Hallelujah chorus! The next day without cause it dispenses an uptick that destroys moods, egos, and sanity.
Such is the life of a dieter.
But look! There on the horizon is another toned body, chiseled with rippling muscles. This genetic freak, this Darwinian throwback that would not have lasted a single hungry season, has news for the the desperate dieter. Eat this way, in this proportion, and you too can look like me! Honest, look at this science. Ignore all those other diets that don't work, mine will work because I have more pretty pictures of airbrushed bodies joyfully starving per square inch.
And at what altar does the dieter pray? No God affixes their altar. It is a humble object placed on the bathroom floor, worshiped and venerated beyond all else. Quietly the dieter approaches the object, stripped of all, cleaned inside and out, ready for the sacrifice. Trembling feet adjust themselves to cold metal, and the object speaks. It is a cruel God, dispensing grief and joy seemingly without justice. One day a slight down tick of its face sends the body into rapture. The sun is out and the birds are singing the Hallelujah chorus! The next day without cause it dispenses an uptick that destroys moods, egos, and sanity.
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