I am not an Alien aka Why I will Never be Slim

Recently, I was talking to an annoying perky slim person.  It was four in the afternoon.  Here’s what she said:

“I’m really hungry because I forgot to have lunch today.”

Eh, what?  Are you kidding me?  Is this person human? Who forgets to have lunch?

No, really.  Have you ever worked in an office?  It goes something like this:

Any sane person I know who works for a living starts clock-watching at 11:30, at the latest.  Only half an hour…only twenty minutes…I’ll go to the bathroom.  Talk to Rachel in accounting.  Is it noon yet?  WILL THAT CLOCK EVER MOVE?

Things aren’t much different if you are an author writing from home.  It is currently 11:06 am.  I have decided to write this humour column to distract myself from the lure of the last-night leftovers.  Because I know from experience that if I eat lunch at 11, then dinner somehow gets downed by 3:30.  And even the Hobbits don’t indulge in second dinner.

To set the record straight, I have never missed a meal in my life.  Okay, I’ve been toilet-bowl-sick and passed on solid food, but only because I knew it wouldn’t stay down in its current form.  I didn’t *forget* to eat.

The 3 o-clock meeting has some of the same attributes.  I’m willing to bet that the annoyingly slim person above hasn’t even thought about the fact that the main virtue of morning or afternoon meetings is the plate of muffins in the table center.  Lose your muffins, lose your allies. And wait for the grumbling.  Not just stomachs.

Speaking of stomachs, more annoyingly slim person dialogue I have been witness to:

 “Ooh.  I ate a whole egg.  I bet you can see the bulge in my stomach now.”

“I’m starving.  Do you feel like soup?  I could really down a whole cup of fat-free chicken broth with nothing in it.  Yum.”

“Salad.  Let’s have a salad.  We can use lemon juice instead of salad dressing, if you’re worried about the calories.”  <eyes drop to my waist>

Okay, the clock is getting closer to 12:00, so I'll wrap this up quickly by circling back to the post title:

What kind of planet are these people from, who forget to eat?

My take on people who forget to eat is that they are probably from some place like Mars or Jupiter where they don’t have carbs growing conveniently out of the ground.  Which makes them aliens. 

I always knew slim people were aliens.

Final joke I sold to a standup comedian back in the day:

“I had the flu once.  It was awful.  I couldn’t eat a thing for three hours.”

WHEN TOOTHPASTE IS A FOOD GROUP - more comedy from BAD GIRL

First published in The Globe and Mail. Reprinted with permission.

I’ve always been a curvy girl.  Even in youth, I had more in common with Sophia than Twiggy, and towards the end of the last decade, I was definitely in the Marilyn class.  But lately, there has been a slight shifting of the curves…a lower European drop, so to speak.  The crisis came last January, when the sweet little store Clerkette asked me when I was ‘due’.  For the record, I was done long ago.

It was obvious: this couldn’t go on.  This former beach babe was on track to becoming a beach ball.  Badly needed was a swift revision of the current eating strategy, which involved stuffing in as much as possible in order to avoid the famine that might just come in the next seven hundred years or so.    

First, I tried Weight Watchers.  Nice people and sound advice, but all the ‘counting’ had me thinking about food every hour.  I fetished over fruitcake.  I don’t even like fruitcake.  This was not for me.

In desperation, I turned to television.  Prepackaged food plans are all the rage on cable:  “Look at me!  I’m a Grandmother, and love prancing around in a bikini again…” Hey, that annoying person could be me, back in a size 2!  I was a size 2 in grade four. There had to be a sensible way of eating for life, that didn’t involve wacky obsessions.

Which got me thinking… thin people are thin because of how they eat.  And if I watched them carefully and copied them religiously, surely I would be thin in time, too?

Brilliant, I thought!  Piece of cake, I thought!  Why do all my idioms involve food?

I went in search of a role model.  Dianne came to mind, a tall blonde colleague, willowy slim.  She once told me that she hadn’t had butter in over 15 years.   I remembered a conversation we had during a conference. It was one-thirty, lunchtime had come and gone, and I was ravenous.  Leather portfolios were starting to look tasty.  

“Are you hungry?” Dianne said.  “I’m starving.  Do you want to go down and get a bowl of soup?  I could really do with a bowl of soup.”

We went down to the cafeteria.  I had a chicken salad sandwich with mayo and fries.  Dianne had a bowl of clear chicken soup with 4 soda crackers.  

"Oh, that was good,” she said.  “I’m stuffed.”  And she didn’t eat anything more until dinner at seven, when she had a large salad with no dressing.

Soup is the answer, no question.  I shall have a bowl of soup every day for lunch and not eat anything else until dinner.  I shall be as slim as Dianne, eventually.  Who needs crackers? 

DAY ONE

7 a.m.:  I hate breakfast in the early morning.  Dianne never eats breakfast.  Coffee with milk (yuck) instead of cream and out the door.

10 a.m.:  In a meeting.  Will she ever shut up?  Somebody pass the muffins.  They’re pigs at that end of the table – pigs!  Oh yeah – I can’t have one.  I’m being good.

12 noon:  Soup!  I’m having soup and it’s really good.  Salty.  Chickeny.  It’s gone.  That was quick.  I’m feeling righteous.  This can work, I think.

1 p.m.:  Ate the 4 crackers that came with the soup.

2 p.m.:  Went searching for gum, breath mints, anything.

3 p.m.:  Snuck somebody’s Diet Coke from the fridge.

4 p.m.:  Screamed at my staff for talking.

5 p.m.:  Sobbed quietly in the washroom.

6 p.m.:  Raced home, setting new record.  Chewed all five pieces of sugarless gum left in the package, while shifting gears.

7 p.m.:  Ate salad of spinach, romaine, tomato, 1 egg, 1-ounce low-fat cheese, no dressing, while family munched leftover lasagna and trifle.

8 p.m.:  Yelled at the kids for talking.

9 p.m.:  Looked for snack.  Surely thin people have a snack before bed?  All that Easter chocolate hanging around.  What would a thin person eat?  Probably just one piece, and it would be dark chocolate for sure.  I broke off a small piece of bunny and swilled it down with skim milk.

2 a.m.:  Dreamt about food.  Glorious food.  Roast beef with Yorkshire, macaroni and cheese, cocktail parties with canapé.  Dianne was stuffing her face with Brie. 

4 a.m.:  Got up and ate the rest of the chocolate bunny.

            I’ve learned two things from my day of eating like a thin person.

1. I will never be tall and blonde and thin.
2. When you’re starving, toothpaste can be a food group.

Tomorrow is a new day and I am trying a new approach:  eat like two thin people.

-30-

 Melodie Campbell writes funny books.  The Goddaughter's Revenge is now available at Chapters, Barnes&Noble and Amazon.

Bring me Italian and hold the Salad - more anti-diet comedy

“I am SO not a salad girl.”

Some people say this is one of the funniest lines in my screwball comedy novel, THE GODDAUGHTER.  It is spoken by Gino Galla, goddaughter to the mob boss in Hamilton, the city of steel.  Gina is a curvy girl.  She says this line to her new guy Pete, as a kind of warning.

I’ve come to the conclusion that women who remain slim past the age of 40 actually like salad.  Yes, it’s an astonishing fact.  For some people, eating raw green weeds is not a punishment. 

Not me.  I’m Italian.  We know our food.  Ever been to an Italian wedding?  First, you load up with appetizers and wine, or Campari with Orange Juice if you’re lucky.  When you are too stuffed to stand  up anymore (why did you wear three inch heels?  Honestly you do this every time…) you sit down at a table, kerplunk.  

Bring on the antipasto.  Genoa sausage, olives, marinated veggies, breadsticks, yum.  Melon with prosciutto.  Bread with olive oil/balsamic vinegar dip.  White wine.  Then comes the pasta al olio.  Sublime.  

Carbs are important fuel, right?  And I’m gonna need that fuel to get through the main course, because it’s likely to be roast chicken, veal parmesan, osso buco, risotto, polenta, stuffed artichokes (yum), more bread, red wine.

Ever notice that salad is served after the main course in an Italian meal?  Good reason for that.  We aren’t stupid.  Hopefully, you will have no room left for it.

If you do manage to eat it, you’ll be so stuffed from what came before that you won’t even notice.

So you can be a bunny and eat salad all you like.  Bunnies are cute and harmless.

But I am more like a frontier wolf.   Try to feed me only salad, and see how harmless I am.

When Toothpaste is a Food Group (reprinted with permission from the Globe and Mail)

I’ve always been a curvy girl.  Even in youth, I had more in common with Sophia than Twiggy, and towards the end of the last century, I was definitely in the Marilyn class.  But lately, there has been a slight shifting of the curves…the crisis came last week, when sweet little store Clerkette asked me when I was ‘due’.  For the record, I was done long ago.

This former beach babe was on track to becoming a beach ball.  Badly needed was a revision of the current eating strategy, which involved stuffing in as much as possible in order to avoid the famine that might just come in the next seven hundred years.

In desperation, I turned to television.  Prepackaged food plans are all the rage on cable:  “Look at me!  I’m a Grandmother, and love prancing around in a bikini again…” Hey, that annoying person in a size 2 could be me!  I was a size 2 maybe in grade four.  There had to be a sensible way of eating for life that didn’t involve wacky obsessions.

Which got me thinking… thin people are thin because of how they eat.  And if I watched them and copied them, surely I would be thin in time, too?  Brilliant, I thought!  Piece of cake!  Why do all my idioms involve food?

I went in search of a role model.  Diane came to mind, a tall blonde colleague, willowy slim.  I remembered a conversation we had during a conference. It was one-thirty, lunchtime had come and gone, and leather portfolios were starting to look tasty. 

“Are you hungry?” Diane said.  “I’m starving.  Do you want to go down and get a bowl of soup?  I could really do with a bowl of soup.”

We went to the cafeteria.  I had a chicken salad sandwich with mayo and fries.  Diane had a bowl of clear chicken soup with 4 crackers. 

“Oh, that was good,” she said.  “I’m stuffed.”  And she didn’t eat anything more until dinner, when she had a large salad with no dressing.

Soup is the answer, no question.  I shall have a bowl of soup every day for lunch and not eat anything else until dinner.  I shall be as slim as Diane, eventually.  Right?

DAY ONE

7 a.m.:  I hate breakfast.  Diane never eats breakfast.  Coffee with milk (yuck) instead of cream and out the door.

10 a.m.:  In a meeting.  Will she ever shut up?  Somebody pass the muffins.  They’re pigs at that end of the table – pigs!  Oh yeah – I can’t have one.  I’m being good.

12 noon:  Soup!  I’m having soup and it’s really good.  Salty.  Chickeny.  It’s gone.  That was quick.  

1 p.m.:  Ate the 4 crackers that came with the soup.

2 p.m.:  Went searching for gum, breath mints, anything.

3 p.m.:  Snuck somebody’s Diet Coke from the fridge.

4 p.m.:  Screamed at my staff for talking.

5 p.m.:  Sobbed quietly in the washroom.

6 p.m.:  Raced home, setting new record.  Chewed all remaining pieces of sugarless gum in the package.

7 p.m.:  Ate salad of spinach, romaine, tomato, 1 egg, 1-ounce low-fat cheese, no dressing, while family munched leftover lasagna and trifle.

8 p.m.:  Yelled at children for talking.

9 p.m.:  Looked for snack.  All that Easter chocolate hanging around.  What would a thin person eat?  Probably just one piece.  I broke off a small piece of bunny.

2 a.m.:  Dreamt about food.  Glorious food.  Roast beef with Yorkshire, macaroni and cheese, cocktail parties with canapé. 

4 a.m.:  Got up and ate the rest of the bunny.

            I’ve learned two things from my day of eating like a thin person.

1. I will never be tall and blonde and thin.
2. When you’re starving, toothpaste can be a food group.

Tomorrow is a new day and I am trying a new approach:  eat like two thin people.

-30-

Melodie's heroine Rowena is definitely on the curvy side.  Rowena Through the Wall (Imajin Books) is now available in ebook and paperback from Amazon.com and Smashwords.