Do or diet

After three of the Busiest Months of My Life, I finally looked down from my desk - and saw that I've grown a lot smarter and a bit wider than when I started. So today, I went to the bookstore at the mall and checked out some diet books. And I have some advice for all of their authors. Here goes:

1) I have a life. All of your recipes are for things like Moroccan Strawberry Chicken Drizzle, with 43 ingredients, and two hours of preparation time. I am glad that you all have time to make dishes like this for each of your meals. Unfortunately, I don't.

2) I also have food allergies. Soy and nuts, among other things. And those 43 ingredients I mentioned? Seems like I'm usually allergic to two of them. Go look up "food allergy" in the dictionary, check out the most common ones (mine are pretty common), and think of us once in a while, OK?

3) Make nice with each other. It seems like every diet book spends at least two chapters explaining why every other diet book's approach will make my hair fall out, my muscle mass go down, my social life disappear, and my weight eventually come zooming back. Here is what I've learned so far from each of you:

-Cut out carbohydrates
-Don't cut out carbohydrates
-Don't eat more than 1200 calories a day
-Don't eat less than 1600 calories a day
-Drink milk
-Don't drink milk
-Limit all of your fats
-Have lots of monounsaturated fats

Meanwhile, you all want me to spend between 15 and 25 dollars for books where, apparently, only one of you is correct and the rest of you are bald-faced liars. Could you folks all lock yourselves in a room somewhere and go fight it out, and then let me know who won?

And ironically, I am exactly the kind of customer these diet books want. I am motivated to lose weight. I am willing to go hungry for a while if I know what I'm doing. And I'm happy to plunk down money for books or even coaching, once I know whom to believe. But for now, I feel like trying to lose weight from a diet book is a little like trying develop good mental health by watching Dr. Phil. Who, oh yeah, also wrote a diet book. So I'm back to the drawing board for now, if not the bookstore. Wish me well.