A BAD YEAR FOR THE DOG - excerpt By Gina Lovoi 2001 The next day I got up, put a block on her e-mails and began the Zone.  Eight hours into the Zone and I already hated it.  I only had four and a half more months to go.  I’d be those twenty pounds thinner damn you, you crazy, insulting, Italian bitch.  This was the last time anything would ever happen again.  EVER! The diet lasted about half a day.  I don’t want to talk about dieting because talking about dieting makes me almost as angry as dieting itself.  Who you decide to talk to about dieting determines the amount of anger provoked in each conversation.  The non-dieters, the ones who had never attempted a diet in their lives, used to be at the top of my aggravation list because no matter what you said to them, they simply didn’t get it and it didn’t matter which side they took – prodiet or antidiet.  That kind has been replaced by those who are fellow dieters and are just as messed up with their weight swings as you.   A typical conversation starts off with me telling one of them that I’ve decided to go back on a diet.  They will rebuttal with something about how unhealthy dieting is to the human body.  Specifically, I was talking to Michelle the other day and I told her my plans to go back on the Zone.  She immediately followed that by saying that the Zone is such a horrrrriiiibble diet.   Not that Michelle has ever been on the Zone, but maybe she read that somewhere or heard it from Dr. Dean Adel on the seven o’clock news or perhaps her doctor told her that dieting is bad for one’s health and any diet now is hhhooooorrrriiiible.  Uh huh, yeah, I know that dieting isn’t so great for you, but mentally I need something else to focus on (something other than her) and although I would have liked to let her know exactly how fucked up my choice of a new focus was by sharing the fact that she was always talking about weight and one way of really getting at her was by obtaining something that she was always trying her best to obtain.  Of course I didn’t let Michelle know this because it was rather the same story with her.  I had lived with Michelle for two years and the entire time my five foot four body was heavier than her five foot nine body.  Michelle was no skinny mini, but it was clear that she felt a step ahead of the cute game when she could fit into all kinds of vintage, corduroy, bell-bottom pants from the local thrift store, which were somewhat popular in the day of Nirvana and Mudhoney.  I, on the other hand, was forced to wear men’s clothing because they were the only things that would come up high enough in size to illy fit me.  No matter what pants I found, they were consistently three to five inches larger in the waist to accommodate my ample ass and thighs.  It caused a buckling every time I bent over or sat down which revealed the droopiest of any repairman’s decrepit work pants.  It was embarrassing and it’s a wonder that I didn’t completely give up on girl clothes in a time when cute, fat-girl clothes were non-existent.  In the early nineties it was a muumuu-type smock or a polyester something or other or naked.  The last was simply not an option, none of them were options, so I was stuck with the messed up man pants.  Since I was talking to Michelle about this diet thing, I dare not bring up her past dieting habits.  I mean where did she find the gall to be telling me of dangerous dieting habits when several years ago her idea of safely loosing weight equaled eating nothing all day and drinking vodka in the evening?  This diet certainly produced one of the most dramatic results of all the dieters I’ve ever been privy to when she passed out cold in the middle of The Great American Music Hall.  It all happened in slow motion, but I remember looking at her all dolled up in a vintage, snuggly fitting black dress and lots of red lipstick.  I looked over at her to give an approving look at how great the band sounded and wasn’t this a fun birthday celebration?  She was already somewhat blank in the eyes, then those blank eyes rolled back in her head…of course I thought she was kidding…making some sort of a joke, especially when she started to swerve back and forth with her upper body while her feet remained firmly planted on the ground.  That was until her feet left the floor completely and instead of her soles touching the ground, it was now the back heel on the ground with the soles completely visible to everyone, including the bouncers who immediately saw that something went awry.  I was on the ground yelling at Tiffany, Michelle’s current roommate and one of our best friends, to get some help. Tiffany was doing the math on what had just occurred, and once Tiffany figured it out (a matter of seconds because Tiffany is usually too smart for her own good), she began to get fully pissed at Michelle for ruining our birthday night out.  I, on the other hand, was rather clueless to Michelle’s diet that day and I was too busy being on the floor, freaking out that my friend had just passed out in the middle of a rather large and snotty swingster-type crowd.  The bouncers seemed to be used to this type of behavior, as two of them swooped down like buzzards on decay, grabbed her under either arm and swiftly propelled her into the nearest chair while shoving a glass of water in her limp, lifeless hand.   The rest of the night Tiffany and I counseled the teary-eyed, highly embarrassed Michelle on the dangers on not eating and especially not eating and drinking a bottle of vodka.  This type of behavior would not make your fat or your problems go away. So this was Michelle’s idea of how to loose weight and she was telling me that the Zone was hhhooooorrrrible.  I mean really, maybe I should combine the Zone with some Jack Daniels and that would be more up her alley.  She informed me that she was currently pigging out on chips and dip and something else that didn’t sound particularly good when I called, so my new idea to be on the Zone was not only hoooorrrrrrible, but didn’t I know that it was going to fuck with my metabolism and it would cause me to gain weight in the long run and a list of many other things that this Zone would be doing.  I knew she had a point, I knew she was probably right, I knew that I would be giving a similar speech to anyone who just told me they were about to embark on a diet, and this was because we are all in competition with one another.   We hate it when our friends start looking better than we do and so many of us equate looking good with loosing weight.  We use all the facts and tactics possible to steer them away from getting ahead of our depressed, over-eating asses.  Michelle actually went so far as to bring you cases full of decadent truffles now that she worked for a chocolate maker, knowing good and well that we’d accept them after a long diatribe how we didn’t need them.  We’d much rather everyone wallow in food with us.  I’ve seen plenty of pairs of friends go on diets together under the deception that they will be helping and encouraging one another, but never have a seen a pair of friends make a pact to stay off of diets together and just resign themselves to eating whatever, whenever the emotion strikes them.