When I realized spring break was only three weeks away, those ads on Facebook really started to freak me out. I found myself wondering whether I was ready for spring break as I double-fisted a beef burrito and a 20 oz. grape soda.
""Maybe not..."" I began to speculate as I washed that down with four bowls of Lucky Charms. A jar of Nutella later, I decided a fast-acting diet was in order. I had no idea which to choose, so I decided to set a few perimeters to simplify my search.
First of all, like most college students, I'm crazy busy and ridiculously poor, so my diet needed to be cheap and easy, just like my last boyfriend.
Secondly, I don't exercise on a regular basis, or ever for that matter, so my diet would need to be workout free.
Finally, I wanted to be a stone-cold fox by spring break, so this diet needed to be damn quick.
The first diet I tried was the Atkins diet. This diet involves eating lots of lean meat and vegetables while cutting back on sugar and carbohydrates. It was very popular a few years ago and millions of Americans still swear by it.
After attempting this diet for a total of 3.6 hours, I concluded that millions of Americans are completely insane, and should probably not be allowed to vote or own firearms. Don't get me wrong—I love meat. The thought of an extra-rare porterhouse steak makes me drool like I'm wearing headgear again. It's the exclusion of carbohydrates and sugar I simply could not handle. The moment I swore them off, they began to haunt me. Fruit Loops went on sale, Mum sent me oatmeal cookies and someone left a tub of cream cheese frosting in the fridge.
Baguettes called seductively from bakery displays, marshmallow Peeps showed up in my dreams and Twinkies threw themselves into the street as I walked by. I caved. I was found by a Coldstone employee several hours later, curled into the fetal position underneath a table. Pour some sugar on me; I just couldn't do it.
The grapefruit diet was next. It was a few hours later, after I'd been blinded by an erratic seed and had burned a large citric acid hole in my esophagus that I remembered I do not, in fact, love grapefruit all that much. However, I love grapefruit juice and vodka.
I decided to try the natural diet next. There's been quite a bit of press recently surrounding this plan, which advocates eating only what was available to our distant ancestors. Distant as in ""I just learned to walk upright and use these sweet new thumbs"" distant.
The diet prohibits any man-made compounds like high-fructose corn syrup. Pop-Tarts, frozen pizza, orange juice, Ramen noodles, beer and anything remotely enticing or delicious.
The weight-loss mechanism in this diet becomes quite clear after attempting it for any period of time. You lose weight because you cannot eat. Ever.
Spring break is now only two weeks away, but I'm feeling confident about my newest diet. The poor college student diet may not be politically correct, but as far as cost, ease and effectiveness goes, it's one of the best I've scrounged up yet, pun completely intended.
So if you see a scrappy, stone-cold fox searching trash bins on State Street this week, help a sister out and toss me your half-eaten Chipotle. Don't forget, you've got a spring break to get ready for, too.
