Toss Your Cookies

So one of my 2010 resolutions is to lose 10 20 30 pounds. This is basically the same resolution I have made since 1987. It is interesting to think about the motivations for losing weight. Maybe it is a new year’s resolution or an upcoming wedding or reunion, or like me, maybe just a chance to see your feet one more time before you die.

So I did what any woman would do to lose weight, I cried and then I bought new shoes. It didn’t help me lose any weight but it did make me feel better. However, since I still needed to lose weight, I went on a diet. It took me a few months, but I finally hit my stride. I was sort of on a roll because the holidays were over and I had completely run out of peanut butter cups. I had even gotten used to a life without bacon when the unthinkable happened. I was sitting on the couch reading about low-fat, high-fiber and generally tasteless food, when I heard this sound . . . ding-dong. I peaked out the window . . . but couldn’t see anything. Ding-dong . . . ding-dong. So, I went to the door and there it was—the cutest little Girl Scout you have ever seen and what did she have? You know what she had, she had the goods, she had cookies. AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!

So now I have to hide from the Girl Scouts and they are everywhere. And I mean EVERYWHERE! They set up little kiosks all over the place with giant signs that say one word “COOKIES!” I was almost in a 3-car pile up yesterday when the guy in front of me saw one of their signs and took a hard right without signaling. I would have been mad, but I was under-going sugar detox myself and sympathized with his craving. The sad thing about these Girl Scouts is they don’t even put a price up. No one cares what they have to pay to get these cookies. Last year I paid a scalper $600 for an opened and half-empty box of Thin-Mints and felt like I got a deal. There are only 6 Somoas per box, and with the prices those girls charge, it works out to roughly one-thousand dollars per cookie. But do I complain? No. No, I do not. I say, “Can I have 4 boxes of Do-Si-Dos, 3 boxes of Tagalongs, 6 boxes of Trefoils, 10 boxes of Samoas and give me a case of Thin Mints.”

If I had one (more) complaint about the girl scouts, it is that the ones in my neighborhood are lazy. They only come to one house on their door-to-door trips: Mine. If I don’t meet their cookie purchasing demands they threaten to start dealing, I mean selling, to my neighbors. At first I stonewall, but cookie withdrawal always gets the better of me and I just sign the form the delivery guy gives me and tell him to use the fork-lift to deliver my pallets of cookies—no use in us both straining our backs.

The only thing I say “no” to are those new cookies, the healthy ones. They have like, fiber and berries in them. Gag. Some of them have no sugar. Let me tell you something, a cookie without sugar is called a cracker. If I want berries, I will put them on my cheesecake. If I want to stop eating sugar I will stop pouring it on my cereal and putting it on my French toast. And, if I want to eat fiber I will take a pill, like every other American, not get it in my food like some uncivilized weirdo.

Yes, Girl Scouts strike fear in the heart of every man, but I really feel for those poor little Boy Scouts. The girls have cookies; you know what they make the boys sell? Popcorn. That just isn’t even fair. Now, they do offer popcorn that is covered in powdered, partially hydrogenated cheese flavored by-product and they also offer one with chocolate drizzle, but it just isn’t the same. Those boys would do a better business if they sold black-market meat out of the back of a dirty camper trailer on the street corner. My husband, like me, cannot resist the tug of the Girl Scouts marketing strategy, but he cannot slam the door on the faces of those little Boy Scouts fast enough. He said, “They are boys, they need to learn rejection now. See that one on the porch crying, I am helping him become a man.”

Selling popcorn is just setting them up to fail. What they should do is sell something masculine and outdoorsy. I think they should sell chili door to door--now that is manly. They could come up with names like Atomic Burst, Blazing Intestine, Rectum Wrecker, Maximum Velocity Blow Torch, Esophageal Explosion, Gut Grenade, and Bleeding Ulcer. They can have it made with mystery meats that the boys bludgeon to death with tent-poles and Swiss army knives out on their camping trips. I would buy it, not necessarily to eat, but it would make a great gift. They could also come out with their own line of jerky called “Almost no hair on it.” I think it could be a goldmine.

Something else that would help is if they let those boys use more high pressure sales tactics. For example, how about showing customers new knots they have learned. They tie folks up with them and only un-tie them if they promise to purchase 10 pounds of jerky. Or they show customers how to start a campfire using pinewood derby cars . . . in their living room.

Now, before you send me a bunch of hate mail, I love the Boy Scouts. There is a boy under my very roof who used to be a scout, and I feel quite affectionate toward him. I don’t love the Girl Scouts more than the Boy Scouts, I just love cookies more than popcorn. If I wasn’t on a diet I would buy both, but since I am on a diet I will purchase neither.

Once you tell people you are on a diet, if they are your friends, they will usually try to sabotage your dieting efforts. They will start by saying mean things like, “I was going to have you over for dinner but I knew you were on a diet.” Or they will say, “I made this wonderful chocolate torte and I was going to bring some over for you to try but I know you are on a diet.” If those things don’t work, they will move on to step 2. They will say things like: “So, have you lost any weight?” If someone has to ask you if you have lost weight, the diet is not going well.

When I tell people I am on a diet they always want to know “which one?” So I say, “The one that makes you wear smaller clothes.” Then they want to know, “Is it Weight Watchers, Atkins, Jenny Craig, South Beach, etc.?” It is none of those. It is the Sonia original. It consists of eating 1 cup of coffee for breakfast, 1 rice cake and a grape for lunch, 1 cup of undressed lettuce for dinner, and for dessert--an entire New York Cheesecake.

I don’t understand why people go on these crazy diets. Low-carb, low-fat, only juice, only fruit, vegan, raw food--it is maddening. What’s next, you’re only allowed to eat Himalayan yak juice and Goji berries? I need a diet I can live with. Face it, no matter how much I weigh I am going to lie on my driver’s license. That is why I have developed my own dieting tips.

Dieting Tips for Non-Dieters:

Make sure your friends are fatter than you so you look thinner by comparison.

Remember, horizontal stripes are not the enemy; the sales girl at Nordstrom’s is the enemy.

Diet sodas do not counter-act the calories in a cheeseburger. However, a bottle of wine with the meal will make it so that you don’t care.

Frozen yogurt is a good substitute for ice cream. Mostly because it tastes like garbage and after two bites you will stop eating it.

The fattest professions are Truckers, Lawyers, Plumbers and IT workers, so don’t get one of these jobs. The thinnest professions are Models, Actors and Sports Stars—so go for those jobs.

A carnival mirror is a useful dieting tool. Purchase one that makes your body look skinny and your head odd-shaped and bulbous. Then you will think the problem is in your brain, which it is.

Eat less food. If you usually have 2 Snickers bars, cut down to one.

And no matter what, stay away from the Girl Scouts, especially ones that are hawking cookies!