Lethal Dose

Oh Princess Luciana! I can’t find out any info if you are alive or dead, but then again, does it really matter? I can just consult one of your books for an answer to my most pressing problems.

“Dear P.L.,

With the holiday season here, I feel just horrible! I am working out harder than ever, but I can feel those pesky pounds piling on. What’s a duchess to do?”

Let’s turn to page 61 of “The Beautiful People’s Diet Book, chapter “Exit Fat City.”

“One of the major difficulties, i suppose, in losing weight in normal life* is that the whole process is such a bore. On the other hand, so is being fat. It is not heroid to stop eating too much; on the contrary, I would say it is common sense, and while the initial phase of stringent dieting takes willpower, once you have redimensioned our attitude towards food, you body will redimension itself. The basic line of attack is not on spare tire, fat bottom, and pot belly; instead you first come to grips with faulty thinking - you get the right amount and the right kind of food on the brain. I have listed various drastic, limited, or tedious reducing techniques more for their shock value than for practical results. It does not matter how the message gets to the mind as long as it gets there: totting up calories with the satisfaction of Donald Duck’s Uncle Scrooge counting his dollars; the drama and suspense of fatsing; special injections and intravenous feedings; the total elimination of certain foods for the compensation of eating to satiety on others … depending on the way your mind fucntions, you choose whatever convinces you that less is more.

If you are really desperate, you can even turn to the last-ditch therapies of shock treatment or surgery - the latter for reducing specific body areas and the former, as far as I can see, for reducing the brain.”

Well, I am desperate … but if I’m lobotomized, will I care if I need to lose 5 lbs?

*That would be us - the common people. P.L. is not bothered by such problems, but thankfully has volunteered to graciously share her secrets with us - sort of a charity.

P.L. ponders the boredom of other people’s weight loss.

P.L. after leaving a luncheon where she refrained from all forms of food.