by Caroline Raisler

Note: This piece is a creative exercise that borrows much of its text from Dr. Atkins' New Diet Revolution by Robert C. Atkins, M.D., specifically from pages 4, 5, and 32. No offense is meant to Dr. Atkins or anyone on the Atkins diet.

Simply put, you avoid the negative consequences of too much carbohydrate intake, all of which can be attributed to too much insulin release in the body. Would you like to see what I mean? Well, since they say one picture is worth a thousand words, how about two? Avoiding the negative consequences involves turning over when he turns his sugar-sticky hands to you. You know the negative consequences of that release of insulin, how it leaves you shaky and alone when later, he calls.

Here's the first picture. Let your fancy run free. Four months ago, he wanted it inside you. Would you like to be freed from hunger much of the day? You can be freed much of the day, but the hunger may hit again around five o'clock, when the telephone crackles that he is not coming home. The cell phone service is bad. Maybe he's in a tunnel. But you know he's calling to say what he always does: the train is late. The 4:07 used to be late and not have him home until five. Then the 5:02 came late and he got home at six. Now some days it's the 5:59, still late. Would you like to be freed from the feeling that the train cannot be late every night?

You can be freed from hunger much of the day, but can you be freed from memories? He used to turn to you at night - hands carbohydrates, tongue sugar - and eat until you were pleasantly satisfied and full. You used to enjoy foods so rich that you've never seen them on any other diet. You used to enjoy the dough he filled you up with. Now it sits, uncooked, in your belly.

Would you like to reduce your appetite via a perfectly natural metabolic function of the body? Never have to count calories again? Never have to think of the weight within you, feeding off every calorie you eat, consuming your flesh for energy? Never feel it rising?

Eliminate addictive food habits? Does the drinking of him when he is not looking count as addictive? You eliminate the turning to him when he is gone in sleep, the counting of his breaths, the timing of them with the ticking of the clock and the pulsing of what is inside you. But could you eliminate the licking of the sheets the morning after he leaves, tasting the salty sweet he leaves behind?

Do you experience steady loss, even if you have had dramatic failures in the past? Does time leap from the snap of his briefcase in the morning to the crackle of the telephone in the evening and find you still in bed? Would you like to experience a dramatic failure of memory?

Would you like to learn a way of eating that will keep any lost weight from coming back? Are you listening to the slow slurping of the bubbles inside you? Would you like to learn a way of being that will keep him from ever coming back?

My second picture is of you. In the short term, it's a sure road daily misery, making you irritable and tired during the day and sleepless at night. But I'm very hopeful that it resembles the future you. The you in this picture I'm conjuring up is finally the weight you've always had as your goal, or fairly close. You feel great - full of energy. The dough inside you blazes by day. Your skin is glowing. In the sleepless nights you are an oven. In the sleepless nights beside him, you burn your own skin.

Or would you like to slow the aging process? Slow the crackle of carbohydrates on your tongue. The words come easier these days, when he calls and says he cannot hear you. Would you like to enjoy enhanced energy? Then use for fuel the words that drip like fat from your lips. Nonsense words like garbage can and dog hair and rubber glove and baby gate. Nonsense words mean nothing to him except don't come home.

Would you like to feel better than you have for years? Would you like to minimize your risk factors? Bolster your self-confidence? Improve health problems that have accompanied your excess weight? Then melt the fat off your bones; blister your baggy skin off in the fire. Would you like him to touch your shaking knots of red muscle, or would you rather leave a loaf of leavened bread? Would you let him see you like this? Or would you like to be alone?

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Caroline Raisler lives in Maryland, where she is working on an M.A. in writing from Johns Hopkins University. This is her first published story.