Noom
Instructions: Pay $70 a month to count calories in an app and get daily reminders that celery has fewer calories than cake frosting.
Advantages: A fleeting sense of satisfaction from signing up and paying for a service.
Cons: Ruin brunch by judging the calorie density of your friends’ meals; targeted advertising for Noom for the rest of your life.
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French women don’t get fat
Instructions: Eat tiny portions of your favorite foods with a vintage seafood fork. Serve poached pears at dinner parties. Start wearing scarves and smoking a pack of cigarettes a day; sizzle at fat people.
Advantages: A single tarte tatin from the farmer’s market can keep for up to five days.
Cons: Clarins anti-aging serum is no match for cigarettes. Plus you starve.
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Intermittent fasting
Instructions: Incorporate large intervals of no food into your day and/or week (for example, eat all meals within a six to eight hour window).
Cons: Ruin brunch by skipping it in favor of a twenty-ounce buttered coffee and tell everyone about your new podcast. Strong mood swings.
Advantages: Unlike other diets, hanging mood swings happen at predictable times.
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keto diet
Instructions: Eat 70 percent fat by combining eggs, bacon, nut butters and artificial sweeteners into uncanny valley analogues of real foods. Say “I’m in ketosis” to excuse a host of unpleasant interpersonal behaviors.
Advantages: Finally use all those leftover mayonnaise packets; weekly groceries may eventually be replaced by a single Arby’s party dish and bag of almonds.
Cons: Unbearable bowel movements once every six days; scurvy.
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Grapefruit diet
Instructions: Add half a grapefruit to any low-fat, low-calorie meal. Add whole grapefruits between meals to maintain homeostasis.
Advantages: Generous bulk discount from Sunkist; no more scurvy.
Cons: Ruin the brunch by explaining how grapefruit’s interaction with Zoloft sent you to the ER multiple times; soft teeth; diarrhea.
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Costco diet
Instructions: Practice portion control by eating only free samples. Take more than 15,000 steps a day by walking in circles through a cavernous warehouse.
Advantages: Discovery of Kirkland Signature Cashew Clusters.
Cons: High risk of derailed diet and overdraft due to regular purchase of Kirkland Signature Cashew Clusters; Wednesday samples are usually Tide Pods and flavored seltzers.
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Raw vegan diet (“rabbit food”)
Instructions: Consume only uncooked, plant-based foods (for example, fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds soaked in water). Maintain eye contact without blinking with anyone eating bacon.
Advantages: Divine sense of superiority.
Cons: Impossible to talk about “eating nut cheese” with a straight face; blood transfusion for iron deficiency not insured; targeted ads for the ASPCA; ruin brunch with horror stories about concentrated animal feed operations.
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Purina Complete Pellets (rabbit food)
Instructions: Before your Costco membership expires, order a fifty-pound bag of Purina Complete Rabbit Pellets. Eat them like popcorn. Drink a liter of water a day from a bottle with a ball bearing on the end of an angled metal spout.
Advantages: Easiest meal planning of any diet; siblings estranged during the raw vegan phase can reconcile during rabbit pellet intervention.
Cons: The vitamin A content in rabbit pellets causes blurred vision and hair loss in humans an order of magnitude worse than a weekly Tide Pod washed down with mango-lime seltzer.
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Jordan Peterson’s All-Meat Diet
Instructions: Eat only premium, organic, grass-fed beef and drink only water. Hiss at French women.
Advantages: Diseases you were never diagnosed with have magically disappeared.
Cons: Unbearable bowel movements once every ten days; meat sweating; ruin brunch by talking about jordan peterson.
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paleo diet
Instructions: Mimic our Paleolithic ancestors by eating only food that can be obtained by hunting and gathering.
Advantages: The local cave system maintains the base temperature of 50°F year round (suitable housing option after going broke from all that Jordan Peterson beef); new bow hunting skills useful in the event of a societal collapse.
Cons: Local cave system inhabited by Burning Man enthusiasts; no outlets for your podcast equipment; ruining brunch by trying to take a sponge bath in the First Watch bathroom.
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Black market Ozempic alternative
(compound semaglutide of
illegal online pharmacy)
Instructions: Once a week, inject your abdomen, upper arm, or thigh with the contents of an unlabeled syringe that comes in the mail.
Advantages: No targeted ads on the dark web.
Cons: Semaglutide takes twenty years off your body and adds them directly to your face; DEA watchlist; pancreatitis; you’re not invited to brunch anymore.
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Not on a diet
Instructions: Eat what you like when you are hungry. Stop when you’re satisfied (or not).
Advantages: Hours of time and attention reclaimed.
Cons: