Dieting? Well, It's Elementary, Really.

Wow – have I got a diet plan for you. Not that you need to be on a diet…. I’m just saying, this is an incredibly affective way to lose weight. Best thing is – it’s cheap and you don’t have to cook a thing. Are you ready for this?

I call it the Elementary Diet (oh boy, I hope that’s not trademarked somewhere….I can’t afford a lawyer….). This is how it works. Step one is to plan a day to attend lunch with your Kindergartener. Don’t have one in Kindergarten? That’s ok. Call your closest elementary school and tell them you want to volunteer to let the Kindergarten classroom assistant take a lunch off. Trust me – they won’t turn you down.

Next, show up at the school and find your lunch partner. Obviously this would be your own kid if you are a K-grade room parent, but if it’s not, then look for the one kid whose parents actually needed that memo sent home in the first nine weeks about the need for children to take a bath every day (yes, by the way, that memo was real – I still have it). Don’t worry, you’ll know how to spot him – he looks a little like Pigpen from the Peanuts. By the way, you will notice that lunch starts at 10:30, so you won’t be needing breakfast that morning. See? It’s already working and you haven’t even done anything yet!

Now saddle up in line behind your little one (or Pigpen), and grab a nice melamine tray full of gelatinous meat (if you’re lucky they’ll throw in some gravy), heat-lamped turnip greens and “California blend” veggies (seriously, do people in California even eat this stuff? I don’t think so). Oh, and don’t forget to grab a roll and a box of slightly chilled milk on the way out. Now, simply sit back and let the magic work itself.

You will find, ironically, that the actual food you have loaded onto your tray doesn’t really have anything to do with the diet itself. In fact, you may even find that even though it somewhat resembles the same exact food you ate in elementary school (leading you to wonder if they just have a gigantic never-ending storehouse of 25 year old freeze-dried food somewhere), today’s mystery dishes are now much healthier. They actually contain vitamins and proteins found in real produce and meat, and (believe it or not) tend to taste somewhat good. But don’t worry, you won’t have to fret over wanting seconds you’ll never be allowed to obtain. Trust me.

It is at this point that the diet truly begins in full swing. All you have to do is keep your eyes open. Watch the girl in front of you squish reconstituted mashed potatoes through the gap in her teeth. Check out the kid who is trying desperately to be funny by unsuccessfully shoving an orange peel the size of a small football into his mouth. Observe your neighbor spreading butter all over his ham before he eats it, simply because he ran out of bread and hasn’t figured out – yet – that he could just eat the butter out of the little cup all by itself (don’t worry – come back next week. He’ll have figured it out by then).

Then take a gander at the rest of the table. The kid who puts ketchup on everything – including his pears. The one with the stuffy nose who feels the need to unstuff it right at the table. The girl whose loving mom knows that she likes lots of mayonnaise spread on the lunchmeat before it’s wrapped around the pickle. The boy who seriously thinks his chocolate milk tastes better with peas in it. Oh yeah, I said peas. And all the while, notice that any somewhat tantalizing aromas that may have risen from your own tray have been blocked by the hand you have to keep throwing next to your nose every time Pigpen leans across you to tell your neighbor something that usually involves the phrase “Hey, watch what I can do!” (don’t watch, by the way. This is a diet plan, not a prescription for permanent self-starvation).

Even if you do decide to close your eyes for a moment or two and choke down some good ‘ole county government fare, don’t worry, you haven’t blown anything yet – the diet’s not even over. The torture will only last about 20 or 30 minutes, and then it will be time to prance your tray over to the wash window. This is the real grand finale – the icing on the cake, if you will. Check out what the lunch ladies do with all that left-over, ketchup-laden, partially-chewed decadence. Oh yeah, they throw it all together into this little trough that leads to a garbage disposal, where it backs up and lingers in a pile of spooge and nastiness, all the while begging for a violent shove of the scrapper to send it into the rotating blades of horror and put it out of its misery. Mmmm, just like mom used to make, huh? Well, guess what? There goes all hopes of wanting to eat dinner, and possibly even breakfast the next morning. See how it works?

Do this just a couple of times a month and the memories alone will be enough to keep the weight off for years. I’m really looking forward to fitting into those size 6 Diamond Cut jeans I couldn’t get rid of after monster-huge baby #1 (they were really new when I got pregnant…who wants to get rid of perfectly brand new jeans? Even if they are hmmfnumabah sizes too small….ahem….). Just a few more lunch dates, and I’ll be there….I just know it….

Happy eating, friends!