Eight People to Avoid While on a Diet

When you're on a diet, there are people who will sabotage you. Some will be friends, others coworkers, and still others who like to see fat people squirm. These are eight types of individuals to stay away from while you try to lose weight.

1) The friend who is ready, willing, and able to help. This person may or may not even be a real friend. Yet, they see you passing by the fresh bagels in the break area at work. They sniff the air like wolverines at the scent of the container of 2% milk fat cottage cheese you brought in for lunch and they realize you want to lose weight. Whether they are a coworker or someone you're related to, this pain in the ass is going to count every calorie you put in your mouth as if they have a personal stake in your health.

"Are you sure you can have that, honey? You shouldn't have the toast unless it's whole wheat." It doesn't matter which plan you're following, they are the one who is going to make sure you will stick to it, whether they are familiar with your diet plan or not.

2) The Devil in the Devil Dogs. This person is someone you really don't like and you're only polite to him/her because you work with them. Because food is present in most work places for in the form of birthday cakes, doughnuts and bagels for breakfast, cafeteria cuisine, and catering for other corporate functions, this person senses your weakness and derives a gleeful pleasure from watching you squirm while others nosh.

"You can have one, it's not going to kill you," they say. Unfortunately, the food item they point to while grinning as you fight temptation can actually kill you in the long run.

3) The formerly fat person. This saboteur does not understand the damage they do. Having been obese and successfully losing enormous weight, they see others struggling with weight loss as sick patients whom they will both counsel and tutor in the exact same way weight loss occurred for them. They feel camaraderie with you. They are in this battle with you whether you like it or not, or if you need their help or not. Little do they realize that not everyone has the same physiology, mental makeup, and taste buds they do. Also, there is more than one diet plan and some of them make sense for one and not the other. The formerly fat is staked to their system and everything else seems like folly.

"You're allowed five grams of fat a day? That's not good. You'd better read the instructions again."

They become the unwelcome cheerleader in your life, seeking you out at every function, usually waiting for you at the buffet line with their hands clasped in front of them and a helpful smile.

"There's a fruit tray right over there; and, they have melon!"

4) The loving, denying, enabler. This person is most likely a close friend or a family member who needs you to stay the way you are, for fatter or for worse. There is no evil or bad intent with this person. They simply refuse to believe there is anything wrong with you. They invite you to their home, prepare a tray of lasagna, and seem vaguely insulted when you explain that your cholesterol number has a comma in it and you need to lose weight.

"But, I made this because you LOVE lasagna!"

5) Anyone for any reason dining with you in a restaurant who hears you order a salad, and ONLY a salad. You might as well ask for a revolver with one round in the chamber.

"Come on, you're in a restaurant, you can have the pasta. They make it fresh here." Yes, they also sell it in boxes, in cans, and at the pizza joint down the block. That's how you became fat in the first place.

6) The fitness freaks. They are the ones who go the gym before work for an hour of "cardio," so they can work on their abs during lunch and go home after work so they can run through the neighborhood until ten o'clock at night in an orange, reflective vest. They'll pass by you in your cubicle while you open a container of Dannon Low Fat Yogurt with the not-quite-real-fruit coating the bottom of the cup. They'll skid to a stop on one heel, a la Fred Flintstone, and double back to offer you their unsolicited advice.

"How many hours a day do you exercise?" Hours? Per day? The only exercise you get is pushing a shopping cart up and down the freezer aisle of the supermarket searching for fat-free fudgesicles. Sure, you'd love to work out more, but that comes after dropping fifty or sixty pounds so you can reach for a fallen paper clip next to your desk without wheezing.

7) The quasi-medically-trained person. This person can be a nurse, nurse's aide, medical technician, or merely answer the phone in a doctor's office. Aside from an actual medical doctor -- a trained professional who knows you, your history, and who obtained a medical degree -- this person is to be avoided at any cost and more than any of the above. Why? Because a little bit of knowledge is enough to kill you, and certainly is inadequate to help you. This is the person you meet at a party or social gathering and is someone you either know a little or not at all. Usually, you already dropped a lot of weight and you're feeling really good about yourself. Others are beginning to notice your weight loss and you are free for a night out and not have to worry about your diet for a few hours. This person is seated at your table. They may be the boyfriend/girlfriend or one of your cousins. While others congratulate you on your hard work, the quasi-medical person sits back and gives you the once-over with a look reserved for an undated Tupperware container of tuna found in the back of the fridge.

"Your doctor put you on Atkins/South Beach/Weight Watchers/Nutri-System? That diet makes your adrenal-muscular-adenoidenal-hypo-sub-systemic-glandular-cardiac-renal-tryptphanic-glycemic index spike to hyper-abnormal levels. I wouldn't go back to that guy. He doesn't know what he's talking about."

8) The product/system/workout-device salesperson. Anything you're doing is pointless because the dietary supplement, exercise equipment, diet plan, or psychological self-help book, video, or audio tape they are selling is not only the best way to lose weight, improve your sex life, give you energy, improve your memory, kill your appetite, reverse the aging process, it can make you money!

"Not only can you buy this product from us at wholesale prices, you can EARN MONEY by becoming a dealer just like us! You can sell to your friends, co-workers, family (if they still talk to you after pestering them relentlessly until they buy your crap). You can throw parties and invite every single person you ever stood behind on line at the supermarket. You'll be thin, healthy, rich, and friendless. Never get invited to a family function again!"

-M.J. Kannengieser

Much Later, My Love

I heard a song the other day which reminded me of when I was a teenager. It’s important to know the title of this tune and the band that played it; and, what’s also interesting is that it made me recall a series of incidents which I find mystifying to this day.

As I sat in the driveway of my home listening to that song the car radio, I flashed back to my days as a sixteen year old working in the town library after school.

One of the librarians I worked with was a friendly woman with two children whom she talked about often. She lived in nearby town; but, not close enough where I’d know anyone from her neighborhood. I did meet her daughter, though, a pretty girl about my age, who often visited her mom at the library accompanied by her friends. I never said more than “hello” to the girl, and only once or twice I was in the same room with her as she would often enter the library and go directly to her mom’s office.

I left the job after I graduated high school and lost contact with the librarian and her daughter.

Years later, I met my wife and we began to date. While becoming acquainted, we talked about growing up and school and about our friends. It wasn’t long before we discovered that the woman I worked with at the library lived next door to her; and, that her daughter was my “new girlfriend’s” best friend. I also learned that their families were extremely close and often vacationed together. My wife considered her friend’s parents to be surrogate relatives, calling them “Aunt Millie” and “Uncle Joe.” When I was reintroduced to her friend, Diana, she remembered me from the library and our reunion was pleasant, if not amusing.

The one benefit of this coincidence was that my future mother in law was relieved to learn that her daughter’s new boyfriend, me, was considered to be a “nice young man” by her librarian friend, Mrs. Martens. My background investigation was completed with a stamp of approval coming from my former boss who just so happened to live next door to my girlfriend.

After four years of dating and engagement, we had a big, Italian wedding, and in due course, two wonderful children followed. During that span of time, I joined the police department and since retired, my wife advanced in her career, and we both reached middle age. Our family is doing well and I’d like to think that there is a lot more history to be made between my wife and me.

Every so often, we have some quiet time to chat as the day to day tasks of working and taking care of the kids means that we have few occasions to be alone and just talk. Sunday mornings, we rise early, at around six o’clock, and head downstairs while the kids are still sleeping to have coffee and read the Sunday paper. This is our opportunity to enjoy each other's company and to share a hushed laugh. Occasionally, we surprise ourselves.

On one particular weekend morning not too long ago, we talked about various jobs we had in high school. Of course, we reminisced about how I worked with Mrs. Martens all those years and eventually ended up marrying the woman whom she regarded her “niece.” I described how I remembered seeing Diana coming and going to the library with her friends all the time and my wife raised an eyebrow.

“What do you mean she used to go to the library with all of her friends?” she asked.

I picked my head up from the sports section and looked at her. “Huh? That’s exactly what I mean. Diana always had a friend with her as she came to visit her mom.”

“She never took anyone to the library but me. I went there with her all the time.”

My mouth opened and I paused a moment. Finally I spoke.

“You mean to tell me that was you who I saw with Diana way back when I was sixteen years old?”

We both stared at each other. It was a moment when we both understood how eerie the circumstances actually were. More than just the coincidence of working with Mrs. Martens in the library, and then meeting her again nearly ten years later while dating her daughter’s best friend, was the fact that I used to regularly bump into the woman I would someday ask on a date, fall in love with, become engaged to, marry, and father two children with. All of this happened long before I would meet her one evening in a loud, smoky, night club and asked her to dance at one thirty in the morning.

“I have the chills.” I remember my wife saying.

“Wow. That was you the whole time? I can’t believe it. And we wouldn’t meet again for almost ten years as total strangers in a bar.” I pondered.

It took a few more seconds for that insight to sink in for both of us; yet, it required twenty years for us to finally discover this concurrence. We still chuckle about it. And, once in a while, something will make me ponder the mystery surrounding the memories I have of a young, teenaged girl following her friend around the library as I watched from between the book shelves.

Her image remains blank, as if shaded to obscure her identity. In my recollections of her at the library, she exists as an anthology of fleeting glimpses and passing glances. I’m unable to conjure a distinct likeness of her. The discovery of our previous encounters is like unearthing a treasure chest and finding nothing inside. It hurts because I can’t envision her walking next to Diana; and, I wish I was able to remember what she looked like when we came within precious inches of each other not knowing that one day we'd meet again and fulfill a new destiny.

Yesterday I sat in my car in the driveway of my home, and listened to a song I first heard as a sixteen year old teenager back in 1980 while driving to my job at the library. Inside that building was a woman who would remain an obscure outline in my mind for many years until the day I found her again and she became my wife.

That song made its own significance clear by its title: “Don’t Stand so Close to me,” by The Police. For me, it reminds me of a young man edged by providence away from the woman whom he was supposed to fall in love with later on in life, and not before. Perhaps if I stood closer to her, if our eyes met and we chatted like two awkward teenagers, things would have turned out differently. Who knows? What I do know for sure is that I am happy. We are happy, together.





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That's for Life

On December 20, 2006, I woke up at around five o’clock in the morning, one hour before I typically arise, and did something I never do that early in the day. I checked my e-mail. My inbox contained a message from a woman whom I only knew casually through my best friend and former partner in the police department. Her name is Denise, and my friend Stephen hired her to work in the shop he owned. I helped out at his store fixing his computers and doing some counter work with the customers. Denise and I often talked and joked when we were there together, but our relationship was strictly professional as we were both married and had families. Besides, she was Stephen’s friend from childhood.

I was curious to see a message from Denise, but not shocked. I did give her the address, not one that I use for personal e-mails, but a Yahoo! e-mail address I give to people I am “iffy” about. The subject line caught my attention, though.

“Urgent! Please read!”

It wasn’t spam, and I didn’t think she would hit me up with some sort of business scheme; but, for the life of me I couldn’t think of a single issue where I’d need to speak to her in a hurry.

Stephen closed his shop up a few months earlier. Business in the shipping and receiving world was bad, especially since he had to compete with FedEx and UPS. Cutting his losses, he decided to sell collectibles on EBay and enjoy his well deserved pension from the NYPD. Denise started a new business with her husband and by then I got a job with my current employer at the college. With that said, I had no real reason to have any contact with Denise unless Stephen was involved.

I opened the e-mail.

“Mike, call me the moment you read this. It is important. Even if it is two o’clock in the morning, please call. I need to speak to you!”

She included her home phone, her cell phone, and the number to the business her and her husband owned together. At five a.m. I wasn’t going to call anybody, especially a woman I was only casually acquainted with; and, not with my wife in the shower getting ready for work a few yards away in our master bathroom. I didn’t want to have to withstand the district attorney style grilling she'd give me if I was caught calling a thirty-something woman from the secretive confines of our computer room at the crack of dawn.

I waited until I got to work. My job keeps me in front of a computer all day and I can check my e-mail messages at will. I opened My Yahoo!, navigated to my inbox, found her cell phone number, and then I called her up.

“Mike, oh my God Mike. It’s about Stephen.” She was bawling, weeping uncontrollably.

“What Denise, what happened?” My stomach tightened.

“He died. He died last night. He had a heart attack.” She said something else but I didn’t understand it.

I was reminded of that old joke where the guy was bluntly informed “The cat died;” but, it wasn’t the humor in that gag which struck me, it was the lack of preparation for the sad news he was given which was the punch line.

There was no "wind up" to her delivery. She blurted "he died," just like that.

The relationship you have with somebody and how you are given bad news about them says an awful lot about how people think of your association with that person. Stephen was my friend since 1989. We worked together in a squad car for almost six years, backed each other up each other on the streets, and knew things about each other which our families were not aware of. Still, I found it odd that the only person to reach out to me during that initial period of shock and mourning was a woman I was affiliated with through my part-time employment.

Once, only a few years ago, Stephen helped me out by giving me a job, insisting on paying me to set up his computer network. Times were a bit tough for me and my family as I was recently retired from the police department. I had brand new computer certifications, but no experience. One evening, when we were locking up his store, I thanked him, told him how much he was helping me, and I added that I did not think I could pay him back. With a raised hand, he cut me off and said “Hey, we rode in a sector car together. That’s for life.”

“He died?” That was all I could muster in response.

She gave me the details stating that he picked up his son Jimmy, his only child, from the airport. Jimmy had come home from college to be with his parents for the holidays. Stephen was divorced, but he bought a home around the block from his ex-wife to be close to his son and to help raise him. To his credit, he maintained an amicable relationship with her for their son's benefit. I only met his former spouse, Terry, once as they had been separated for many years. That night, he took his son home to meet his new girlfriend, a woman whom he had been seeing for about two months. The three of them had plans to go out for dinner. When he was preparing for a shower, he fell to the floor and was unable to be revived.

I hung up with Denise and ran outside my building. It was a crisp, clear day, and I ignored the cold. The folks in my office couldn’t help but overhearing what I said to Denise, but they politely refrained from asking what was going on until I eventually told them about my friend's passing.

For about two hours I was in shock and denial. In order to make some sense of what happened, I called the county coroner’s office. A polite woman who answered the phone knew whom I was referring to off the top of her head.

“Yes, sir, he was brought in last night. His ex-wife is coming to claim his body.”

He was no longer a person, but a body.

After muttering a few polite words of thanks, I hung up. The Dean offered me the rest of the day off and I refused. The best way to deal with his passing, as unexpected as it was for a forty eight year old man to drop dead, was to simply put my head down and work.

After hanging up with the corner's office and conferring with my supervisor, I called my wife to tell her about Stephen.

“What do you mean he died?” She asked with the same incredulity which I had when I spoke with Denise. “Isn’t he supposed to come over tomorrow?”

She was right. He was due to come by the next day for an informal visit just before Christmas and I was looking forward to seeing him. Instead, I was going to attend his wake.

The next evening I arrived at the funeral home and was curiously pleased to see marked, New York City police cars among the clogged streets and parking lots nearby. Hundreds showed up to pay their respects. If you knew Stephen you loved him. He was smart, funny, gregarious, and had a bit of a mischievous side to him. But, he was loyal to a fault. As I wended my way through the dozens of officers congregating on the front steps of the funeral home, some I knew well, others only vaguely, it struck me that as good of a friend as I was to him, I was only one of many hundreds whose lives he touched; and, I am ashamed to admit that I was a tad jealous.

Denise arrived with her husband and sought me out. She explained that she did not know my telephone number and found my e-mail address on a scrap of paper at the bottom of her pocketbook. It was a minor miracle considering that I gave it to her a year before. Stephen’s son Jimmy was remarkably poised for a young man who watched his dad die only two nights earlier. And then I saw Terry.

A receiving line formed in front of her as she took up a spot near his casket. Terry arranged the funeral, the wake, and his burial. She even dug through his closets and found all of the items for his dress uniform, including his name plate, shield, tie, collar brass, and other insignia. She’d done well, and I was touched, as she and her son were the only family Stephen had in the world.

“Hi Terry, you don’t remember me, but I’m Michael, Stephen’s friend.” I offered my hand and she took it and looked me in the eye.

“You’re Michael?” At first, I thought she didn’t hear me. Then she repeated herself.

“You’re Michael? Oh my goodness. You’re all Stephen ever spoke about.”
She stepped back and looked me up and down. Then, she smiled, but not in a happy way; but as if to confirm a suspicion.

“All these years,” she continued “all I ever heard was ‘Mike and I did this, and ‘Mike and I did that.’ He spoke about you all the time, more than anyone in this room.” Of course, she didn’t include their son in that comparison.

It didn’t occur to me that I was crying until she offered me a tissue. We talked a bit more and then I paid my respects to my buddy resting in a coffin.

Outside, I mingled with the cops, some in uniform and others in dark colored suits, on the front steps. Most of them wore grim expressions while they talked shop and reminisced about the good old days when Stephen was alive. I couldn’t wait to get the hell away from them. I was reminded of how much my life had changed since leaving "The Job" as I was now used to the more comfortable and safe environment the college has to offer. It was also obvious that one of the last connections to my former life in law enforcement, my friend and partner, was erased forever.

In the months following Stephen’s death, I was unable to get a hold of his son in spite of his acknowledgement that we should stay in touch. In addition, Denise has remained aloof. I do not want to interfere with her life; and in fact, we had no relationship at all except for when we worked at our mutual friend’s business. Every once in a while when I hear a joke that he would have laughed at, or when I see a gadget he would have enjoyed, or when I stumble on a difficult memory from my days on patrol, I think of him.

Early in my early career as a rookie, a veteran cop who was about to retire offered me this adage:

“On this job, you’ll have secrets which you won’t tell your wife, your parents, your priest, or anyone that you know, except your partner. Those things die with you.”

Man, was he right about that. As of today, I have nothing but a few photos to remind me of the time I had with my friend. In many ways, it is as if he never existed. There is no one else who I can turn to and talk about all of the things I did with him, and no one who will understand except other cops; and, still there are things that even they should not be privy to. All of that died with my partner.

A long time ago, we rode in a sector car together. That’s for life.

Author’s note: The original story about Stephen’s death “Goodbye to a True Friend” can be read here. It was written the morning after he passed away.





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When Life Turns To Stone

There’s a little something in my writing which the reader has no way of picking up on. In my novels, I honor my best friend who died when he was only twenty one years old way back in 1985. The Wade Thompson I knew would have scoffed at anyone doing something so trite; but, the way I see it, he may have changed his mind if he was alive today.

In my first novel, I have a character with the initials W.T. In my second novel, the protagonist buries a suitcase full of stolen cash in three feet of snow at a cemetery, in front of the headstone of Robert Wade Thompson. In my last novel one of the characters based solely on his personality. My visits to him in my stories are my homage to his life, and they don’t necessarily reflect my actual visits to his grave.

Frozen in my mind as an athletic, young, long haired man with a cigarette dangling from the corner of his lips, the Wade Thompson I knew remained someone I could visit even after death. He listened quietly, I imagined, as I told him about my life when I stopped by the cemetery. He’s buried just miles outside our hometown in a small, quiet, private graveyard next to his mother. She had passed away a few years after he did. Over the years, I’d make a side trip to see him while on the way to my parent’s home.

Last August when my mother was dying, I went there once more to pay my respects before I headed to see my mom for maybe the last time before she passed away. As I always did, I kept him up to date with the events in my life and I told him about what was happening to my mother. This visit was different, though. Suddenly, when for all these years I’d been able to have my gratifying little graveside chats with my buddy, it lost its meaning.

I stooped over his headstone, looking at the inscribed words “Loving Son, Brother, and Friend” and was no longer able to attribute them to Wade. My head spun. My mom was going to be buried soon, and we made her funeral arrangements the day before. I didn’t want her to go, yet I knew it as inevitable. Still, there I was, asking my deceased friend for help with my grief. It was time I came to terms with the fact that he was dead.

Wade was twenty one years old when he died suddenly from complications due to Juvenile Diabetes. We knew he was getting sicker, yet that didn’t stop the two of us from wanting to go to school for computer science together. Also, it didn’t hold up our plans to share an apartment and split the rent as two pals would. After his death, the reflection of his friendship stayed with me all the way through my acceptance to the New York City Police Academy, my marriage to my wife, the births of my two children, and up until the moment when my mom faced her own mortality. Then, in one moment of clarity, he was gone.

This was not his fault. I was the one who glorified him, both in my writing, and in the way I kept him alive by seeking him out for “chats” at the graveyard. My other friends over the years all learned about him, saw his photos and tried to understand as I explained how much of an influence he had on my existence. There was always the question in my mind when I faced a problem “What would Wade have done?” That day, a little over a year ago on that tiny plot of grass, I couldn’t find my friend anymore. There was just a gray, carved stone. Dirt filled the crevices of the chiseled letters which formed his name. I don’t know how it happened, but I believe he wanted to go on. There had to be a point where I needed to grow up and face my problems without relying on a friend who died twenty one years earlier.

Wade never went to college, never got married, did not have children, never had a career, and he died before his mother did. Maybe he couldn’t be there for me. Perhaps he was never around the way I belived he was and I couldn’t, or wouldn’t realize it. I walked away from his headstone that day and went to my parent’s house, around the corner from where my friend grew up, and watched my mother leave us the next afternoon. It’s okay, they are both gone now, and we are all going to meet the same fate. I’ll continue to hide secrets about my buddy in the paragraphs of my novels and short stories. He’d like that, if he was still alive.



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