So last week I did this diet with my wife called, "The Military Diet". The wife lost 15-20 lbs last year doing this diet, and she looks fantastic, and she's been asking me to join in on the fun with her, but I had refused for the longest time. I respect the power of diets, but I much prefer to run, swim, skip rope and basically do a triathlon to get my excess weight off. I don't get too many chances to flex my athletic prowess anymore, so I rely on my workouts to fill that void. But last week I decided to give in and make the magic happen. The diet is all about depriving yourself with as little food as possible, and as a result of all this malnourishment, I was cranky as hell for the three days (ok two and a half) I had to the diet. The worst part of the diet was eating a grapefruit.

Now, I'm a huge fan of grapefruit juice. My late grandmother kept her some grapefruit juice in the fridge, and despite its occasionally bitter taste, I drank it like a champ because she did. I've also tasted the Ruby Red grapefruit juice, but that's cheating because they sweeten up way more than is necessary. Natural grapefruit juice does the trick as well. But in my 39 years of living on this Earth, I had never eaten a grapefruit, and now this diet was completely taking me out of my comfort zone and forcing me to tackle this unknown monster.

Before I left the house, I got a brief tutorial from the wife on how to eat it...the grapefruit that is. She said to take a knife and cut all the way to create about 7 or 8 different sections, and then to take that same knife and cut in a circle which would allow me to scoop up the pieces of grapefruit. It sounded easy enough, so I got to work and sat down, I tried this method and all hell broke loose. I cut the grapefruit in sections, and in the process, it squirted all over my good work clothes. Still, I thought that was just part of the risk involved when eating this fruit, so I pressed on and went to step two of the plan. I took a knife around the edges of the fruit, and more squirting went down. On top of that, I was unable to dislodge the grapefruit from the skin, so I started slicing and dicing everything in sight with the knife. All that resulted in was more squirting and frustration.

So at this point, I picked up the fruit, and just sucked all the damn juice I could out of it. I literally treated the fruit like it was a juice box, turned it upside down, and drank that sh*t like a champ. Mind you, I had co-workers walking by my desk periodically, so I had to be as smooth and discreet as possible. I have a (work) image to uphold. So here I was, holding a juiceless grapefruit, trying to figure out how the hell to get the mangled pieces of grapefruit out without looking like a complete savage at my place of employment. Finally, I looked left, then right, picked up the grapefruit, and ate it like Little Black Sambo. It was pitiful, and I'm quite sure I set the race way back, but I conquered the grapefruit like a champ. Needless to say, I will not ever eat that thing again. The grapefruit I mean...