Let me tell you the difference between men and women when it comes to dieting.  A man says he’s going to go on a diet and immediately drops five pounds just because he said it out loud.  Then he takes the Sunday newspaper into the bathroom and comes out an hour later having dropped yet another three pounds.  And so in less time than it takes a woman to:

• Buy the “Skinny Bitch” or “French People Aren’t Fat” or “South Beach Dieting Volume 32″
• Go to the grocery store and purchase all necessary food items
• Call five girlfriends and announce the new diet and ask for support
• Make an appointment with a personal trainer at the local gym
• Go buy two really cute yoga/gym outfits and a pair of specialized gym shoes
• Buy 18 different types of supplements and two types of green diet tea

the guy has already lost eight pounds.

My good friend Kristina has been on a lifestyle change for the past seven months.  She’s lost almost 40 pounds and I’m proud of her and also just a little jealous.  I want to lose 15 pounds.  Which, had I started this lifestyle change with her several months ago, I would have accomplished by now.  Instead, I go around bragging about her to my friends.  And invariably I get the same question, “Wow, how did she do it?”

“Exercising every day and eating properly,” I reply.

“Oh….” is the inevitable reaction, accompanied by a crestfallen look.  We all want the quick fix, the magic bullet, the bag of tea and the tiny pill that will magically melt off those unwanted pounds.  The idea that we’d have to actually WORK at it for a sustained amount of time (i.e., more than 3 DAYS) we’re not interested.  Or we put it off because we don’t have the time.  “I’ll start on Monday,” we whisper the promise to ourselves as we stop by Starbucks to grab a caramel whipped foam toffee covered latte.  As a compromise we ask them to hold the whipped cream.