Listen to “Long Day’s Journey Into Night” on Spreaker.

There are different food groups for different days. The day after you starve yourself with vegetables I’m more accustomed to watching go bad in the refrigerator, you get to gorge on melons and other fruits that, again, I’m used to seeing wither in the fridge or turn black on the kitchen counter. There’s also a river of water to be drunk, which has the additional exercise angle of you getting up every ten minutes.

On Friday there’s chicken. Of course, it’s nowhere near the chicken you can order at Popeyes. This is more like the chicken you’d be served if invited to dinner by Carthusian monks. One afternoon, Carol had a snack. It was celery stalks and water. There was no cream cheese or onion dip in sight.

“On Friday there’s chicken. Of course, it’s nowhere near the chicken you can order at Popeyes. This is more like the chicken you’d be served if invited to dinner by Carthusian monks.”

Diets like this have the additional feature of making a routine day last as long as back to back root canals. You find yourself looking at the clock, and wondering whether 6:30 p.m. is too early to call it a day. You’re terrified of having dreams of being Italian, and are on your way to your granddaughter’s First Holy Communion dinner. You awake in a cold sweat, swearing you can smell garlic and parmesan in the bedroom.

The thin, little book (ha ha) the diet is based on claims you can “lose up to ten pounds in seven days…and never feel hunger.” I’m expecting to find this to be a lie. The only saving grace is that you are not meant to be on this Bataan Death March for more than a week at a time. In between, you’re supposed to return to regular eating. “Nutritionally balanced eating,” Carol points out pointedly. All my nutrition is balanced with a deep red Cabernet, I reply.