A Big Phooey on ″Flat Belly″ Diets
Oh, for Pete′s sake! How many more fad diets will come along that try to open our wallets and extract cash in exchange for unproven claims that they target belly fat? Save your money. Here′s what the average woman can do to trim her waist over time:
1. Cut 150 calories a day from your daily intake.
2. Walk at a brisk pace five days a week for twenty minutes, and build up to thirty minutes per day.
3. Start with a set of ten crunches on the first day, and add sets of ten until you build up to two hundred per day.
– From The Little Book of Beauty Secrets by Mimi Morgan
Something was definitely wrong.
When I returned to the studio that afternoon, I left not one, but two messages on Jonathan′s cell phone. I had to handle some assignment-desk chores for Beatty while he recovered from an emergency root canal; meanwhile, I kept compulsively checking the messages on my landline at home. By five p.m., Jonathan still hadn′t called me back. That would be ten p.m. in London -plenty late enough for his mother to be asleep.
Before leaving the second message for him, I sought out the privacy of a sound booth. I perched on a stool, then listened with mounting tension to his greeting message. In the past, I′d always felt soothed by the sound of his voice, even in a recording. Not this time.
″Jonathan here,″ came his message. ″Leave a word and I′ll ring you back.″
″But you′re not ringing me back,″ I blurted after the beep. ″It′s me. Is your mom okay? Are you? Please call me as soon as you get this message. I love you.″
My tongue tripped over the ″I love you,″ three words that had always rolled off it so easily before. It was almost embarrassing how totally, completely consumed I was by Jonathan. Maybe that was why I′d always felt a little insecure about him. Maybe that was the real reason I′d never let him see me naked in the full light of day. If I didn′t love my own body, why should he?
After leaving the second frantic message, I was afraid I′d come off like a clinging vine.
Fuck that thought-the man hasn′t called you in a week. It′s his fault. My Inner Girlfriend, who′d been feeling emboldened ever since that morning′s shopping trip with the self-confident Evelyn, tried to prop me up.
But then Clinging Vine caterwauled, There must be some reason he hasn′t called you back. Maybe he′s hurt. Maybe he′s lying in a London ditch, dead.
Jonathan hadn′t given me his mother′s phone number, and I didn′t know a single friend of his in the UK whom I could call to check up on him. Not that I′d call them anyway-checking up on a guy with his friends is the quickest way to stamp your forehead with big neon letters that spelled dumped.
Workwise, the day had gone from bad to worse. As Beatty′s fill-in, I had to review and approve every news story for the six o′clock show, including Lainey′s. Just as I′d feared, she′d developed a piece-tipped off by Tipsy Floyd-about how the head of animal control had submitted his resignation over allegations of sexually harassing a city dogcatcher. The story was slugged, ″The dog poop flies.″ It was scheduled to run as the lead that night.
Inside the production booth, I ran her story through a machine and reviewed her intro copy; the results were dreadful. Dreadful for me, that is.
Her story was great.