Crystal Light has become my new best friend.

You see, you can take your mundane water right from the tap and, one powdery package later, you have one instant ticket to flavour country! Even as my two fingers scurry across the keyboard, my taste buds are enjoying a journey of tangerine goodness.

I don’t usually buy into the flavoured-water phenomena unless I’m hung over.

This time around I’m all in, my friends, mainly because I’m on a diet.

Remember that article a while ago? the one extolling the virtues of peanut butter and Oreos?

Well, let’s just say I’ll never have enough points to be able to afford tossing one of my favourite late-night concoctions down my yap.

This snack crackdown comes at a less than noble impetus.

My future father-in-law decided to create a contest for the family, a Biggest Loser of sorts. So, the entire clan, including spouses, is working toward meeting their goal weights with the included bonus of a prize for the couple that loses the most weight.

I then discovered, to my delight, that my competitive nature had the ability to overcome my need to stuff my face with Sweet Chilli Heat Doritos.

How lazy am I that it took a contest with prizes involved for me to get off my arse?

Apparently, I’m not all that consumed by lethargy as I’ve lost about seven pounds in the past two weeks. My pants have some more room in them and I can finally drag out last year’s T-shirts for actual public viewing.

(I’m a different kind of geek; I know what size of shirt actually fits me. Go into Titans, you’ll see what I mean. Sorry guys.)

And all of this was thankfully without the added hassle of exercise. It’s pretty gratifying to know I can still lose weight and not have to subject the world to my excessively sweaty self.

I just know that the gym thing just isn’t for me.

I’ve had dalliances with the concept before. Things seemed to work out fairly nicely (lame pun intended), but I found myself between reps (yeah, I know the lingo) pondering only the silly things about the whole gym scene.

Just watch the parade of overly grunty people, the goofy dudes preening themselves in the mirror and the potential OCD candidates.

It makes you really think about your purpose for being there and whether all that sweating and moaning is really for you.

I mean, I already sweat a lot just kinda standing around. I usually lose a good litre and a half just performing stand-up. Thankfully, I’m lazy enough to allow that to be my regular exercise. (And that actually isn’t a joke.)

I don’t actually recommend bombing in front of a large audience, but, my oh my, will you ever be a few pounds lighter after the experience.

The big lesson of dieting really isn’t all that complicated. All it takes is keeping more careful track of your caloric intake. Read labels and pay attention to what you’re throwing “down there”.

Don’t worry, I’m definitely not trying to be a voice of reason here.

I mean, seriously, one of the first things I did on the new diet was to calculate exactly how many beers I could drink if I didn’t eat anything else that day.

I’m all about the loopholes.

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