Optifast

I place the forlorn fliegle on a bright orange plate and tear skinny pieces of meat from the skeletal frame. Tenderly, the strands are slurped and cautiously chewed so that flavor and texture can be sustained. This is my first solid food in 12 week s.

It all started as follows:

"Fatty, we're going to Rio," my wife suggested with an emphasis upon the "going" that left no doubt that timing and cost were of no concern - to her.

"Great idea," I exclaimed. "Get out my string-tarp for the beach." I'm never pleased on the sunny strand unless lying motionless on my back. That's because when I move in an upright position:

1. My thighs' insides always chafe against the lower lining of my size 52 bathing suit;
2. Sand collects inside my inverted nipples; and
3. My shadow wobbles.

My wife saw the chagrin in my eyes, and we agreed that to enjoy the bikini-life, I'd have to lose weight quickly and permanently. From that moment on, after a visit to a few medical practitioners and Optifast meetings, I've drunk chocolate and vanilla liquid for 84 days.

Chocolate Optifast is cool and deeply filling. I chill a carafe of water in the refrigerator into whose glass sides I've deposited large chunks of ice. When the time comes (and it does five times a day), I pour six ounces of the frigid aqua into a shaker laden with the motionless nutritious Optifast powder. I apply 30 seconds of hefty vibration until a limpid smooth velvety cream coats the shaker's inner recesses. I pour the silky dark potion into my "former" scotch glass. Three gulps and it's gone.

"OH GOD, I'M FULL," I scream six times. "THANK YOU, LORD OF THE ISRAELITES, FOR CAUSING ME TO BE SO STUFFED, AND YOU, ABRAHAM, ISAAC AND JACOB: NO JEW HAS EVER BEEN SO SATIATED AS ME."

Vanilla Optifast is another story. Remember as a child sitting with a bowl of piled scoops of Breyer's vanilla ice cream? Remember mushing its middle downward with a soupspoon (and skwushing its sides upward simultaneously) until the mounds were crushed to frozen murky lava, speckled with vanilla bean-dots? Remember placing the bowl upon your lower lip and pushing it upward and forward until the scathingly cold fluid dipped down your chin and into your waiting belly-button? Well, Vanilla Optifast DOESN'T COME WITHIN ONE MILLION LIGHT YEARS OF THAT SENSATION. It's so much better for you, though.

After the third day, I lost all sense of hunger. The prescribed doses of dampened talcum cause bursts of energy and need for movement. Without the time required previously for breakfast, lunch and dinner, more work is done than ever, and there's more time to visit friends, see movies at theaters and read the latest travel brochures on Rio.

My pants fall off at an inhale after five weeks. Clover Day sees me at the belt racks and the shirt and underwear bins.

After eight weeks, my shoe size has fallen by two, and I'm no longer swallowing blue, orange and yellow pills for high blood pressure, diabetes and gout, respectively. After 12 weeks, my cholesterol level is well below that of the average Japanese peasant, and I'm able to wear a Miller-White suite last worn a dozen years ago.

There's no marrow in a chicken wing bone, nor have I ever asked or attempted to resolve that culinary question until now, as I make this particular cartilage glisten, my premiere post-fast solid food.

As I contemplate the denuded dangling remnant, I realize that with a little string tied here and a little string tied there, I've created my own beachware. Just need a poulka for the front.