Princess the Elder boxes, as in fighting. She has become quite good. So good in fact, that she wants to lose weight to fight in a lower division. Sounds innocent enough, but it isn’t.

Why is it that when one member of the family wants to lose weight, that the rest of us are on a diet too?

I am not saying that most of us do not need to lose a few pounds.

I certainly do, but Princess the Younger, who has to run around in the shower to get wet, has climbed on this bandwagon along with the Admiral.

Now, the dog and I are dragged into this dietary abyss.

Like the majority of humanity, I do not enjoy dieting. I have dieted before, twice. Once losing thirty pounds, the other nearly fifty.

Both times, it needed to happen, but neither was a pleasant experience.

I am a meat and potatoes guy.

I love bacon, sausage, real butter, chocolate, anything with lots of carbohydrates, and soft drinks even though they are diet.

I like my chicken, fish, and some steaks fried with batter and lots of grease.

I love my potatoes mashed or fried.

The former swimming in butter, or drowned in good, greasy gravy. The latter, deep fried in hot grease.

Give me burgers over soy, or tofu any day…please.

Oh, and don’t forget the bread to sop the grease and gravy with.

I do not like meal replacement shakes.

I find them physically and mentally painful.

I did not list salads as a favorite food.

I don’t want rabbit food for dinner. I want meat.

Princess the Elder says to eat meat sparingly.

I do, at every meal. I never eat it all.

These days, when I ask what’s for breakfast, I am greeted with the Admiralty stare, now perfected by the Princesses, with their shakes in their hands, all with thick shake mustaches.

It would be comical if they were not so serious.

The other day, the Admiral asked the Princesses and a male Princess worshipper (he thinks he is a boyfriend), what they wanted for lunch and gave them choices that would kill a maggot by starvation.

There was no meat.

I was not included in the offering, but blurted out, “Would you make me a bacon sandwich on white bread that you used to blot the grease off the bacon, smeared with lots of mayonnaise dripping out the sides, maybe even butter the bread first?”

This was greeted with total silence.

Even the Princess worshiper was shocked.

This whole diet thing makes me sick.

The first week of starving and drinking useless shakes produced zero weight loss for the dieting Princess.

She then turned to me.

I convinced her that the best way to lose weight, and train at the same time, is to eat smaller, but more frequent meals composed of real food to keep your energy up during high intensity workouts.

The week of doing as I suggested produced a loss of eight pounds, seven from her goal.

There is no magic to weight loss. It is controlling the diet with what you like to eat, but with less of it, and upping your exercise to burn off the fat.

It works, and best of all, you do not have to starve the whole family, or even just one guy.

David Wilson Atwood is a local writer whose human-interest columns offer a unique perspective. He may be contacted, at www.starchasers.us or david@starchasers.us.