The morning I tackled my daughter because I wanted the Cheerio that was stuck to her chin, I knew it was time to rethink the Atkins diet. By that time, my desire for a carbohydrate was so overwhelming I was fighting off the urge to dive headlong into a box of Bisquick. Let me back up. I was never on the Atkins diet, and I am not qualified to talk about it at all, other than to say that it seems to be all the rage. Best I can tell, men are faring better than women, due to the biological fact that men do not carry on decades-long love affairs with cookies. My thin husband, for example, can eat half a fresh-baked brownie and leave the other half because he's "full." That's just not normal. But after learning that a male relative had lost 15 pounds in something like two hours, I decided that it was time, once and for all, to stop eating so many carbohydrates. How do I define carbohydrates• Quite simply, a carbohydrate is anything I have ever felt like eating. I am a girl who would not cross the street for a filet mignon, but the allure of a four-day-old piece of raisin toast is so compelling right about now I would gladly trade all the meat in my refrigerator for just one bite into some doughy friendliness. And to think I was so hopeful the first few days. I went to the grocery store and laid in supplies that would feed a convention of lumberjacks: steak, whole chickens, roasts, every manner of legs and thighs and breasts and bellies and beaks that promised to give my incisors a good workout while dropping my blood sugar to levels sure to make a pancake of my stomach. By the way, I would kill for a pancake right about now. But I can't have one, can I• Nor can I have anything else that normal people eat for breakfast. Toast• No way. Cereal• What, are you kidding me• Fruit• The biggest no-no of all. The other day, I got up in a very bad mood because I couldn't face another egg. Finding the bowl of fruit on the counter, I grabbed a banana and, cradling it tenderly, began to sing the first verse of, "(If Loving You is Wrong) I Don't Want to be Right." I'm pathetic. And sadly, I am no smaller. Our prevailing marital problem right now is a certain late-afternoon grumpiness that only a cookie could cure. The crumbs at the bottom of my son's lunch box are extremely desirable these days. So what do I eat, you ask• Cows, except for the milk, which is bad for you. Pigs, the whole greasy shebang. Fish. Butter, although it's not to be eaten upon anything like potatoes or bread or noodles, so why bother• Oh, yes, and the occasional nut. Some days I live for those five evening cashew nuts. And how do I know this is even good for me• What if I stick to this impossible eating plan and lose some weight, only to have all those butter and beef and pork calories that lay harmlessly dormant during the first weeks of the diet come raging back to life, jumping into my depleted fat cells and re-inflating themselves in a show of revenge and I end up gaining everything back and then some• And what if, years from now, medical science finds that a few cookies a day actually keep the doctor away, as well as prevent diseases of the heart and central nervous system. Do I want to take that chance? No, I do not. Far as I'm concerned, this no-carb diet is not worth the trouble. I'm going to go get a potato and draw Dr. Atkins' face on it. Then, I'm going to stick a needle in its eye. Then, I will probably take a bite. I'm going to stop this madness before it's too late. Somebody get me a cookie.

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