The Quick Weight-Loss Break-Up Diet

by Gwen Cooper — May 23, 2007

Whenever I end a major relationship--"major" either in terms of its length or its intensity--I drop weight like Verizon drops calls. When my fiancé and I broke up ten years ago, for example, I lost seven pounds in a week. A few years later, when I discovered that my live-in boyfriend was still sleeping with his ex on the side, the pound count when up to ten. The sudden weight loss can probably be attributed to stress, although I'm sure it doesn't help (or harm, depending on your perspective) matters that, after a major break-up, I take to not sleeping, not eating, and chain-smoking up to two packs a day. But I've always figured that it's a defense mechanism of sorts; after all, there's no better way to bounce back from a break-up than by hitting the town a week later looking as svelte as possible.

Back in South Beach, my friends used to call me "The Terminator" because of my tendency to dump guys at what they claimed was "the drop of a hat." I would always deny any such hat-dropping assertions. Perhaps because I take break-ups so hard, I balk at the early warning signals that an unpleasant break-up in the near future is a near inevitability. Guys who say they'll call on Tuesday, for example, and don't end up calling until Saturday--unless there's been some genuinely pressing and extreme crisis in the interim (a death in the immediate family; being hospitalized), these are the guys I have no problem kicking to the curb. No amount of "I've been busy" will suffice. Let's face it--we're all busy. It's been my experience that people manage to make the time for things they care about making time for. Somebody who's taking you for granted during, say, the first month of a relationship--during that blissful time period where you're all moony-eyed and obsessed with your new partner--will almost certainly end up breaking your heart (or, at least, seriously pissing you off) six months down the road.

My point here is that it's typically much, much easier for me to end something at six weeks than it is for me at six months or--God help us--six years. Robert and I are at exactly the six-week milestone today. This is the time when I can usually cut and run, if I have to. I was talking to Robert last night about a TV interview I have coming up, and I told him that if he really cared about me he would break up with me right now so I could lose ten pounds before I have to go on camera. It was a joke, and we laughed.

But a familiar clenching of my stomach at the mere suggestion of a split made me realize how invested I already am, even now at the six-week point. It normally takes me several months to get here emotionally with a guy. And, suddenly, my joke about staging a break-up for the sake of shedding a few pounds super quickly didn't seem funny at all.

Gwen Cooper is the author of Diary of a South Beach Party Girl, recently published by Simon & Schuster. To read all of Gwen Cooper's posts in "The Dating Life," click here.