After dinner. I am doing the dishes. We are settling in for a quiet weeknight of TV and reading. (The benefit of being mentally ambidextrous. I can also eat while conversing, as long as it’s not about geography.)  

Burke is on the couch calculating something on her phone. I say ‘something’ but I know precisely what it is – points.

With the goal of dropping a few unwanted pounds, Burke has decided on the Weight Watchers method of punishing the body for having enjoyed its past self. This method, preferred by gulags around the world and the Matre’d at the Guantanamo Bay canteen, involves a set of daily points. In a nutshell: you get a set of points per day (e.g. 30), all of the food and drink items you ingest have a designated point ranking, and you can’t breech your points. How you decide to allocate these points is up to you, as long as you stay within your allotted points. Sounds reasonable enough . . . until you are chewing on the back of your tongue at 8 pm.

Since Weight Watchers is such a well-known system, everything that can be put in your mouth, chewed, and swallowed has a point ranking. It will surely not surprise you that the better tasting that thing is, the higher its point ranking. Out of a 30 daily points, a ½ cup of vanilla ice cream would cost you 7 points, a candy bar would dock you 10 points, and a beer 5 points; for a small order of McDonald’s fries you’d be charged 10 points – a third of your day’s allowance. It had better be the best fries you have ever tasted.

Surely, we know that if you’re trying to lose weight, your best modus operandi is to skip the fries and ice cream. But it’s the amounts that can really get to you. A ½ cup of vanilla ice cream? A small order of fries? I eat ½ cup of ice cream as a warmup to my main serving of ice cream. A small order of fries is what I buy for the walk home from McDonald’s.

Unfair?

Yes.

But the point system, she hath no mercy.