Blessed Are The Children: Explaining Your Low-Carb Diet to a Child

I have recently come to the conclusion that my goddaughter, Brittany, is the devil.

At the tender age of eight, it is already apparent to me that she is going to be one of those beautiful, rail-thin-yet-muscular “beach babes” that say things like, “I wish I could gain weight as easily as you do. I just eat, and I eat, and I eat, and I can never get those nice, childbearing hips like you have! It seems like the only place I ever do gain any weight is in my breasts!”

I can already imagine her friends glaring at her over lunch. Everyone is chowing down on veggies and low-fat Weight Watcher meals, while Britt eats another slice of pizza and washes it down with a thick, frosty chocolate shake. I can see the bitter daggers flung from their eyes as she tries to garner sympathy from them because she accidentally made a date for Friday night with both the captain of the football team and the captain of the basketball team and she doesn’t know what to do.

“They’re both just so dreamy,” she’ll sigh. “How could I be expected to make a choice? Sometimes, I wish I could just not go out on Friday night… like you. I’m so jealous of you, getting to stay home all weekend long….”

Just one look at her lets me know that this is her future. Of course, being a good “Uncle Brian,” I have taken it upon myself to try and alter the future by making her more down-to-earth and, well, for lack of a better word, “weird.” I figure that if she’s at least “the weird girl,” she won’t be as hated as she might have been. I don’t want her friends to say, “Look at her! Why is she so perfect? I hate her!” I’d rather have them saying, “Look at her! Why is she reading comic books and listening to the “Gilligan’s Island” theme song on her Walkman? If she weren’t so weird, I’d probably hate her! But her weirdness just makes her more lovable.” (Hey, so far, it’s worked for me!)

So I’m doing what I can to make sure that she ends up just a little bit on the warped side of the Force. I make sure she reads a fair amount of comic books and takes part in good, healthy doses of classic cartoons and “Nick-At-Nite” on a regular basis (Currently, you will find “Gilligan’s Island,” “The Brady Bunch,” and “Three’s Company” amongst her most beloved shows.)

Brittany has already started hanging posters of N’Sync and the Backstreet Boys in her bedroom (gag!), so I made sure that the first rock concert she went to featured Weird Al Yankovich. (I like to think that it’s these little things that I do that have encouraged her to become the very “unique” child that she is.)

For example, she is the only 8-year-old I know of who will actually ask to be taken out for sushi. She’s willing to try anything at least once! And my proudest moment was when she was asked why she had done something wrong (like making a mess of her room – something like that), and she said, “The voices told me to do it… they’re EEEEEVIL voices! EEEEEVILLLL!!!” Then she wiggled her fingers at me to emphasize just how evil the voices had been. She’s my kind of girl!

Brittany is so sweet, so caring, and so wonderful that I thank the Maker every day that I have her in my life. But why, oh why must she be so cruel to me?

Since I am the only one in the house who eats low carb, it would be rude of me to impose my low carb ways upon the child at such an early age. Brittany knows that Uncle Brian only eats meat, eggs, meat, cheese, and meat. She delights in telling people this, making her voice go lower and lower with each repetition of “meat.”

Photo by Noah Buscher on Unsplash

She is very supportive of my diet and feels really bad that I can’t have all the sugary treats that she enjoys on a daily basis. But she doesn’t feel so bad about it that she doesn’t torture me! If she eats her dessert in front of me, she will talk to me all the way through it.

“Gee, Uncle Brian… this sure is goooood ice cream! But you can’t have ice cream, can you? Because of your diet. I wish you could have some ice cream, but you can’t. Because you wanna lose weight. I think you’re skinny enough. You’re REALLY SKINNY, Uncle Brian. Yup, this sure is good ice cream. Sure do wish you could have some… but you can’t, ‘cuz of the diet.”

And as she devours the bowl of frozen temptation sitting right next to me, speaking in her shrill little voice about the wonders of ice cream, I realize that she is, in fact, the Devil. I look over and I see the pointy little horns and the red-orange flames licking at her back… and her voice gets deeper and deeper…

Join usssss, Uncle Brian. Partake in the creamy-cold evil prince of sugary delights with usssss. You know this is what you waaaaant…

The worst part is, I can’t tell if she’s being sincere and actually wishing I could have some ice cream with her, or if she is just being the warped little child I always wanted her to be and is actually tormenting me for some sick, twisted fun. I can’t really blame her, though… I am the Obi Wan to her Anakin, the Smokey to her Bandit, the Balki to her Cousin Larry. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Just wait till she starts dating. I’ll have my revenge then 🙂