Why didn’t I think of this? I’m good at putting tubes into people and there’s big money in it…

Really… a feeding-tube diet?
Yes. Patients following the K-E (ketogenic enteral nutrition) diet wear a feeding tube in their nose for 10 days. The tube delivers 800 calories a day and promises the loss of 10 percent of the patient’s body weight or up to 20 pounds. While it’s new in the U.S., the technique has been used for years in Europe. And it’s effective, Dr. Oliver Di Pietro tells ABC News. “Within a few hours your hunger and appetite go away completely, so patients are actually not hungry at all for the whole 10 days.”

This made me flash back to a Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode where Gypsy is talking to one of the brain guys–who are so advanced they carry their brains on trays. “Wouldn’t it be easier to keep your brains, like, inside your heads?”

Wouldn’t it be easier to put the ketogenic super shake, like, in your mouth and swallow it? Does having a tube shoved up your nose really kill your appetite? Maybe it has that effect on the people who have to look at you.

There’s no mystery in the science here. If you cut down to 800 calories a day you will lose weight. A tube in your nose will give you something to think about besides food, and the program is so expensive and wedding date so unforgiving that motivation takes care of itself.

The above illustration is not an accurate representation of the pre-wedding diet. It shows a male. There’s no way a guy is going to spend his last few weeks of bachelorhood starving with a tube up his nose.

I’m opening a weight loss center. I’ll stick a small cork in one of your nostrils and give you a thermos of unflavored feeding tube formula– it tastes terrible. For tough cases, I’ll hit you over the head with a whiffle bat. If you stick with my program you are guaranteed to lose weight. I take personal checks, cash and change you find under the couch.

And think about the poor folks who have a nasogastric tube because there’s something really wrong with their stomach. Lots of them are tiny babies. Why aren’t the grown women just enjoying their wedding and counting their blessings? There’s worse things than being buxom.

Women, and men too, need to recognize that there is profit in body shame and cures for imaginary diseases. When you feel really good about yourself, someone, somewhere is feeling cheated. Maybe they can convince you that you have uneven toes and sell you a surgical cure. Beats doctoring whiny sick people who don’t have any money left.

I know enough people who have to live with tubes in their bodies from necessity, not for fun. Some of my best moments in nursing involved removing tubes from people who got better.

Me and Mr. Green probably owe our friends a party, but I never regret that we eloped.