Men aren't supposed to say this, but I always wanted to be thin. I know we allegedly love to be called "big guy" and Bubbah and Tornado. But it'd be nice occasionally to be called Lance or Sean or Prince. Is it so wrong - just once, for a 200-pound heterosexual man, outside the context of prison - to want to be called Pretty Boy?

And obviously dieting is the only way I'm going to pull this off, unless I achieve my closely held dream of going around threatening strangers with a stick. But I do not know how to behave on a diet - how to complain, look martyred, dress up a radish so that it looks and vaguely tastes like pork. I also do not know how to handle a stick.

Women, however, know all about dieting. They lose weight with passion, flair and occasional detours into voodoo. One woman I know went on a diet based on color. I forget whether she could eat white things but not red things (she could have cauliflower, cheese, vanilla ice cream with tiny marshmallows) or red things but not white (strawberries, strawberry ice cream, raw lamb). Anyway, she gained 15 pounds. But she looked lovely when her skin turned entirely red. Or white. Whatever it was.

The male approach to dieting, on the other hand, not only lacks personality, it bears no stated relation to our physical appearance.

Our diets mainly involve numbers - a drop in cholesterol, an increase in potassium. Rather than basing our diets on something Oprah picked up from a Polynesian shaman, we usually starts our regimens in a medical office, the first time a doctor looks at our blood test and screams, "There is no God!" Instead of reducing thighs or hips, our diets alter some alchemical admixture in our bloodstreams, as if we were all Pyrex beakers - pasty, out-of-shape Pyrex beakers who should never take off their shirts, even in the shower.

Mostly, what our diets lack is poetry, and poetry is mainly in the name.

For example, what man wouldn't try a diet called "The Shotgun Approach"? It's always easier to feel confident about something if it seems to include weapons ("The fat cells are crossing the 38th Parallel!") and lets us believe that we're getting fat because foreign invaders have crept in at night and forced us to eat cooking spray.

More importantly, "The Shotgun Approach" sounds kind of casual, something I could do in a T-shirt, sweat pants and gym socks - which is fortunate, since these are the only clothes I have that still fit.

Successful male dieting programs also need to sound somewhat mechanical. Marketers already know this, which is how we end up with cans of chocolate-flavored chemicals called things like "Uni-Mega" or "The Angry Rotor." I also would suggest a high fiber diet called "The Weedeater."

But we can exploit other archtypical male images as well. "The Fireman Diet" is an obvious one, and in fact has already come up. Among others, the Subway sandwich chain has an ad campaign featuring Clay Henry, a firefighter from Columbia, S.C. But we could have diets for other manly jobs. How about Conan the Breatharian? Or hey! A diet that turns you into a cowboy!

Sure. Something that makes it sound like you get thinner by frying up a chuck steak and onion rings. We'll give it a rugged, Western sort of name such as Rot Gut or Low-in-the-Saddle - though, as with all other diets, it'll mainly involve eating kelp.

The best campaign, however, would be to make it sound as if you lose weight by simply forgetting to eat. You're just too busy doing manly things - clawing your way to the top of your tribe, losing an arm to a flock of vicious geese, subscribing to magazines that show other men losing at arm to a flock of vicious geese, having a son and teaching him to take revenge upon the geese.

The main thing is that dieting can be a man's world, an approach that sets us apart from everything women have tried. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to continue with a nutritional program that only a man would understand. Basically, I can have any food I want, as long as I eat it off a toothpick instead of a fork. A strong, manly toothpick - made of oak.