I've tried every diet there is, from Atkins to Slim-Fast to Subway to bulimia.

But the problem with diets is that they don't become effective until you incorporate them into your everyday lifestyle -- at least, that's what it says on my George Foreman Grill.

It's tough to start eating right in a town like Boulder, where everyone is already in shape and knows what they are doing diet-wise.

On the other hand, it's also tough to get out of your car when there are people parked on both sides of you and every space in town seems to be custom-sized for the Olsen twins, so I guess you have to start somewhere.

I'm starting late in the game, though, so I need to commit to something that will stick. I don't have time to go the traditional route of experimenting loosely with vegetarianism in early high school only to have my friends talk me out of fish and fowl and into Wicca and lesbianism by the time I graduate college.

It's a good system, but so slow.

And it's not for lack of trying on my part. I spent some time as a vegetarian -- my entire infancy. But from what I remember, it was filled with a lot of irregular bowel movements and uncontrollable crying.

Not for me. Besides, you can only be a vegetarian so long before you get pressured into becoming vegan, and it takes a stronger person than I to survive on a diet consisting solely of black coffee and trance music.

That being said, I do have some very strong opinions about the food we allow ourselves to consume. There seems to be a willful ignorance of our responsibilities as the species at the top of the food chain, and if I have to make a choice to re-establish the natural order of things, I know what to do.

No more veggies, twice the meat.

I know, It's going to be a sacrifice. I really like mashed potatoes and corn on the cob. In fact, I'll probably keep eating them. I definitely will. But just those two -- and if those small vices can ensure I do my part to counter the atrocities happening to the rest of the vegetable kingdom, so be it.

It's almost scary how people can look down at their squash or broccoli and not even bat an eye that this food was literally uprooted from its rightful place in the ground just to be speared with a fork and eaten.

Just because a bunny rabbit with a brain the size of a guitar pick can dig through the dirt and gnaw on a carrot doesn't give you permission to rape the Earth for your dinner -- unless it is the occasional mashed potato or corn-cob side dish to a hearty serving of meat ... preferably rabbit.

Right about now, you might be asking, "But, Lance, why twice the meat?"

Simple: to make up for the slackers out there who have turned their backs on it.

A lot of people would rather kill innocent vegetables and pretend the animals that aren't eaten die peacefully in a retirement community in Boca Raton.

Ninety percent of animals in the wild die at the hands of their predators. That, I can live with.

What I can't live with is bringing the same senseless, sadistic violence to poor, unsuspecting vegetables . . . and, yes, it says that on my George Foreman Grill, too.

Bon apetit!

Lance Vaillancourt drains excess sarcasm writing Diet Water for the Colorado Daily on Wednesdays.