I HATE DIETS. I'm really bad at them. But when New Year's resolution time came around and everyone on my work team was talking about pursuing a diet plan as a team to "keep ourselves motivated and inspired," I gladly threw my name into the hat, because the only thing I hate more than diets is being left out of group activities. Then came the hard part: Which diet plan were we going to do?
After a week of my team scouring the internet for diet information while I lied about also scouring the internet, we had our answer. "We should do the Santa Clarita Diet!" my most trustworthy co-workers said. "There's no exercise involved. It's just sensible eating and these protein powder and juice things you buy from them." Protein? Powder? Juice? Buy? I didn't know what any of these fancy diet terms meant, but I wasn't going to be the lone team member who took a detour from our path to self-improvement.
"Let's do the Santa Clarita Diet!" I declared, definitely sounding like I knew what I was talking about.
I quit the diet later that afternoon. In my defense, the office ordered a catered taco bar for lunch, and I was powerless to resist. I didn't want to be the first casualty of the team diet resolution, so I hid my shameful secret from my co-workers by eating lunch in the bathroom stall every day. As treasonous as it felt, I was excited to see what would happen to my more dedicated co-workers. I was not prepared for the horrors that would soon follow.
"Let's do the Santa Clarita Diet!" I declared, definitely sounding like I knew what I was talking about.
The first few days of the diet were great! Everyone was gleefully mixing protein powders, sipping on juice bottles, and incorporating their new habits into their daily life while discussing their generally good-feeling bodies. That's when I started noticing some major weirdness.
The first sinister signs were sensationally subtle: the little trickles of thick red "juice" leaking from the corners of my co-workers' mouths were probably nothing to be alarmed about, although it did look suspiciously similar to the little blood trickles they used to put on vampires in those old-fashioned horror movies.
I decided to ignore it. After all, I hadn't even tried the SCD juice concoction yet. Maybe it contained some cranberry pulp that was difficult for the human mouth to contain. Maybe it made your teeth bleed or something. How was I supposed to know? Besides, I had other things to worry about. It was going to take all the inner strength and dedication I could muster to continue faking my way through our team diet.
One thing quickly became clear: Whatever was in those juice bottles, it was proving to be very leak-prone. I started finding little red rings all over the place, remnants of the juice bottles being toted around the office. I thought it best to document this evidence, just in case it became important later. As it turns out, it would.
That looks a lot like blood, doesn't it? My suspicions were definitely growing. Something was going on here, and I needed to get to the bottom of it. But technically I had nothing concrete to freak out about — that is, until the next morning when I stumbled into work to find this:
If you're thinking what I'm thinking, then you're thinking that's definitely a freakin' bloody handprint on the wall! I still wasn't sure if the mysterious red substance was actually blood, but a few hours later my suspicions were confirmed when I found this:
WHAT. THE. @#$&!?!! An empty blood bag? Why is this in the office? And, perhaps more importantly, WHERE IS THE BLOOD THAT USED TO BE INSIDE OF THIS BAG?!!
"Something was going on here, and I needed to get to the bottom of it."
Could it be that my co-workers weren't deviating from the diet but in fact following it exactly? Was blood actually part of the diet? Despite all the craziness I'd seen so far, this idea seemed utterly ridiculous. So of course it was all but confirmed when I managed to get ahold of the office security camera footage, where I saw something truly unbelievable:
While my co-worker was calmly snacking on a severed human hand for lunch, my mind was doing backflips. I tried to calculate my next move. Should I go to the authorities? I needed to tell someone about this, and now I had video evidence! I went back to the office later that night to grab the security tapes before heading to the police station. The office should've been empty at that hour, but I heard something in the kitchen down the hall. Like a dumb teenager in a cheesy horror movie, I stupidly decided to investigate, and what happened next would change my life forever...
SPOILER ALERT: My co-workers didn't eat my flesh or drink my blood! Hooray! In fact, they were actually really cool about it. They quickly calmed me down and explained the immense benefits of the Santa Clarita Diet. There are some strange side effects, but my co-workers all felt healthier and happier than ever before!
"My co-workers didn't eat my flesh or drink my blood! Hooray!"
As I was probably moments away from becoming a murder victim, I decided to hear them out and dive headfirst into the Santa Clarita Diet. I'm four days in now, and I cannot recommend it highly enough! Believe me, I understand your hesitation. But after only a few days, you'll be feeling more vibrant and alive than ever before. Now get out there, grab life by the balls, and take a bite!
