The Imagination Diet

I was 16 years old.
My parents were fighting.
Mom wanted to complain to me about her problems with dad, and dad wanted to hang around me so he could ignore mom.
I was trapped in the middle and didn't want to be there.
Haunted by adult problems that I could not solve, I got a part-time job after school so I could leave early in the morning and not come back home until late in the evening.
It would have been the perfect plan, except for one small problem:
I was completely skipping breakfast, lunch, and dinner.
I hadn't been paid yet and had no money, so I came up with a creative solution.
When my new job gave me my first 15 minute break, I walked over to a nearby deli that had a wide variety of meats, breads, and desserts on display near the window. Since I had tasted these things before, it was easy for me to re-imagine all of the flavors just by looking at the food.
Yep.
After successfully pulling up the taste of roast beef, mashed potatoes, and gravy to the front of my mind, I then imagined that I had eaten an entire plateful.
It worked!
Suddenly, I wasn't hungry anymore
I didn't need to actually buy food; I could eat it with my mind.
Awesome!
Another problem solved.
I thought I was absolutely brilliant.
However, by the time I got my first paycheck, I was almost too tired and weak to continue working. It should have occurred to me that my lack of actual food was at fault, but it didn't.
Duh.
So, I went to a doctor to find out why I felt so exhausted.
He took one look at me and said, "When is the last time you actually had something to eat."
I thought for a minute and answered, "Well, umm...I really don't know..."
And then, I told him about my imagination diet.
Uh Oh.
He stood there for a few minutes staring at me without saying a word. And then he said, "Well that's very interesting, but you can't do this anymore. If you don't eat, you'll die. Your body will not survive if you continue to eat food with your mind only. If you don't start eating normally, I will send you to a different kind of doctor."
Ok. I understood.
My brilliant imagination diet had a major problem: No nutrition whatsoever.
It works, but it shouldn't be used on a regular basis.
Maybe just from time to time, like at Christmas or Thanksgiving, to keep from eating too much.
Oh well.
With my paycheck in hand, I put my creative mind on the back burner, and went back to eating food again (most of the time) like everyone else.