About two weeks into my diet, I realized I was starving, and no low-cal protein snack would stave off my hunger pangs. Although pork products sounded mouthwateringly delicious in my weakened state, I eventually determined that the diet was a bunch of baloney.

No matter how many times a rich television celebrity — who probably ate diet meals prepared by her personal chef and exercised with a trainer in her home gym — told me “the pounds just melt away,” I doubted that any diet would work for me.

The first few days of my diet had seemed like fun. The same way raking leaves seemed fun for the first fifteen minutes until I realized it was going to take five hours and I’d have to do it every weekend. Or the way cooking dinner seemed like fun when I was first married, but then 20 years later, I’d have rather chewed my own arm off than prepare another meal. Or the way running seemed like fun until I came to the end of the second block and suddenly felt as if my heart might explode.

But by the second week of most diets, I want someone to hit me in the head with a frying pan — preferably one that has just fried up a dozen crisp slices of bacon — to put me out of my misery.

I hit that dieter’s wall recently while driving to the commissary. The satiating effect of the protein shake I’d guzzled that morning had worn off, and I was beginning to feel that familiar grumbling in the pit of my stomach. I was most definitely getting hungry.

I rushed from my car across the blustery parking lot and into the commissary. Everything was fine in produce, where I followed my grocery list to a tee, including the bagged Lite Caesar Salad Kit I decided would make a satisfying diet lunch.

The burning in my innards was tolerable at first, but it slowly built as I weaved through the grocery aisles. I made it through the canned goods, baking supplies and cereal without incident, but as my hunger mounted, things began to unravel in the snack food aisle. With each step, the burning in my gut seared deeper, until I was ready to grab a cheese ball out of the dairy case and eat it like an apple, cellophane and all. I resisted my urges, but soon, I felt as if I might implode like the collapsing core of a supernova, transforming the entire commissary into a giant black hole and destroying civilization as we know it.

That’s when it happened. Lying there, on the shelf beside the display of Pringles, I saw it. Some coupon clipper had generously left me a lifeline. “One dollar off five cans,” it read. It was such a fantastic deal, it seemed almost compulsory. Saliva dripped from my lower lip as I loaded the Pringles into my cart.

By the time I approached the checkout area, I had grabbed Oreos, frozen pizza, apple turnovers and a one-pound block of cheddar cheese. Blinded by desperation, I caught the tantalizing aroma of roasted chicken.

Two rotisserie chickens soon joined the mountain of forbidden foods heaped onto the cashier’s conveyor belt. While the bagger loaded my groceries into the back of my car, I fantasized about sneaking food to the front seat for the drive home.

Not a new ploy, and not only fantasy. During past hunger-fueled commissary runs, I’d instructed unsuspecting baggers to “put the rotisserie chicken up in the front seat to keep it warm,” knowing I planned to sneak a piece on the way home. I’d pull into my driveway, my face and steering wheel slick with grease, and a drumstick clenched between my teeth.

But on this particular day, the miracle of convenience foods helped me to stick to my diet. I managed to make it home from the commissary, where I frantically dug through the grocery bags in the trunk of my minivan to find that salad kit. I stumbled into the house without unloading my groceries, faint with hunger, and devoured the salad out of a Tupperware bowl while standing at the kitchen counter.

Hail, Caesar.

Read more at themeatandpotatoesoflife.com and in Lisa’s book, “The Meat and Potatoes of Life: My True Lit Com.” Email: meatandpotatoesoflife@gmail.com