A friend called me up last night because he just couldn’t wait to tell me what a great gift he’d picked out for his wife. She’s been in a funk lately after giving birth to their fourth child and finding that losing the post-baby weight is a lot harder in her late 30s. She’s been dieting rigorously and using her elliptical machine for an hour each day but really hasn’t seen the pounds coming off as quickly as she’d like.

So what was her husband’s “great idea” for a gift?

He went online and signed her up for one of those “diet meals delivered to your door” plans. NutriSystem, I think he said.

“Isn’t that great? She won’t have to worry about watching what she eats now, and she’s got one less meal to cook!” he raved.

Ummm….NO.

Even if she doesn’t take offense to her husband’s gift basically pointing out that “Yeah, you’re still fat but maybe this will work”, she’s still going to wind up cooking meals for her family while sitting there staring at her bland little box of microwaved food, all the while knowing that she’d be rejecting his gift if she set it aside in favor of eating chicken nuggets with her kids.

This seemed rather obvious to me, and once I put it that way it seemed rather obvious to him, too. So why hadn’t he considered it before?

I suspect it’s because my friend is, unlike his wife, one of those people who really doesn’t give a darn that he’s carrying 35 extra pounds OR that his wife is, too. Oh, sure, his wife’s weight bothers her, although he doesn’t understand why, so he figured his gift was just showing his support for her weight loss goals.

“Okay,” he said, “how about if I give her a negligee and a gift certificate for a full body massage at the salon?”

Yeah, because women who feel bad about their bodies already want to display even more of it than usual for their husband and some massage therapist?

I advised him to think smaller. Much smaller. Like the designer version of the knockoff handbag she’s been carrying around all year, or maybe diamond earrings. From what I could tell, he seemed rather grateful for the advice.

Then I asked him to give my own husband a call and make sure he hadn’t come up with some equally boneheaded gift idea for my Christmas because, God love the man, that sounds exactly like the way he’d think, too.