Recently, I wrote about how I was weeding out, once again, books and other messes from my back room. My Teeter Hang-Up was blocking a bookcase, and as I struggled to pull all the books off the shelves so I could dust them, I found a little book called, ‘The Best Kept Secrets In America’.

‘Huh!’ I thought to myself. I often say that to myself. It is a great little word, that covers a lot of territory, sort of like the words ‘fine’, or ‘whatever’, or ‘nothing’.

When I flipped through it, it stopped automatically at a page about weight loss, which is not surprising, considering I’ve been on a diet of one kind or another for most of my life, and probably marked the page at one time. I have been on many diets not because I necessarily needed to lose weight, but because I needed to be at a certain weight to meet a work requirement, something I documented in my Pan Am book about being a flight attendant for that erstwhile airline, which set me up for yo-yo dieting, and my cheekbones making a yearly appearance around the same time as the swallows in Capistrano.

It is a well-known maxim that prostitution is the oldest known profession, but with the advent of the Industrial Revolution that pride of place is rapidly being pushed aside by diets and their proponents.

The little book I found with the secret about weight loss states that we should eat the bulk of our calories early in the day. It said that those people who ate 2000 calories for breakfast and nothing for the rest of the day, lost an average of 2 pounds a week. Those who reversed that, gained an average of 4 pounds a week.

This sounds perfectly reasonable, and medically sound, and like a plan I should follow. My problem is that I am never that hungry in the morning, nor do I have time to consume 2000 calories. I know that it doesn’t say we should consume that many, it was just for the purposes of the study. However, if I start eating in the morning, I will keep eating, and even if the calories do not exceed 2000, I will never lose weight.

Whether this is because I am totally messed up from years of dieting, or because of my age, and the fact that metabolism is no longer a word recognized by my body, I don’t know. I heard one doctor say that when you lose weight, your body remembers all the fat cells you have depleted yourself of, and resents it, much like your husband and children do when you get rid of stuff that’s been hanging around for years clogging the garage and closets, the reason I found the book of secrets in the first place.

Your family is just waiting for a chance to pull those old tee-shirts out of the giveaway box when you aren’t looking, and your body is just waiting for you to eat a bag of chips, or a doughnut, and wham! You have some of those fat cells back. These cells are all hanging around, lurking in the hedges, or outside the front door, plastered against the wall like little round spies, ready to jump on your butt when you leave the house. They sit in the wheel wells of your car, or keep warm on the engine, like the neighborhood cat. They are angry at being locked out, and try to mug the pizza delivery guy when he goes next door to make a delivery.

Up to recently, I was on a very healthy regimen, with yogurt and fruit for breakfast, fruit and some healthy peanut butter for lunch, and generally, a healthy dinner at a reasonable hour. I try to fit in a workout at least four times a week. The upshot has been that I am a healthy, good-looking, older, overweight woman, and most of my clothing goes unworn as my weight remains the same.

It has been almost a week since I started what was referred to as the ‘guy diet’ and I am losing weight. My guy objected to the name, saying that in his experience, guys eat all the time. The person who coined the name said that guys eat just once a day, usually dinner. I get pretty hungry during the day, but as long as I know I can eat dinner at five o’clock, I can stand it.

I decided to try it, and it is working for me. I make the dinner a healthy filling one, which includes fruit and veggies. If I don’t include those things guilt will take over my psyche, and I will fly apart in a million pieces.

Hmm…. Those pieces would include molecules from my fat cells, so that may not be a bad thing. Perhaps they will not be able to find their way back home, and the neighbor’s pizza will be safe.