A Life Lesson: How to Lose Weight

I remember changing my life more than four years ago. It was a Friday night. Buzzed on a vintage Chianti, I had just devoured several large slabs of cheese pizza. And if memory serves me, some double-stuffed Oreos, too. I lit a cigarette (that's right, it keeps getting worse), sunk down low and contemplated the future by having some dialogue with my inner fat girl: What's the plan, lady? When are you going to change your ways? I am so tired of being fat. All the binging on the weekends. And during the week, I starve myself. Monday through Friday, I kill myself at the gym. Because I can barely breathe during my work out (thanks to our two-pack a day habit). And I'm too scared to weigh myself. I mean, why bother; the jeans are just as tight as last week...

And then another thought popped into my head like a camera flash. There was this pretty girl who sat across from me at work. She had scrawled the name of a web site on a post-it note and had given it to me as an answer to my question. We were exchanging war stories on our battle of the bulge. And I gawked at her incredulously and asked, "How did you get so skinny?"

Frantic, I jumped from the couch and in my drunken stupor, poured out the entire contents of my purse until that yellow post-it note peeked out from the mess. I grabbed it and hopped on-line. "This will be my salvation," I said to my cat Lydia, who sat on the desk, eyeing me suspiciously. Tears began to well and my heart filled with hope as I logged on to weightwatchers.com.