So what kind of loser does it take to spend a week on Weight Watchers...the easiest, most sensible, foolproof weight loss plan in the Western hemisphere...and only manage to post a .2 lb. loss for the week?

It takes me.

So basically, at the rate I'm going, I should be at my weight loss goal in October 2016. Awesome. I've always wanted to be 36 and smokin' hot.

I am not sure the amount of hubris it requires for a person to pay forty dollars a month, to sit through meetings and nod and contribute, to read success story after success story, to sit and watch the Jenny McCarthy promotional video where she bats her heavily made-up lids in amazement at her post-baby transformation...to do all those things and STILL manage to walk away saying "You know, I don't really need to count points. Or exercise. Or eat food that is not made of cheese."

Seriously, who do I think I am?

In the course of all this navel gazing, I've spent lots and lots of minutes trying to be Carrie Bradshaw and pondering the "what does it all mean?" question in regards to diet. Is a diet stripping away the layers of yourself? Is it a lifelong journey? Is it about planning on completing the Ironman in 2 years and figuring out how to do it? Is it hanging up the little black dress in your closet and picturing it every time you have to make the choice between a donut or a bowl of oatmeal? Is it memorizing the sound of your ginormous thighs slapping together as you race down the stairs for work each day and pledging that you will do everything in your power to never, ever let that sound get louder again?

And so for at least right now, I've decided that a diet just has to be an exercise in honesty. Honesty meaning that starving myself in the five hours before a WW meeting in the hopes that the six previous days of less than stellar eating won't show on the scale is an awful, cowardly copout. That throwing on a couple point's worth of food at the end of the day is never, ever okay, and that WW has paid millions of dollars to Caltech degreed scientists to figure out exactly how many points you should eat to not be a fatass and so I should probably just shut up and agree with it no matter how much I deserve an extra cookie in the afternoon. It means admitting that I need help from other people, because if I could actually lose weight on my own without a program, then I'd be wearing a bikini and stilettos to walk out to the mailbox instead of seven layers of oversized clothing to hide the lumps and the rolls and the past week's worth of pizza and garlic bread and ice cream, and, and, and...

And I guess it has to work the other way, too. I have to be honest and admit that I'm not going to wake up at 5:00 am to do yoga if I've only been able to sleep for four hours before that, and maybe that's okay and I need to find something else to work for me. I should be honest and understand that failing at this (even failing at it over and over and over like I seem to do) doesn't make me a bad person, just a really typical one.

And that maybe if I can figure out all this stuff and learn to live with myself and my setbacks and my propensity for excuses, maybe I can bump that weight loss goal date up to, like, 2012. Exciting.