Jenny Craig, I think I Love You

ot many people know that I have been, most of my adult life, secretly obese. I hide it well with baggy clothes and by never leaving the house, but, truth be told, I'm fat as all get out.

By average standards, I have been, at my greatest rotundity, 100 pounds over the standard mark. Just because the standard is set according to the average size of fanatical fasting Fakirs in Darfur doesn't mean it isn't right. I'm supposed to be only one person and, according to the measure, I'm two.

My gorgeous attorney has also battled with thinnitism and decided recently to join Jenny Craig. As a measure of support, I vowed to stand by her, diet spackle bar to diet spackle bar, steamed zucchini to steamed zucchini, in her quest to reduce her size by one thin secretary.

So here we are, 7 weeks into the program and we're down 20 pounds each. 20 pounds. I never thought I'd freakin lose twenty pounds. You know how much twenty pounds is? Grab four bags of sugar. Wear them. For thirty years.

However, no one's noticed yet. My pants are hanging off my ass like I'm some kind of white rapper wanna be. I went bowling and nothing worked because I'm used to heaving twenty more pounds up to the line and I'm just . ... off. I look in the mirror and I look different to myself and I see me every day. I see my attorney every day and we LOOK DIFFERENT! WE'RE SKINNIER! AND NO ONE NOTICES IT!

I think it has to do with fear of fat. When my attorney complained that no one had noticed that she'd lost weight, I told her that until she's dramatically thinner, no one is going to say anything because they can't be sure they're right. If they say "Wow, you've lost weight!" and you say, "Uh, no," look at them for a minute then finish with "I'm still fat," well, it's an awkward moment.

It's the opposite of the irrevocable comment: "When's it due?" to which the robustly bellied recipient of this folly replies, with frigid malice, "I'm. Not. Pregnant."

If you are on the upside of ample, as Mrs. Death and I were, please accept my assurance that you can lose it. You really can. And it's easy.

I've been losing two pounds or more every week for eight weeks. I eat more than I used to, the food is good, and I haven't exercised. At all. I'm not advocating that by the way so all you nitpickerels can just stand down now. I hate exercising and I doubt I'll really do it until I have to. If I was exercising---I'd have lost probably 25 pounds by now.

Jenny Craig food is expensive and it doesn't always live up to the picture on the box. The pesto pizza is terrible. The cheese tortellini is torpid and wan. But the Fish and Chips is alright and the pot-stickers and cashew chicken dinners are pretty tasty.

The important thing we've found is to load up the fridge with diet Jello and really good vegetables. We eat a salad every lunch and a huge bowl of steamed veggies every night. I have yogurt and dry cereal for breakfast every morning with a fruit, a cup of coffee and a lot of water. I eat a snack two hours later: yogurt and a snack bar with fruit. I eat a JC lunch with a womping salad at lunch, take a vitamin, have a snack two hours later, cottage cheese, a fruit, and diet chips. Then dinner. Then desert. I'm eating more food than Oprah on a binge and I'm losing weight.

I know some of my readers are, as I have so delicately described, on the upside of ample. Maybe it's you. Maybe this sounds like preaching but I'm pretty excited about losing weight. It can be done. You can do it. If I can do it ... you can.

Please save me: my children are trying to kill me.