In September, 2008, I signed up for Weight Watchers.

It wasn’t the first time I’d tried the program. I’d done it online once before, with extremely temporary results. All that tracking was more than I could be bothered with, especially for the long haul.

On the other hand, at least on Weight Watchers I got to eat. In the late 1980s, Slim-Fast had a commercial that sang, “Give us a week, we’ll take off the weight.” One night, I thought, “Okay, fine. I have a week.” Sure enough, I lost weight. Mind you, the Slim-Fast plan at that time meant having one of their shakes three times a day (two meals and a snack), with one “sensible” meal. Who couldn’t lose weight on that? Especially in combination with a lot of walking and Jane Fonda’s low-impact aerobics (which were so low-impact that I didn’t bother my downstairs neighbor). Alas, keeping the weight off once I returned to a more traditional lifestyle, i.e., eating more than one meal a day, proved . . . impossible. Sigh.