Why

Is it so easy to gain weight but so very hard to lose it? Have a few cookies after dinner each day and before you know it you've gained ten pounds. Don't have a few cookies after dinner and you just stay the same.

I'm trying to lose some weight and am eating carrot sticks right now because I am freaking STARVING! Breakfast was wheat toast, lunch was a rather dry turkey sandwich with no cheese and just a little mayo and an apple. I did splurge on one of those 100 calorie snack pack things that everyone has out these days, it was one of the hostess cupcake ones where they give you three tiny tiny little cupcakes. Very tiny, but at least it was something sweet. I was full for maybe an hour and have been hungry ever since.

Someone needs to invent a vegetable that tastes like chocolate and we'd all be happy, don't you think?

I'm one of those people who has always been overweight, not hugely gigantically overweight like the fat lady in the circus or the people on The Biggest Loser, but always overweight by about 50 pounds. In elementary school all of my dresses came from the 'chubby' department and I still remember the humiliation of being weighed in front of all my classmates in 5th grade and being 20 pounds heavier than anyone else. Why the gym teacher had to weigh us in school I don't know but he seemed to take a perverse pleasure in calling out your weight loud enough for the whole class to hear. I still hate that man. We had to wear our school clothes for gym class and back then girls weren't allowed to wear pants to school and if you forgot your shorts for under your dress on gym day it was even more humiliating than the weight thing, because you would always have to play sports where your dress might fly up and all the boys would see your underwear.

Anyway, back to the weight thing. When I was 35, almost 20 years ago, which just astounds me that it's been that long, I went on a diet that actually worked. I counted every calorie that I ate and I went hungry all the time but I managed to lose about 60 pounds. Which has since slowly come back on over the last 20 years. Gain 2 or 3 pounds a year which you don't really notice at the time, but damn, that adds up after 20 years, and you're right back where you started from.

For those of you who are naturally skinny, I don't want to hear about how if you just eat right you don't have to worry about gaining weight and blah blah blah. Some of us are just naturally fat, all right? Just like some of you are naturally skinny and can't gain weight no matter how many pints of Ben and Jerry's you eat, some of us are just fat no matter how many calories we count and how many carrot sticks and apples we eat instead of the Ben and Jerry's.

So, anyway, I have lost a few pounds so far but it's hard, really hard, and I hate to be hungry and diet food is boring, and damn, Ben and Jerry's sounds really good right now. I especially like the Chubby Hubby flavor, and if that's not a fitting name for ice cream I don't know what is.