Eventually

The “diet” began at age thirteen with diet pills. I meandered through “chubby” clothes the 1/2 tag, slacks wearing out first at the inner thighs, chiding comments from Mother and others, called in Red Rover by the description, “Let Fat Domino come over,” band uniforms having to be altered, the embarrassment of hight and weight being announced before eighth-grade peers, most weigh-and-pay organizations you could name, some you never heard of, carb blockers, amphetamines, a metal pin at an acupuncture point on my ear, graphs and charts projecting how much I’d lose by what date, counseling (3 times, years at a time), hypnotism, and anything else marginally relative, fasting one day each week, beginning to write a book about how with a partner I attained a total weight loss of 500 pounds, knowing I lacked well over a hundred of those before publication… Giving myself shots in the stomach twice daily with a medication approved for diabetics, which I was not, but not approved for weight control…. The “diet” lasted until 36 days before age 60… Unlucky? Certainly. Stubborn? It would seem so, but no, neither luck nor mulishness had anything to do. Fortune stepped in, led me to understand it’s a disease, and led me eventually to Recovery in the rooms of Overeaters Anonymous...