I think diet pills should come with blunt warnings: Will make you drop dead of a heart attack at 21. Will make you shit yellow liquid. Will make you clean your bathroom grout with a Q-tip. Which isn't to say that I never tried it. I dropped a wad of cash on that metabolife, or whatever it was called, back in the day because I saw someone drop 300 pounds in 2 days and I was in for a quick fix. Of course, it did nothing and I stopped taking it because I was scared. Sucks to have to do it the old fashioned way.

Why can't the advice be simple? Eat this. Do that. You will lose weight. But there are all these conditions. Eat complex carbohydrates unless you can't. Do this much exercise unless it's a bad idea for you. Can't weight loss come in a nifty plastic package? Instead, I struggle to eat all my damn vegetables and I break weight loss rules all the time. I put real sugar in my coffee and I eat full fat cheese. I ate a piece of Baklava as big as your head the other day.

I constantly feel like I'm doing something wrong. The fact that my pants are falling off me isn't enough; I may lose weight, but am I doing it the right way? Do I eat too much dairy, not enough protein, too much fat, not enough of the right fat? Do I exercise too much, not enough, not intense enough, not enough weight training? I can barely get myself to work with both shoes tied, how the hell am I supposed to remember all of these other rules for eating? That was what I thought about the least. Sure, I saw what the fat did (to my thighs, my stomach, my butt) but it was hard to connect it to the food. So now I try to eat the right food, but I feel like I've got 5 balls in the air and I'm only managing to juggle two of them. Right amount of calories, but I only eat 2 servings of veggies a day, not enough water, too much juice, or whatever it is I'm obsessing over. I should set down the balls, switch to a chainsaw, chop down a tree, make a bench, sit down and stop thinking about it so damn much.