Day one: it begins.

One stone = 14 pounds.

I want to lose weight. I want to feel healthy and light on my feet, I want my clothes to be comfortable. I want to stop looking at other chunky women and wondering who's fatter, them or me. And even if they're fatter, are they carrying it better than I do? Every now and then I remember that my shirt might be clinging to my back and showing off the rolls of back fat to the world, and I start doing weird things with my shoulders in a superstitious attempt to smooth out the rolls. I don't even know if they're really showing, or if the back contortions minimize them, or if I'm missing something important in the conversation while I obsess about the situation. I don't want to have to worry about that any more.

I weigh 168 pounds, exactly 12 stone. I'm going to cast off a couple of stones, and it's going to be great.

The diet started this morning; one egg. If only this were Helen Gurley Brown's diet from Sex and the Single Girl, where after the egg you get to eat grapefruit and a glass of white wine (I would have a Sauvignon Blanc from Marlborough). Instead it's a high protein, low fat low carb diet that jump starts with three days of protein only - and paltry amounts of that. Six tiny servings that you eat throughout the day: one egg, two and a half slices of low-fat turkey breast, four ounces of low-fat cottage cheese. Water.

Sigh.

Addendum, 2pm: peed on first ketostick. Results: "trace".

Had coffee this morning with LB, who is also on the diet and is a veteran, having successfully completed it three times in the last six years or so. We walked through CVS looking at sweet-flavored protein bars and metamucil, the first to answer cravings for chocolate-y flavors, the second to deal with the stoppage that is apparently widely experienced by people on these types of diets. Nice. One theraputic serving of metamucil: 4g of carbs. Seems kind of unfair.

2:45pm: Not even at the point of hunger yet, and already I'm looking longingly at bananas. I started thinking happily, as I often do around this time of day, about eating a bowl of ramen noodles and watching Colbert for lunch. Brain smarted indignantly like a puppy getting its nose smacked when I reminded it that ramen noodles wouldn't be happening today.

Will definitely be needing some kind of organized distraction to make it through this.