I misunderstood when I heard about this story, or the person telling me about it did. It speaks of a diet, and of course that usually means a temporary change in food regimen, but in this case, the reference to diet is about clothing.

The way it was explained to me, people who'd lost weight had chosen to stick with six garments only until their weight had stabilized, so that they didn't end up with a range of sizes for the long run.

I see now that this makes no sense, but what it recalled for me were the days when I was dropping from 365 to about 200, where I remain today 20 years later. Except for a couple of size 64 sweatpants that I bought (slightly oversized for what I needed) — while I was in rehab, I got rid of every stitch I owned, and eventually disposed of everything I'd bought to replace it on the way down, because that stuff no longer fit, either.

I recently ran across the Shrinking Mama blog, telling the story of Melissa, a 31-year-old mom of two who is, or was, up near 400 pounds. 'Least, I think that's right; in her bio, she declines to say how much, though she does keep a running weekly total of her weight loss, which stands around 60 pounds since March 18. She says she needs to drop 150 to be healthy.

I can relate a lot to what she says, of course, such as this passage from her bio:

[I lifted this entirely from a newsletter from edreferral@aol.com. As some readers will recall, my issue is the recognition of food addiction, but that never was even on the table. Recognition of Binge Eating Disorder is important, but progress comes way too slow.]

By John Gever, Senior Editor, MedPage Today May 29, 2010. Primary source: American Psychiatric Association. Source reference: Walsh B, "Approaches to the diagnosis and classification of eating disorders in DSM-V" APA 2010; p. 106.

Originally I wanted to make fun of this guy, Dattatreya Siva Baba, and he's still campy by Western standards, but his theory isn't too far from what I subscribe to, albeit with different frames of reference.

The description on the site where I "found" the clip said that "the main reason we are attracted to the wrong food is because negative forces or demons make us unconscious and we consume food that is bad for us."