There are certain instinctive drives that all human beings share. Hunger is one of them. Eating is necessary for our survival as individuals, so we eat. We can't live without eating, so the drive to eat is hardwired into our psyches. As individuals, we can live without sex, but as a species we cannot, so that drive is also hardwired into our psyche.

We all know what it feels like to be overweight. The self-disgust. The shame. The exhaustion. Unpleasant physical symptoms abound; maybe we even have to have our blood taken regularly to test for diabetes. A trip to the doctor's office includes the inevitable rationalizations about heavy clothing as we step on the scale and later dire pronouncements of doom and gloom from the doctor if we don't do something.

One of the most common refrains I hear from overweight women is their rebellion against the emphasis they feel our culture puts on impossibly perfect bodies. If Barbie were actually alive and full-sized, she wouldn't be able to carry her own weight and she wouldn't be able to walk without tumbling over. Yet little girls crave Barbie after Barbie, each one with a new look, a new outfit, a new hairstyle. Consciously or subconsciously, Barbie is a role model of style and grace to little girls, a mentor of feminine perfection that is actually possible only in molded plastic.

I've been on low carb many times in my life, but when I started trying to lose weight in 1996, I finally stuck with it. I weighed 208 when I started. In December 1998 I got down to 137. I've been maintaining ever since then.

Some of us have been scared into our weight loss effort by the threat of dire consequences. Our doctors have told us we will die if we don't lose 100 pounds, or our husbands have told us they will leave us if we don't lose 50. The surgeon says the lifesaving operation can't be done until the weight comes off, and we don't want to die. We have four small children and no job, so we can't afford to lose the husband, so the diet starts and we will know when we get there. If either of these are true for you, you can stop reading right now, because your course is simple.

Straight Talk And No Nonsense Have you ever perused the ten commandments? They are the basic rules for civilized human behavior, summed up concisely in only ten basic simple sentences. But has it ever occurred to you to wonder what something relatively benign like jealousy is doing right up there …

Webster's defines honesty as "the state or quality of being honest; specifically refraining from lying, cheating and stealing, being truthful, trustworthy or upright, sincere, fair, straightforward." The original meaning of the word was akin to the word honor.

You've lost the weight. You got on the scales one morning and there it was, your goal weight. Or you went to the gym and had your body fat percentage checked and found out that you were already below your goal body fat percentage, even though you hadn't gotten to goal weight. Or you finally got into that goal outfit, that goal dress or pant size.

Do we believe that other people care what we eat? And if we do, do we believe that what they think matters? Even my parents recognized my sister's and my rights to establish a fair boundary in the back-seat. They might have quibbled with our techniques, but no one questioned our rights to boundaries. The same should be true of our eating. It is a uniquely personal decision, effecting no one else directly and only a limited number of people in our lives even indirectly. Why not allow ourselves the dignity of establishing a few no trespassing signs?

Admit it. It crossed your mind to think that a mandatory burka would cover a multitude of figure flaws, didn't it? Did you ever consider joining a convent just for the baggy robe, just as a way to give up on trying to look good?

I am a food addict. I am addicted to wheat and corn, potatoes and sugar. Low-carb eating, of course, treats these addictions very successfully. But even on low carb I have to admit I show every sign of addictions to cheese and diet drinks. So it's no surprise that I am actually a happier person, healthier and thinner when I am off all of those.