I've never been truly heavy, but I've been about 20 pounds overweight, more or less,all my life. The first time I was aware of it, I was 13 years old, and my Dad lookedup from his plate at the dinner table and remarked to my Mom, "Polly'salmost...fat."

I was 13. What did I know about weight loss? I got up after eating and started running down the street. I remember my Dad watching me go.

In the 80s, when I was a kid, being thin was critical. To be a little zaftig wasto be scorned by girls and invisible to boys. I came to absolutely loathe myself. I tried starving, with the usual results; I binged later. I couldn't maintain a strategy for more than a week. I don't think I was capable of consistency then. It got worse as I got older. I had other problems. diets became one of them. For the first time in my life, after discovering cocaine at age 17, I was very thin. I loved it. I had no conception of how terribly emaciated I'd become. Only looking at my clothes later was I able to see how far gone I'd been. I was wearing a size one when I quit.

But when I regained the weight at age 19, I was miserable. I got into anobsessive cycle of binging and starving. I dabbled with diets for weight loss all through my 20s. I wore a size 9 or 10 most of the time, hardly obese, but I worked in show business and wallowed in despair, sure that if I could never success if not a size four. There was reason to think that. There are very, very few plump show business success stories.

At 30, my weight topped out at 159.

At 32, I quit drinking. That turned out to be the beginning of life, for me.Three months later, I quit smoking. I became a lot more active once I wasn'tsick in the mornings any more. I started riding my bicycle around, hiking a lot,even climbing short mountains. But I didn't really change my eating habits. My weight dropped to 154. I took onmore hours at work, and my weight slowly dropped to about 149, where it stayed for a very long time. Then I fell in love. Well, there was motivation. I made a bet with a friend at Thanksgiving that I could quit eating sugar all the way until New Years, with just a bit on Christmas and Thanksgiving. I won the bet and lost a couple pounds. I weighed about 147. Size eight startedfeeling pretty good.

Then I discovered yoga. Yoga made me feel calm and flexible. I joined a gym toget access to yoga classes, and figured I'd take a few work out classes. I quickly dumped five more pounds, getting down to about 142, but the dramaticchange was in my size. I went from an eight or nine to a six. Some fours, eventwos, fit. I took all my measurements and entered them in the computer and foundthat my lean body mass was close to ideal.

Then I started counting carbs and calories about two months ago. My weight is now 140. I have a goal of about 135. At this rate, it will be off in six months, but that's fine. It will stay off.