Given my failure at dieting, my plan was to trade Waist Watchers for weight-loss surgery. The surgery was scheduled for October, little more than four months away. I was excited about it, but also terrified at the thought of having my internal organs cut up and rearranged and of the possible complications that might follow. The surgery would make my stomach the size of a walnut; afterward I’d only be able to eat spoonfuls of food each day for the rest of my life. That was the horrible part, but the miraculous part was that I would lose between ten and twenty pounds a month. In one year it would be possible to lose more than two hundred pounds, but I wouldn’t go that far. I wanted to weigh 125 pounds, and then I would be happy. Waist Watchers could never give me that. I’d been devoted to the program for years and I was bigger than ever