Nurse Sarah took a deep breath. “Very good!” she said, making a visible effort to sound happy and upbeat. “Now, how about a portion of fat?”

“Tip of your thumb,” I muttered. Her eyes widened. “Look,” I said, “I think we all know this stuff… am I right?”

I looked around the table. Everyone nodded. “The only thing we’re here for, the only thing that this program has to offer us, is the drugs. Now, are we going to get them today, or do we have to sit here and act like you’re telling us things we don’t already know?”

The nurse’s face went from frustrated (and slightly dismissive) to angry (and more than slightly scared). “There’s a procedure to this,” she said. “We explained it. Four weeks of behavior-modification classes…”

Lily started thumping her fist on the table. “Drugs… drugs… drugs…” she chanted.

“We can’t just hand out prescription medication”

“Drugs… drugs… drugs…” Now Bonnie the blond girl and Esther were chanting along as well. The nurse opened her mouth, then closed it again. “I’ll get the doctor,” she said, and bolted. The five of us stared at each other for a moment. Then we all burst out laughing.

“She was scared!” Lily hooted.

“Probably thought we’d crush her,” I muttered.

“Sit on her!” gasped Bonnie.

“I hate skinny people,” I said.

Anita looked very serious. “Don’t say that,” she said. “You shouldn’t hate anyone.”

“Agh,” I sighed. Just then, Dr. K. stuck his head through the door, with the chastened-looking nurse right behind him, practically clinging to the hem of his white coat.

“I understand there’s a problem,” he rumbled.

“Drugs!” said Lily.

The doctor had the look of a man who wanted very badly to laugh and was trying very hard not to.

“Is there a movement spokeswoman?” he asked.

Everyone looked at me. I got to my feet, smoothed my shirt, and cleared my throat. “I think that it’s the feeling of the group that we’ve all been through different lectures and courses and support groups concerning behavior modification.” I looked around the table. Everyone seemed to be nodding in agreement. “It’s our feeling that we’ve tried to change our behavior, and eat less, and exercise more, and all of those things that they tell you to do, and what we’d really like… what we’re really here for, what we’ve all paid for, is something new. Namely, drugs,” I concluded, and sat back in my seat.

“Well, I know how you feel,” he said.

“I doubt that very much,” I shot back.

“Well, maybe you can tell me,” he said mildly. “Look,” he said. “It’s not like I know the secrets to lifelong weight loss and I’m here to tell them to you. Think of this as a journey… think of it as something we’re in on together.”

“Except that our journey led us to the wonderful world of plus-size shopping and lonely nights,” I grumbled.

The doctor smiled at me – a very disarming grin. “Let’s forget about fat or thin for a minute,” he said. “If you guys already know the calorie counts of everything, and what a serving of pasta’s supposed to look like, then I’m sure you all know that most diets don’t work. Not over the long term, anyhow.”

Now he had our attention. It was true, we’d all figured this out (from bitter personal experiences, in most cases), but to hear an authority figure, a doctor, a doctor who was running a weight-loss program say it… well, that was practically heresy. I half expected security guards to come rushing through the door and drag him off to be re-brainwashed.

“I think,” he continued, “that we’ll all have much better luck – and we’ll be happier – if we think instead about small lifestyle changes – little things that we can do every day that won’t prove unsustainable over the long term. If we think about getting healthier, and feeling happier with ourselves, instead of looking like Courteney…”

He looked at me, eyebrows raised.

“Cox,” I supplied. “Actually, Cox-Arquette. She got married.”

“Right. Her. Forget her. Let’s concentrate on the attainable, instead. And I promise that nobody here will treat you like you’re stupid, no matter what your size is.”

I found I was touched in spite of myself. The guy was actually making sense. Better yet, he wasn’t talking down to us. It was… well, revolutionary, really.

The nurse gave us one last disgruntled glance and scurried away. The doctor closed the door and took a seat. “I’d like to do an exercise with you,” he said. He looked around the table. “How many of you ever eat when you’re not hungry?”

Dead silence. I closed my eyes. Emotional eating. I’d been through this lecture, too.

“How many of you eat breakfast, and then maybe you come to the office and there’s a box of doughnuts and they look good and you’ll have one just because they’re there?”

More silence. “Dunkin’ Donuts or Krispy Kremes?” I finally asked.

The doctor pursed his full lips. “I hadn’t thought about it.”

“Well, it makes a difference,” I said.

“Dunkin’ Donuts,” he said.

“Chocolate? Jelly? Glazed that somebody from Accounting ripped in half, so there’s only half a doughnut left?”

“Krispy Kremes are better,” said Bonnie.

“Especially the warm ones,” said Esther.

I licked my lips.

“The last time I had doughnuts,” said Esther, “someone brought them to work, just like we’re talking about, and I picked out one that looked like a Boston cream… you know, it had the chocolate on top?”

We nodded. We all probably knew how to recognize a Boston cream doughnut on sight.

“Then I bit into it,” Esther continued, “and it was…” Her lips curled. “Lemon.”

“Ick,” said Bonnie. “I hate lemon!”

“Okay,” said the doctor, laughing. “My point is, they could be the best doughnuts in the world. They could be the Platonic ideal of doughnut-ness. But if you’ve already had breakfast, and you aren’t really hungry, ideally, you should be able to walk right by.”

We thought about this for a minute. “As if,” Lily finally said.

“Maybe you could try telling yourself that when you are really hungry, if what you’re really hungry for is a doughnut, then you can go get one.”

We thought again. “Nope,” said Lily. “I’m still eating the free doughnuts.”

“And how do you know what you’re really hungry for?” asked Bonnie. “Like, me… I’m always hungry for the stuff I know I shouldn’t be eating. But, like, give me a bag of baby carrots and I’m all, like, whatever.”

“Did you ever try boiling them and mashing them with ginger and orange rind?” asked Lily. Bonnie wrinkled her nose.

“I don’t like carrots,” said Anita, “but I do like butternut squash.”

“That’s not a vegetable, though. It’s a starch,” I said.

Anita looked confused. “How can it not be a vegetable?”

“It’s a starchy vegetable. Like a potato. I learned that in Weight Watchers.”

“On Fat and Fiber?” asked Lily.

“Okay then!” said the doctor. I could tell from his eyes that the unruly chatter of five veterans of Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, Pritikin, Atkins, et al., was starting to get to him. It couldn’t be fun.

“Let’s try something,” he said. He walked to the door and flicked off the lights. The room dimmed. Bonnie giggled. “I want you all to close your eyes,” he said, “and try to figure out how you feel right now, right this minute. Are you hungry? Tired? Are you sad, or happy, or anxious? Try to really concentrate, and then, try to really separate the physical sensations from what’s happening emotionally.”

We all closed our eyes.

“Anita?” asked the doctor.

“I’m tired,” she said immediately.

“Bonnie?”

“Oh, maybe tired. Maybe a little hungry, too,” she said.

“And emotionally?” he prodded.

Bonnie sighed. “I’m sick of my school,” she finally muttered. “The kids say rotten things to me.” I snuck a peek at her. Her eyes were still tightly screwed shut, and her hands were clenched into fists on top of her oversized jeans. High school, evidently, had not gotten any kinder or gentler since my own attendance ten years prior. I wished I could put my hand on her shoulder. Tell her that things would get better… except, given recent events in my own life, I wasn’t sure it was the truth.