I recently found myself at the base of the famed Exorcist Steps in Georgetown, D.C. I started up the first 20 of 97 and thought "Ha! Look at me! I'm as graceful as a salmon leaping upstream." Then, on the 21st step, something kicked in and I started thinking very harsh thoughts about your mother.

You start a diet, you do moderately well, and then you completely fall off the wagon at a bar mitzvah party. By the end of the evening you find yourself up on a moral's charge involving two underage slices of cake. Worse, a week later, you learn that that one night of debauchery has cost you an entire week's worth of weight loss.

I remember eating -- let's not be polite here -- I was STUFFING a second piece of cake in my mouth, drunk out of my skull. "Jesus, that's good!" I exclaimed to the Bar Mitzvah guests. I was literally sliding the whole piece in like it was on a conveyer belt.

The notion that I can unfold a paper clip, stick the tip into my brain, and press the RESET button that will make me go cuckoo for Brussels' sprouts is insane. I will never change into a spa-cuisine kind of eater. I will never choose edamame over taters. This is a diet and it sucks.

I'm a professional geek who weights 239.6 pounds. I sit on my butt pretty much all day and think think think. I go deep into flow, fingers typing with maestro flare, but to the motion-detector in my office my physical body resembles the onset of rigor mortis.