Diets are a scam!

Quite a while ago I wrote a short story... or is it a novella?... called "Nothing to Lose." I put it on Amazon for 99¢ and pretty much forgot about it. Lately people have been asking me about it, asking to expand it. After I get through this glut of book-revamping, plus the new book, I just might do that. (Plus I'd correct the crazy formatting! Eek!)

It's the story about a group of ladies, one in particular, who have weighty issues. Let's join them at a gym that looks a lot like Curves...
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Pat’s lower lip had begun to protrude farther and farther and I didn’t think it was because we were approaching the leg press again. Her chin wrinkled along with her nose as she thought. We looked at her. Was this a botox moment? She slammed her fists down on the handles of the glute machine and declared, “It’s not us!” She looked hard at each of us in turn. “It’s a curse. A real curse. Magic!”

I laughed. Who wouldn’t?

She pointed at me. “You said it yourself. The physics doesn’t make sense. That’s science, right? If it’s not scientific, it’s not true. OR it’s magic.”

LaDawn tapped her chin thoughtfully instead of doing the required climbing motions for her board. “I never thought of it that way before. Could be.”

“Magic,” I scoffed. “If it were just that, some wizard would be making a fortune curing people.”

“Maybe someone is,” LaDawn said. “Maybe they’re keeping it on the downlow.”

 “Why? So they don’t have to become a multi-millionaire?”

Pat poked the air in front of her as if it were someone’s chest. “It’s so they’re not overrun by people, tearing down their front doors. Begging them to do the job.”

“I know a wizard in Atlanta and she keeps busy. Very busy,” Charlotte said. “Her whole family has been well off for generations. She can afford to turn down business if she wants. I decorated her main parlor,” she confided. “She gave me an unlimited budget. Oh, my.” A wistful smile lit her face.

“Look,” I tried to reason, “if being fat was something magic there’d be a rumor about it at least. I’ve never heard anyone claim this was a curse. You know me; I’m always on the Internet looking for new diets. I tell you, I’d know.”

“Do any of those diets of yours work?”

“Ah...” It took me a while to go through the long list in my head. “That Adkins thing worked for a month or six weeks.”

Charlotte waved her perfectly-manicured nails at me. “Well, I do not want something that only lasts six weeks. I want forever.”

“And I wouldn’t mind it being easy, either,” LaDawn put in. “Diets are too hard. They make me crazy when I’m on them. Give me some magic with some chocolate and maybe a little scotch every day, and I’ll be happy.”

You couldn’t argue with that. Could you?

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If I'm going to be expanding this, I need to hear funny stories about how people have tried to lose weight. Did it work? Did it not? What was your (or a friend's) experience?