Curious, I did a couple of searches myself. I found out weight loss can make you happier if you have hot flashes, and I found stories about how you will be less fat and thus more happy if you eat eggs and get surgery and drink apple cider vinegar and go to the mountains (even though you’ll gain the weight back in a month, of course—yes, the article really admits that). There’s even an article about how weight-loss patches “really work.” I’m not kidding.

I did not find any stories that could be remotely classified as fat positive, with one exception. The link our tipster sent in was this one, an article that contained the tidbit that low social interaction is “twice as harmful as obesity.” Of course this isn’t fat positive on the surface, but I could make a happy headline for that, which would read: Your Friends Are Twice As Important As Your Fat. That’s pretty happy, right?

On the diet, she eats only one meal a day (usually chicken) — and six cookies, each of which suppresses hunger. The six cookies — which contain beef and milk protein — each contain about 11 grams of carbohydrates and 90 calories.

The biggest challenge so far? No binge drinking!

“If I go out I am going to have a drink, but I am not going to have 10 drinks like I usually would,” she says.

There’s a lot of diet talk at the link, so be forewarned before you follow it, but it does point out a couple of crucial things. Firstly, that these “diet” “cookies” ARE MADE OF BEEF. That does not sound like a cookie. In fact, it sounds like a crime against cookies. And secondly, that if you’re going to starve yourself and eat only one meal a day, you’d get the same effect by eating deli turkey slices and a few Oreos. Same nutrition, same constant state of gnawing hunger, same probability that you’ll regain the weight and then some.

Hooray for her quitting binge drinking, though, right? Sigh.

“I think fat people are sold a fantasy, and then get no support in the reality, because we’re simply supposed to be grateful that we’re no longer fat,” [Jen] Larsen says… But weight loss chat rooms, forums and blogs are filled with people who are wondering why their newfound svelte selves and stellar metabolic profiles are leaving them ever-so-slightly disappointed.

And who can blame them? Reality shows, weight loss books, movies, TV shows and advertisements all tell tales of people dropping major poundage and gaining seemingly perfect lives. They find their true selves and their true loves. They go back to school or get promotions. They become social butterflies, the life of the party.

Anyone who’s read Kate’s piece knows that’s a bunch of BS. And if you haven’t read it in a while, or ever, go and enjoy.

Accepting my fat really wasn’t the hard part. Accepting my personality — and my many limitations that have jack shit to do with my thighs — was. But oddly enough, once I started to do that, my life became about a zillion times more satisfying… The thin person inside me finally got out — it just turned out she was actually a fat person. A reasonably attractive, semi-outgoing fat person who has an open mind and an active imagination but also happens to really like routine and familiarity and quiet time alone.

That was never who I expected to be — it was just always who I was.

“I used to eat these horrible boxed meals,” Rue explained. “They were all these processed, microwaveable meals full of preservatives.” Rue spent hours a day on the phone with her consultant, begging her for help in learning how to go hungry. “Even the desserts were just little squares of styrofoam flavored with Splenda. And they cost a fortune! I don’t know what I was thinking.”

Once she joined Yennj Giarc, her thinking changed. “I started eating like a regular person. You know, eating when I was hungry. Having dessert occasionally.” It improved both her mood and her figure. “I’m much happier now,” she says. And her exercise program changed too. “I used to spend two hours a day with a personal trainer,” Rue said. “It really didn’t leave me much time to do anything except obsess over my body. Now I’m going to the gym less obsessively, and taking a dance class for fun. It’s awesome!”

Rue showed off her new body on the cover of Curvilicious magazine’s swimsuit issue. With her new, fuller figure, Rue says she’s getting more parts. “There are a million skinny starlets,” she says, “and I used to have a ton of competition. With my new, unique look, I can hardly keep up with all the scripts that I’ve been sent. It’s a great problem to have.”

Of course, everyone wants to know: how can they duplicate Rue’s success? “Just eat like a normal person,” she says. “It’s that simple. Remember, nothing tastes as good as being whatever weight you happen to be feels!”

Why he went on the show:

[I]t was just about the life experience. When else is someone going to hand me money to and pay me to lose weight? And It’s driving a lot of people to my site who had never been to my site before and they get to see my stuff. Fuck it, I want to have life experiences. I had a paid vacation in L.A. where all I had to do was work out and get every meal delivered to my front door for 3 months. I mean, who wouldn’t want to do that?

I love when celebrities articulate the realities of their weight loss. Because for a lot of these celebs (especially ones who have babies and then are on the cover of magazines a week and a half later all, “How She Dropped The Baby Weight!”) weight loss becomes their entire job. A chef makes them food, and all they have to do all day is work out. Jay McCarroll doesn’t usually have that life, but a lot of celebrities do. So his outside-looking-in perspective is interesting to me.

On being back in the real world:

Now it’s just a matter of finding a balance. Because I’m back in a world that has bread.I know I’m never going to be 150 pounds and I’m never going to have a six-pack and I needed to get over that.

On making his weight a public issue:

Oh, yeah. People have been very positive about it. That’s the only thing that worries me. You’re a public figure and you lose weight on television and everyone’s happy for you and then you gain the weight back and it’s a whole other story.I don’t want that to happen. I also know reality, like today I had a six-hour meeting about my new fabric line and I didn’t have time to like, sit down and have grilled salmon and then head off to the gym. I was occupied with other things. Now it’s a matter of working it deeply into my schedule. I have to.

I think celebrities who lose weight on TV kind of make the proverbial deal with the devil. Because you have an audience, and people rooting you on, and then suddenly that audience feels ownership in your results. And so then you’re like Carnie Wilson or Kirstie Alley, constantly having to publicly humble yourself and beg forgiveness for gaining the weight back.

And finally, on the fashion world:

You don’t feel beautiful, but you feel drawn to beautiful things and you want to make beautiful things and have beautiful things all around you so people won’t notice that you’re not beautiful. That’s where I ended up. I wanted to be in a place where I felt like I could add beauty to the world because I felt like I had no beauty to offer the world myself. But then getting to that track in fashion and getting to that place where what is considered beautiful is completely repulsive to me, i.e., Kelly Cutrone and her world, there’s nothing beautiful about that. It isn’t real. Fashion week and all that stuff, when you’re a fat teenager, that’s what you aspire toward.

But when you’re an adjusted 30 year old, that stuff doesn’t look beautiful anymore. And that’s just how I feel about it. It’s just a circus of dysfunctional fucking people who have low self esteem and body image issues. Fashion is full of people who drink coffee and smoke cigarettes for a meal.

My dream is still for Jay to go out and do a plus-sized line. Because come on, how fabulous would that be?

Women drink Diet Coke and Diet Pepsi; men drink Coke Zero and Pepsi Max, aka the diet sodas without the word “diet” in the name. Since diets are for girls!

Feminist blogs such as The Gender Bender Blog and I Blame the Patriarchy both talk about the dieting-is-for-girls sexism inherent in these ads, but I wonder about it from the size acceptance perspective as well. If we don’t like the word “diet” in the first place, but still enjoy low- or no-calorie cola, would we be more likely to drink the man-branded sodas like Coke Zero and Pepsi Max?

The only times I really drink soda are if I’m at the movies or eating a Subway sandwich, and in both cases my preference is Diet Coke with a splash of Cherry Coke or unsweetened iced tea with lemon. But of course, most places don’t have Pepsi Max or Coke Zero on tap anyway. Do you drink cola, diet or otherwise? Which one is your favorite? Is it based on taste, gender, flavor, availability…or something else?

Oh, Kirstie Alley. You’re a ridiculously beautiful woman. You’re reasonably talented, you’re fairly charming, you’re actually pretty hilarious, even. My point is, you have many excellent qualities, all of which are ripe for the picking and/or exploitation. You could have a career, Kirstie Alley! You could be an Actress, full stop. You don’t have to spend the entirety of your career being a Fat Actress. You don’t have to base all your attention-getting activies on the size of your body and the shape of your ass. Enough with Jenny Craig and the bikinis on Oprah and swearing that you’re going to get back into a bikini, on Oprah.

What I’m saying, Kirstie Alley, is that you don’t need to have a goddamn reality show about how you’re going to lose the weight. Kirstie Alley, you are equally hot and you are equally talented at every size you have ever been. But more importantly, Kirstie Alley: you are more than your goddamn fat. I’m tired of hearing you talk about it and I’m tired of hearing you complain about it, and I’m tired of hearing you hate on yourself and your body and your life.

I’m sorry, Kirstie Alley. I didn’t mean to get angry at you. It’s just–please believe me, Kirstie Alley, when I say that I’m not discounting your struggle, how difficult it is to be an actress in Hollywood, how incredibly hard it must be to work in an industry where you’re only as good as the size of your ass. I just wish, I guess, you didn’t have to buy into the game. I wish you didn’t have to say ha ha, everyone, I know how awful it is that I am fat! It just makes me sad. It just makes me wish you could be simultaneously happy with your size and happy in your career and successful and while I’m at it, I may as well wish the same for everyone, and ponies for all, and world peace and teleportation technology via the magic of physics. You know, the easy stuff.

Uncle Karl then went on to lose 90 pounds or so with the help of a doctor and a lot of starvation, and the avoidance of exercise which only makes you hungry. Hunger is a terrible, terrible thing. So is being fat, says Uncle Karl. There’s a trend toward using less-skinny models in runway shows, and Karl doesn’t like it one bit. Karl, in fact, thinks that it is “absurd.”

“No one wants to see curvy women,” Lagerfeld said. “You’ve got fat mothers with their bags of chips sitting in front of the television and saying thin models are ugly.” Fashion is about “dreams and illusions.”

Dreams and illusions! Ha! Oh Karl. You are an asshole. And you’re kind of an idiot, too. And you know, I was filled with rage when I first read your quote, but I think, in the end, I just feel kind of sorry for you. You used to smile a lot, when you were fat but still, I assume, eating things. And now I don’t remember the last time I saw you looking anything but grim. I’m sorry you’re hungry all the time, Karl, that you have to starve yourself to stay so thin and gaunt-looking and you suggest we all do the same in your diet book, that you seem to be a miserable, kind of creepy and grim old man who hates the person you used to be. I mean, a fan to hide your double chin. That’s pretty sad, Karl.

Your dreams and illusions, the ones where you are fabulous and elegant and enviably slim, they sure are hard to keep up with, aren’t they, Karl? Go have a bowl of low-sodium broth, Karl, and salt it with your tears.

At Joh’s first session with the hypnotherapist, she was asked to talk about her bad relationship with food.

But by the fourth session she was being talked through a gastric band op as though she was really going through the surgery.

To help with the illusion, special equipment pumped out the smells of an operating theatre and a recording of surgical tools being picked up and put down was played. Joh says: “When they actually come round to the final session and the therapist convinces you you’re having the op, it’s so realistic you actually believe you are lying in that operating theatre.

Yes, I’d pay money to be made to believe that I am lying on an operating table. The clink of the surgical tools is also a very nice touch.

So she goes through this imaginary operation, and suddenly, she is free!

“Now that I think I have a band I’ve cut my portion size in half. My mind thinks my stomach is tiny so I feel full much quicker. It’s also caused me to stop snacking on junk as I simply don’t feel like eating it anymore.”

Now that I think I have a band? She’s aware that she doesn’t actually have a band, so I am confused about how she can say that she thinks she has a band. Is she unsure as to whether or not the band exists? Has the line between fact and fiction been so mystically blurred that right becomes wrong and up becomes down and gastric bands lie down in the box with Schrödinger’s cat and play canasta? I guess I don’t understand how you can be perfectly aware that you do not actually have a band around your stomach, and not decide you can eat whatever you want because that band doesn’t exist. But I guess I am missing the entire point of magic imaginary weight loss surgery.

Anyway, she was a U.K. size 18, and now she is a U.K. size 12, she looked awesome both before and after and I am glad she didn’t actually get weight loss surgery to lose only 56 freaking pounds. And I am off to go get imaginary magic PhD, so that I think everyone should call me Dr. Fu.

I appreciate the initiative taken by McDonald’s here, to attempt to pare down one of their most traditionally godawful offerings — one so synonymous with junk food that it remains the benchmark against which all other junk food is compared — into a reasonably-portioned snack. But truly, to extend this idea into reality requires so much dream logic that I am stunned it actually happened. It would require long-standing business people to agree to the following statements:

* People will enjoy Big Macs when they are 1/5th the size but 1/2 the price.
* Big Macs are just as delicious and addictive when they offer only a fraction of the beef and no cheese to speak of.
* Tortillas are an acceptable substitute, flavorfully and texturally, for three hamburger buns.
* Sticking 1/2 of a Big Mac patty into a tortilla with a bit of cheese and some special sauce will trick people into thinking they got value for $1.89
* Canadians are perfect to test this kind of crap on.

Of those statements, only a single one is true — and that’s not nearly enough.

I have been known to try tricks like this to satisfy my occasional cravings for fast food. (I am going to add a “Diet Talk Warning” here just in case this triggers anyone, even though I am not “dieting” in any of these scenarios.) I buy Happy Meals instead of large-sized meals, or get a Big Mac (no cheese, because I hate cheeseburgers) and toss out one of the pieces of bread or one of the patties in the middle. I regularly get Subway tuna subs with half the amount of tuna. I completely relate to satisfying my cravings and hunger with smaller portions. But this tortilla thing looks gross. I would never skimp on the sesame-seed bun! That’s just madness.