Celebrity ScaleLast night I watched a PBS documentary called Fat: What No One Is Telling You. Narrated in Meredith Vieira’s empathic alto, it introduced viewers to a handful of Americans struggling with obesity. The show took a stand against weight-based prejudice by showing overweight men, women and children engaged in a struggle against what all the scientists and doctors on the show deemed a biological imperative.

The big question: Why can’t these people be who they want to be? What’s stopping them—self control, or forces beyond their control? Hovering over all the compelling research presented by the scientists was the haze of defeat. No matter how successful these people were in other areas of their lives—as parents, Microsoft employees, public health advocates—they seemed a little bit pathetic. Here they are running on a treadmill—fat. Here they are grilling chicken breasts—still fat. Here they are sitting in a bariatric surgeon’s office—fatter than ever.

In our culture, obesity is a failure no one can hide. Being overweight is like wearing a sign that says “I am not in control of my own destiny.” Sure, science has proven that setpoints and leptin and serotonin levels and a second gut-brain are really in control of our weight, but most people—even fat people—believe the obese could be thin, if they really wanted to be. If they weren’t so lazy. OK, so it may be harder for a genetically fat person to develop Nicole Richie’s physique, but so what? It’s harder for learning-disabled people to do well in school, but they still manage to win Nobel prizes. It’s harder for Heather Mills to suffer through Dancing With The Stars on only one leg, but she twirls away. Thin people ridicule fat people’s failure to get a hold of themselves; fat people ridicule themselves even more for it.

I have struggled to keep my own weight down for my entire life, trying this diet, that vitamin, this yoga class, that fiber capsule—always ending up voluptuous and self-punishing. Could The Secret put an end to my lifelong battle?

Rhonda Byrne says yes.

Here is what Byrne writes in The Secret book:

The first thing to know is that if you focus on losing weight, you will attract back having to lose more weight, so get “having to lose weight” out of your mind. It’s the very reason why diets don’t work. …

The second thing to know is that the condition of being overweight was created through your thought to it. To put it in the most basic terms, if someone is overweight, it came from thinking ‘fat thoughts,’ whether that person was aware of it or not. A person cannot think “thin thoughts” and be fat. It completely defies the law of attraction…

The most common thought that people hold, and I held it too, is that food was responsible for my weight gain. This is a belief that does not serve you, and in my mind now, it is complete balderdash! Food is not responsible for putting on weight. It is your thought that food is responsible for putting on weight that actually has food put on weight. Remember, thoughts are the primary cause of everything, and the rest is effects from those thoughts. Think perfect thoughts and the result must be perfect weight…

You most likely know of someone who is thin and eats like a horse, and then they proudly declare, “I can eat whatever I want and I am always the perfect weight.” And so the Genie of the Universe says, “Your wish is my command!”

Byrne then outlines some simple steps to take in order to be thin:

- Tape your ideal weight to your scale, so that you believe you are already at your goal of perfect thinness. If you believe you are already thin, you will act as a thin person would. (Secret Rebecca is thin!)

- Don’t buy fat clothes.

- Don’t hang out with fat people. Remember, like attracts like and you don’t want to beckon a big blob of fatness in your direction. (This section, actually, would be at home on a pro-ana eating disorder website; here are Byrne's words of thin-spiration: “Make it your intention to look for, admire, and inwardly praise people with your idea of perfect-weight bodies…If you see people who are overweight, do not observe them, but immediately switch your mind to the picture of you in your perfect body and feel it.”)

As I tape a big “125” over the digital readout on my scale, I feel a bit… delusional. What’s next? A Tahitian beach scene glued behind my windowpanes? Laser-printing a pate label for the cat food can? (That last example was just for effect. I actually hate cats—and pate. So does Secret Rebecca.)

No objection to the clothing directive. It’s no fun to shop for double-digit sizes, especially in the lithe-hipster-owned boutiques I favor.

But—no freedom of assembly? Come on! My whole family is pleasantly plump! (See PBS documentary, genetic imperative). And I hate skinny bitches!

OK, so her tactics are utterly ridiculous, even damaging. But, perhaps unknowingly, Byrne has managed to articulate the lifelong fat person’s inner turmoil: they don’t believe they are capable of being thin. This elusive concept—thinness—is as improbable as instant fame and fortune (thin people scoff, repeating “Eat less, exercise more”). Fat people see thinness as something magically bestowed upon some, withheld from others (and according to the newest research, they are right)—not as a product of their actions.

So why not treat a magical problem with magic, instead of sweat?

I’m going to leave that 125 taped to the scale and see what happens.