Today I'm seeing Dr. Aronne again for the first time since I started this diet about three weeks ago. The diet is based on the medical findings and eating plan outlined in his new book, The Skinny: On Losing Weight Without Being Hungry -- The Ultimate Guide to Weight Loss Success.

And I'll find out if my middle-aged middle has lost any of the pounds that so assiduously cling to it. It's my first weigh-in. Ugh.

But first, I thought I'd relate something that I've been struck by since starting on the diet.

I have learned that I can get a bigger, better high on sugar than I can on stuff that floats other people's boats, such as other narcotics like alcohol. 

Here's what happened.

After two weeks of following the "no sweets" injunction of the Aronne diet, in a fit of self-defeat and to celebrate my wedding anniversary, I had dessert at dinner with my husband: profiteroles with chocolate sauce. To die. 

Within one minute of that first bite, I was in absolute orbit with what I am here to tell you was a soaring, spectacular high. Like the kind you get with high-grade pot, only Much Better. I instantly turned into a giggling, eyeball-rolling happy-as-a-clam-doped-up-with-sugar fool. Like a light switch, I just went off. My husband looked at me and knew it, too. 

I was completely and instantly stoned on that sugar.

Can you imagine turning away from such a high as this? No wonder I battle weight gain. I can get happily stoned on the biggest best, cheapest, cheeriest buzz and it's all perfectly legal. And I can do it all day long.

Maybe others are forced to pay big money for booze and drugs for their high, but for me, a cheap, perfectly legal shot of sugar in the form of chocolate chip cookies and I'm happily in orbit. Which is a great place to be lots of the time. You can drive, work, be a good parent -- do all of those things alcoholics and druggies can't do without endangering themselves or others. 

Except look good in your clothes.

And have a shot of living past 70.

Now, lest I talk myself into a chocolate orgy here, I have to tell you that this revelation is very startling to me and I'm curious as to why it took so long for me to catch on to this. How did I not know this before? How incredibly blind to this could I have been?

Anyway, the next morning I was back on Regime Aronne and off the sugar sauce. Going cold turkey on carbohydrates such as bread and bagels and really disastrous stuff like sweets is easier than half measures. After awhile, the cravings, if not the fits of self-defeat, die down. But quite a revelation, no?

Profiteroles with chocolate sauce. To die. Actually, probably, really to die.

So off I go to see the good doctor to find out if any of this has helped me to lose any weight.

Click here for past Fat Is a Four-Letter Word posts.

Editor's Note: This blog chronicles my adventures in dieting by following the clinical advice of Dr. Louis Aronne, the world-class metabolic-health specialist who has been involved in obesity research and treatment since 1986. A clinical professor of medicine at Weill Medical College of Cornell University, adjunct clinical associate professor of medicine at Columbia University and an assistant attending physician at the New York Presbyterian Hospital, he developed and is director of the Comprehensive Weight Control Program at the prestigious New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center. In his new book, The Skinny: On Losing Weight Without Being Hungry -- The Ultimate Guide to Weight Loss Success, Dr. Aronne tries to show how to "fix your internal biology by adjusting your eating and activity."