Often it occurs late at night, just before you creep into couch.

You're still feeling a little overfed from -- as usual -- ingestion too much at ceremonial dinner. You flinch as you walk past the complete mirror in your bedroom and see yourself in contour. You flinch again as you look in the restroom as you brush your teeth. That double jowl you're starting to shape. The ending is unavoidable:

"we 're getting fat. We have got to mislay credence."

Of course, you've told yourself a dozen times before, maybe a hundred times. But this time is going to be special, you be firm, this time, in the name of all that is sanctified, you are going to make it work. But the subject remains: What is the preeminent diet? What is the preeminent way to mislay credence?

So over the course of the next few days or weeks you do the study. The diet and chef volumes mass up. You search the Internet. You chuck out all the cookies and ice cream in the house. Maybe you even buy a treadmill. You chat with your associates, family and colleagues. "Oh, you must try X diet," says one. "No, no, try XX diet," says another. "Well we lost thirty pounds in thirty days on the XXX diet," says your flabby neighbor, flaw to mention that he got it all back and then some. Soon you find out what thousands and thousands of Americans also have revealed: That the reply to "What is the preeminent diet?" can be very tricky to find. But, undisturbed, you choose a diet chart and lunge in.

Before too long, however, the thought of consuming another salad or drinking eight glasses of water a day has made you desperate. Meanwhile, the treadmill is collecting dirt in the place, half veiled by the preserved fichus tree.

You look in the mirror and see the same old plump face. What on earth occurred?

First off, don't guilt yourself. Failure to stick with a restraining diet chart doesn't mean you're a dire human being. Will power wasn't the setback. After all, figures show that nearly ninety eight percent of American women and more than sixty percent of American men are on a diet for at least part of every single year. And yet Americans as a whole are getting fatter every year; fatness has reached epic proportions, bringing with it a horde of sickness and therapeutic problems.