Oh, all right, I freely admit it. I am the poster girl for fad diets - any crazy, crash diet that promises rapid weight loss. It doesn't matter if the claims are improbably ludicrous...and, to be truthful, most of them are.

I remember the first diet ad I ever saw. It was in the back of a comic book, right next to an ad for Joe Weider Body Building (to stop the bully from kicking sand in your face) and the "sea monkey" come-along.

I was never allowed to send away for the "sea monkeys", or brine shrimp, nor the guaranteed X-ray glasses, nor the tiny dog in the tea cup, but I did, eventually, sign up for any number of weight loss programs.

I was never an overweight child. Childhood pictures show me to be a sweet-faced girl of average height and build - athletic, but by no means the least bit chubby. To be sure, I weighed more than my older sister, who was much taller and much slimmer than I could ever aspire to be. A distorted body image didn't help, and when I compared my compact, more muscular build to taller, more willowy classmates, I fell far short of my ideal

Girls of my generation were not supposed to be muscular. We were taught that to be womanly and desirable meant to be slim. A smoothly athletic build was tolerated if one was terribly good at some sports, but sheer physical prowess and, heaven forfend, muscles were solely the domain of the males of the species.

When my girls' gym class was gathered in the nurse's office for our annual weigh-in, and each girl's height and weight read into the official school records, I was embarrassed to be one of the heaviest girls in the class. I was also one of the tallest, but that was beside the point to me.

That I was only two pounds heavier than my slimmer friends did nothing to assuage the mortification I felt. If memory serves, there was actually only about a four pound range between the heaviest girl in the class and the lightest.

When I married and became pregnant, I gained rather too much weight, but started out to lose it quite rapidly after my son made his dramatic appearance. Then things began to go downhill, beginning with postpartum depression and ending with the dissolution of an increasingly abusive relationship.

By the time I had scraped up enough courage to leave, I had ballooned to well over two hundred pounds. Stress and depression eating is as deadly a disorder as anorexia, it just takes so much longer to kill yourself that way.

During the course of my marriage, as well as over the ensuing years, I have tried more diets than Baskin Robbins has flavors of ice cream.

Now, there is a great idea for a fad diet - The Baskin Robbins 137 Flavor Plan...and easy sell if I ever saw one!

I have counted calories, carbohydrates, fats, points, and glycemic indices. I have lost weight slowly, and rapidly - sometimes ounce by seemingly grudging ounce - only to gain it back almost as quickly as I lost it...and why on earth, can anyone tell me, is this process referred to as "losing" weight? I have never really lost any weight - I seem only to misplace it temporarily.

One of the constants of every diet plan I have ever followed, one item it has in common with its fellows, is that it rarely lives up to its hype for any length of time. Almost any weight loss plan, even ones that rely on bizarre combinations of foods, will cause some initial loss of weight.

The true efficacy of any plan can only be measured by its long-term results.

Every diet plan promises rapid results.

Every diet plan promises that you can "eat what you want, and as much as you want" and still lose weight if you follow their proven method.

Every pill-pushing, potion-producing snake oil salesman from time immemorial, every fancy clinic and food replacement system has really only wanted one thing - your money.

Don't gve up the ship just yet, though. There is hope out there.

In all fairness, many of these plans were begun or promoted by people who saw a need and genuinely wanted to help - at least, I would like to believe so.

Some of these plans and diets that I have tried over that years have worked quite well, but some require such major or elaborate changes in your life style, or come at such an expense that they are almost impossible to maintain, to say nothing of the added difficulty of shopping for special foods.

I had great initial success with the Atkins Diet Revolution, and was able to maintain those pleasant results for quite some time. The second time I went on the program, though, I lost rapidly at first and then stuck at a plateau for over six months.

That, by the way is a normal happenstance with most diets, especially those where you experience fairly rapid weight loss. Some weight loss coaches and doctors now feel that is a natural effect of your body's need to balance itself before further weight loss can take place.

Whatever the reason, the effect is to cause you to lose faith in the regimen, and eventually give up.

Many of the plans I tried do work, however impractical or expensive they may be to stick with. A friend who was sold on one of the well-known food replacement systems managed to maintain her new weight for a number of years, but has had to stay with the quite expensive, pre-packaged products that are the mainstay of her diet plan.

Most plans like it rely on low-calorie substitutions and portion control.

She still finds it difficult dine out, because she says she hasn't really learned portion control. She is never required to measure or weigh anything. She merely prepares the pre-packaged amount.

This is not to say that you will have no success with some of these plans. Even the cabbage soup diet will cause you to lose some weight.

Of course, you may be dead of palate-boredom long before you have finished the second week of that month-long plan, but overloading on vegetables is not harmful. Actually, one of the best ways to lose excess poundage is to reach for (and eat) a piece of fruit every time you feel a snack attack coming on.

I don't have many pounds to shed this time around, but I will admit I have let some excess weight sneak back on over the last few years.

I am now embarked on another well-known weight loss plan - the break-up diet. As I sit here surrounded by boxes and the detritus of another life, I feel no real hunger pangs. Right now I could happily exist on coffee and memories, but I know I have some whole grain cereal stashed somewhere, and a full bag of apples.

Also, I am nothing if not too stubborn to give up on anything worthwhile, especially myself.