This is going to be my first winter handling life in the world of Atkins, and I'm pretty scared. There's usually a two-month long period of serious eating that starts on Halloween and doesn't stop until New Year's Day. It's a time where there's just one traditional excuse to pig out after another! How am I going to deal with this?

I went off my diet temporarily one Thursday this summer, and didn't stop being off until the following Monday morning! It all started innocently enough at a companywide lunch meeting. It was the last lunch meeting of the year that we'd be having outdoors, and my coworkers convinced me that I should go ahead and have a burger on a real bun with real ketchup, since this was the last time this year it would happen. And what good is a burger without potato salad and Fritos? Luckily, I was able to rationalize this cheat by remembering one of the golden rules of dieting: food eaten at an official company function doesn't count. So I figured I was safe, and vowed to start anew the next Friday.

Many of you have written me recently, asking all sorts of questions about a recent news item involving me and how my involvement in this bizarre episode has prevented me from writing more frequent articles for CarbSmart.

If you are like me, you have been overweight for longer than you can remember. Personally, I have never been anywhere near skinny. Rumor has it I was born weighing 47 pounds, and my mother washed down several bottles of painkillers with two bottles of tequila when she went into labor due to the intense pain.

So what's your motivation for switching from high-carb society to the fast-paced, dangerous world of low-carbing? For me, it was simple. I was tired of having my 410-pound Mountain of Meat body getting in the way of finding a mate. My parents are getting on in years, and every family function serves as another opportunity for "The Speech" from my father. He'll gather us, his children, at his feet and make his plea.

I have recently come to the conclusion that my goddaughter, Brittany, is the devil. At the tender age of eight, it is already apparent to me that she is going to be one of those beautiful, rail-thin-yet-muscular "beach babes" that say things like, "I wish I could gain weight as easily as you do. I just eat, and I eat, and I eat, and I can never get those nice, childbearing hips like you have! It seems like the only place I ever do gain any weight is in my breasts!"