Twice in my life I've stumbled across amazing self-help programs - not from books or late-night infomercials or tedious seminars with artificially self-confident ringmasters.

No, these personal advancements were totally self-developed. Find out more now!

Those of you readers blessed to have had personal interaction with are well aware that I'm something of a BIG boy. 'Husky', they used to call it when Mom and I were shopping for back-to-school threads in my grade school glory days. I'm not morbidly obese, but I've always carried a few too many pounds (OK, sometimes a couple few, like 50 or so). I am, it is said, a fine man, but no athlete.

That changed the first time during my first terrifying welcome to the real world, just after I left college (sans degree, I admit. That would take me another decade) and was still living in my college town, unemployed and dragging some my still-scholarly pals with me as we spent night after night singing along to hair-metal bands on MTV.

The malt liquor was cheap in those days and so was the generic mac-and-cheese and Ramen. You could get yourself fucked up fed for under three dollars a day, provided you weren't too hungry - after all, those times were when you'd go visit the folks for a free meal or two. The bonus of not eating so much was, of course, that it would take less beer to numb your brain to the terror that was your future fifty years in some soulless job.

The other weird bonus was that it was the most effective dieting program I've ever attempted. I burned off a tremendous amount of my pasty, doughy white suburban flab off and had to begin wearing a best because all of my pants slid off my newly svelte hips and I was too poor to buy new jeans. Physically, I felt loads better too. Not carrying that extra weight made me feel crazily like I was walking on the moon, unencumbered by the earth's pesky gravity

I felt great except for the heavy dizziness that would strike whenever I stooped to pick something from the ground.

Years later, I was working at one of those soul-sucking jobs that had terrified me so back in the day. During one of the midday impromptu informal conferences at the water cooler, a balding middle executive was regaling the other girls in the typing pool (for I was one of them) with his trials at whatever diet was fashionable at the time.

'Let me tell you about the diet I developed...'

The executive shot me a look, upset that I was interrupting his spiel. 'Looks like it didn't work out so well for you' he sneered.

To my detriment, I have a quick, though not very judicious, wit. 'Well you know what?' I asked. 'I'll be thin again someday, but your hair's NEVER gonna grow back!'

Connected or not, I was fired the next day.