What if the problem isn't willpower?

I spent years chasing thinness. In the end, it wasn't about the weight and it wasn't about willpower - it was about finally being free.

- Anonymous

I was 37 years old, standing at the Trevi Fountain, rubbing my coin for extra luck before tossing it into the water. The wish I made was the same one I'd whispered over every birthday candle, every fallen eyelash, every shooting star since I was 10 years old: Universe, please, let me eat whatever I want and be thin.

That summer, I had lost 15 kilos with the help of a stern, expensive diet coach. She told me what to eat and, at the end of the day, I'd report back like a schoolgirl — yes, I ate the salad. No, I didn’t touch the bread. Rome, with its gelaterie on every corner, was my reward for months of white-knuckled willpower. And for a brief moment it worked.

But like every other diet I'd tried — and I'd tried them all — it didn’t stick. I came home, still paying my coach, pretending to myself that I was getting somewhere, until one day I wasn’t pretending any more. The weight crept back. Then surged. Soon I was at my heaviest, my most humiliated — and wondering how someone like me, someone smart, disciplined and capable, could be completely undone by something as basic as food.