(The Swamp) - This article is not about Mimi Roth, although it could be. Mimi is the unhealthily scrawny woman, running around telling people who look healthy that they are fat. What she does not understand, or more likely will not admit - and why she is so dangerous - is that there are people just like her who are causing the cost of health care to rocket skyward. While she is pointing her bony finger at people with a extra avoidupois, scrawny people are lying and cheating and starving themselves to the point of heart failure. But you wouldn't know it, because Mimi and her ilk are out obfuscating the truth about weight, health, and diet. And THAT is what this column is about.

There is only one indefatigably irrefutable truth when it comes to weight: IF YOUR GENES MAKE YOUR WEIGHT WORK, THEN YOUR WEIGHT WORKS. I point to myself as my example.

I am exactly 130 pounds overweight and have been since 1988. My weight loss has never been more than 30 pounds of water, and because it's water, it always comes back.

Also, I have diabetes, type 2.

When I got diabetes, I weighed 155 ponds and ran three miles a day. After contracting the disease, even though continuing to exercise (and still do to this day), I steadily gained weight. That is until reaching 285 pounds. The weight-gain stopped. It has never started, again.

Now, if I take a water pill every day for a week, I will lose 30 pounds. If I stop taking the pill, I will gain 30 pounds, no more, no less. If my diet varies, it will always push me back to 285 pounds. So technically speaking, my weight has not truly varied since 1988, which is 21 years. Thanks to an excellent doctor, LJ Bridgeman in Greenville, my blood pressure is fairly normal, my lipids are those of a person weighing 130 ponds less, as are all of my "fat indicators," and my disease is still being treated by pills. I am, as he said recently, "..in pretty good shape for a fat guy!"