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I had just announced to my Love God that I was going to join that famous weight-loss program for my second go-around. You know, the triumph of hope over experience.

My lost weight had crept back, as it often does. So it was time to sign up again, pay my monthly dues and waddle into the weekly meetings.

I went to my first meeting, version 2.0, and weighed in. I cringed as I saw my weight in my record book. How did it get to this, I wondered? I used to weigh far less. Well, OK, that was two years ago. Fat returns when you aren't paying attention.

With a straight face, my Love God then asked the forbidden question: "So what do you weigh?"- as if that were a normal marital question, like "Have you seen my sunglasses, dear?"

Did I hear that man correctly? Has he learned nothing after 30 years with me and 14 with his first wife? If he insisted on asking a dumb question, I'd give him a dumb answer.

"I weigh 114 pounds," I replied. That ought to stop him in his tracks. Let him prove I'm wrong.

"114 - really?" he said, eyebrows raised. "That's very interesting."

I'd lied, and we both knew it. Game on.

I wanted to dress as lightly as possible for my second weigh-in a week later, so I took my kitchen food scales into the bathroom to weigh various bras and panties. As I was leaving the bathroom, I was startled to meet my Love God in the doorway. I was like a deer caught in the headlights.

"What in heaven's name are you doing?" he asked.

I braved the truth.

"I was weighing my underwear to see which pieces weighed the least."

He rolled his eyes, trying to ignore this Lucy moment.

When I arrived home from the meeting, my Love God was waiting for me. "So how did the meeting go?" he asked. In Honey-speak that meant, "Did you lose any weight?"

"The meeting went well - I was down two and a half pounds."

"So what do you weigh now?"

Jeepers, did he think I was a mathematician? Lying is so complicated. I had to quickly recalculate my fake weight, subtracting 2.5 from 114, with him staring at me. My weigh-in record book told the truth, but this conversation was not about the truth.

Honey asks every week what my new weight is. I recalibrate my fake weight to correspond with my true weight loss. Apparently, I now weigh 87 pounds, with a final weight goal of 64 pounds.

Oh, what a tangled web we weave…

- Diane Pascoe is the author of the newly published collection of hilarious essays, Life Isn't Perfect, But My Lipstick Is. Her funny memoir "collects the mental musings of a wife, mother and (sometimes) gracefully aging woman." She lives in North Carolina with her husband, Eric (also known in these stories as "Honey" and "Love God") and their two dogs.