“Everybody brings their own skills to this process.” Helena looked up with a grin. “You have a gift for data analysis. I adore your charts and graphs, and you are spotting trouble earlier than most people would. That’s a great asset you’ve got in maintaining your lifelong health.”

“Oh.” Marissa blushed. “I hadn’t thought of it that way.”

“You’re one of a kind, absolutely. And the data says it’s time to tweak again.”

“It feels like I’m tweaking all the time.”

“And this is bad why?” Helena tipped her head to one side.

“Shouldn’t something that works for me, work all the time?”

“Well.” Helena tapped the graph that showed Marissa’s slowly falling weight line. “Since you began we’ve tweaked every six to eight weeks. You’ve lost sixteen pounds on the Tweak It program.”

Marissa chortled. “Okay, so my plan is to have no plan?”

“Your program is to be flexible. Mixing things up, varying your exercise—that is succeeding steadily for you. You work with computers. When you set them up does that solution last forever?”

“No. You’re right, it doesn’t. I’m lucky to get two to three weeks on a configuration sometimes. Then it needs, well, tweaking.”

Helena leaned companionably on her desk, her eyes gentle with compassion. “Your body, my body, all of us, we are the most complex and diverse systems in the universe. We are as complex as this planet, as the stars, because that’s what we’re made up of. No computer could ever be as complicated.”

“Okay, all ones from me on that.”

“Some people,” Helena said, “eliminate butter from their diet and never struggle with their weight again.”

“Bitches.”

Helena shared Marissa’s laughter. “I love it when you make an appointment because I know I’m going to laugh.”

“My work is done, then.”

“Mine isn’t.” Helena put the last month’s worth of nutritional breakdowns on the top of the stack. “I think it’s time for you to ease up on protein in favor of low fat carbs. I’d recommend the extra carbs be eaten after your workouts—a moderate complex carb.”

“Then not fruit. Candy bar?”

“A small one, with nuts if possible. And there are some sports nuritionals that would do the trick—energy shots and the like.”

A hundred possibilities of a modest treat clamored in her mind, “Pick me, pick me.” Deciding would be almost as much fun as licking her fingers after she ate whatever morsel she chose.

They chatted a little bit more and Marissa left feeling motivated and reassured that she was doing sensible, rational things and her expectation to continue losing fat and gaining endurance was reasonable and achievable. She was proud of herself.

Back at the office, she wasn’t proud of the fact that she checked for messages on her answering machine at home, on her cell and on her private e-mail. She wasn’t going down this road again. Annoyed with herself, she went in search of her belated lunch.

Heather was taking her lean frozen entrée out of the microwave. “I’m starting up again, boss.”