When I was about 12, I begged my mom to let me join The Diet Center. It took persistence, but she eventually went for it.

Protocol at the Diet Center demanded we take 8 horsepills a day, which I carried in a plastic pill box that the center supplied. I remember lovingly settling the giant red, brown, and white pills into their separate compartments. Who knows what was in them.

The Diet Center was big on stir fries, made with nonstick cooking spray, of course. I can’t remember eating anything in that period except boneless, skinless chicken breast and massive quantities of soy sauce. Also required were lemon water in excessive quantities and for lunch, green salad topped with tiny plastic packets of Diet Center brand dressing. The Diet Center makes Weight Watchers look like a Vegas buffet.

Carbs were not protocol. I remember I eventually fainted one day in the hallway of my public middle school, one of my first hypoglycemic episodes. The security guard called my mother. She told me to eat a banana. Diet Center was cancelled shortly thereafter, but I was incredibly proud: I had lost 13 pounds.

What’s funny is that it was during that time that I developed the bad eating habit that would eventually make me really fat in high school: Bonding with my girlfriends over food, and lots of it.

My best friend, who was also doing Diet Center, became my partner in crime. We’d get on our bikes and zip over to the corner store to buy a paper sack full of Hostess cakes, chips, and candy. Then we’d ride our bikes six blocks down to the National Mall. At the foot of the Capitol, we’d park it under a tree, gorge ourselves, and feel pretty darn happy. Those were good times. My friend would eat the frosting off the Ho-Hos; I’d eat the cupcake. I’m not sure who came out the worse in this transaction.

(Mind you, the Capitol Building is at the top of the hill. If we’d actually ridden our bikes down to the Reflecting Pool, requiring us to ride back up the hill, we might have actually burned some calories. But no, we were ready to plop down at the first tree that wasn’t viewable from the street.)

This small, tasty rebellion cemented our friendship - and paved the way for a full-fledged sugar orgy once I got to girl’s high school. If I had spread out all that junk over a lifetime, I could probably eat a pint of Ben & Jerry’s a week until my last bite on this Earth and have a few gallons left over for the grandkids.

Here’s the point: Diets make us do crazy things. They inculcate patterns of deprivation and reward that are unhealthy - even perverse. HoHos by the bagful make exactly as much sense - which is to say, none at all - as a prescribed regimen of lemon water, lettuce, and chicken breast.

Forget diets. They’re the sickness, not the cure.