I am sorry to say that, since my diet, my doctor has not yet noted that I am intensely skinny, but he did applaud my weight loss--with muted enthusiasm. Well, what he actually said was, "Now lose another 10 pounds."

My doctor was my main reason for knocking off the excess bulge around my middle. He held out the hope that losing some weight might reduce my high blood pressure. So far that hasn't happened, but I am still hoping.

Losing weight has done something for my personal morale, though. For years I have maintained to both friend and physician that I was at about my optimum body weight, and although I was a tad--just a tad--on the heavy side, I always came back to that same weight no matter what I did.

But the loss of 10 pounds seems after a year to be permanent. I haven't, as in the past, regained it and I am trying not to. Instead I have become inordinately proud of my personal achievement, even though most of my friends and relatives don't seem to notice the difference.

I have yet to take in any trouser waist- bands, but they are getting a little loose. I even have been managed a few pieces of "large" instead of "extra large" clothing. And, of course, when I look in the mirror in the morning, I'm sure that my jowls don't droop as much as they used to.

Now when I walk down the street, I tend to look at those more obese than myself with pity, perhaps even disdain. After all, so I reason, if I can, why can't they?

I've also become increasingly impressed with the epidemic of obesity which seems to be afflicting our nation. Very obese persons were hard to find when I was growing up in the '30s, but now they seem to be everywhere, perhaps less so in California than, say, the Midwest or the South, but still in evidence.

I'm not sure why this is, especially since the baby boomers (my children, for example) have been so sold on fitness. Nevertheless, the fat epidemic is upon us, and I am trying (very self-righteously, to be sure) to do my bit to abate it.

So I suppose you are wondering what the secret of my success may be? Even if you are not, of course, like all reformed obese people, I am going to tell you.

It's simple: Just don't eat. Or just don't eat very much.

I didn't lose weight by following Dr. Atkins, the Drinking Man's Diet or any other organized regimen. I just stopped eating much.

This, I find, works pretty well. It also is a lot harder than it sounds. One's natural inclination is to eat, and my natural inclination has been to eat all the wrong things: pancakes, muffins, sandwiches and almost any wheat product, and to like chocolate in most any form. I used to need a chocolate fix at least once a week.

No more.

If you want to lose weight, you have to renounce this kind of food, if not for good for at least most of the time.

These delicious items glimmer like golden rewards, albeit small ones, of course, along the road to weight salvation.

Instead of actually tasting them, you just get to dream about them.

The rest of the time, you go hungry.

If you're hungry most of the day, you're uncomfortable, but you're also well on the way to some kind of weight loss. This kind of weight loss doesn't happen very rapidly, however, and one has to have a long period of being hungry to get even 10 pounds off. I think I have sort of become used to this. It isn't, as I say, easy, but it is possible. After all, so the experts tell us, as we grow older, we use fewer and fewer calories.

What has to happen is the evolution of a kind of conditioned reflex: Think of food, especially fattening food, as something evil to be shunned, and you're on the way to losing weight.

So that's what I've been doing, thinking that being hungry is the next thing to godliness or goodness or virtue or something like that. He who doesn't eat much is somehow saintly or at least inclined toward the side of the angels.

As the comedian Sid Caesar once said, "In the whole world there is not a single slice of bread. There may be a potato or two, but not a single slice of bread."

And Heaven is unexpectedly coming across a Snickers bar.