Eventually, there’s a moment of reckoning — a day when I can no longer convince myself that my jeans shrunk in the wash —  and I get it together.  This time reality hit courtesy of my friend Angelica, who came to see me in San Francisco after a video shoot up north.   I hadn’t seen her since I left Los Angeles 18 months ago. “You look so healthy,”  she said, a little too cheerfully, when I opened the door. (Clearly,  Angelica’s never had a weight problem.  If she did, she’d know that telling me I looked healthy was more or less the same thing as greeting me with a bellowing moo.)

      I’ve gained weight at least partially because I don’t live in LA anymore.  I’m no longer going to dinners with my fabulous friends at expense-account establishments;  me and my no-less-fabulous friends frequent burrito joints and noodle houses.   At Spago Beverly Hills, the 300-calorie Austrian Chicken Bouillon is fantastic.  At Cancun in the Mission, fantastic comes in the form of 2500-calorie tacos with jack cheese and sour cream.   In Los Angeles, I stayed thin enough to fit into the size 4 get-ups I wore to work; these days I have no real reason to get out of my sweats, which I’m certainly not wearing to the gym.