Spa food for the virtuous: Ananda Fuara 1298 Market Street, San Francisco (415) 621-1994 Lacto-ovo vegetarian paradise owned by yogi/peace activist/runner/celibacy advocate Sri Chinmoy . Enjoy multi-pure filtered water served by waitresses in saris. Food also. Lo-Fats 1968 Lombard Street, San Francisco (415) 776-0454 Pick at the delicious vegetarian tofu quiche and pore over the fat and calorie counts listed right on the menu. Fulfill your obsessive potential! Millennium 246 McAllister Street, San Francisco (415) 487-9800 Glamorous, expensive, delicious low-fat vegan restaurant that uses only organic produce from family farms. I mock not the entrees like chantarelle and portobello mushrooms with leek 'ricotta,' phyllo purses stuffed with wild mushrooms, Moroccan grilled vegetable brochette on rosemary focaccia. Raw Living Foods 1224 9th Avenue, (415) 665-6519 Everything at this very devout vegan spot is uncooked, which makes it healthier and more full of enzymes (or something). Raw's ad in the local alternative paper indicates its fun-loving spirit, reading in part, "Cows are terribly tortured, drugged continuously & fed poisonous food. When they can't stand anymore, they're electrocuted, ground up & eaten." And when you get bored of virtue: Alfred Schilling's 1695 Market Street, San Francisco (415) 431-8447 A restaurant located in a chocolate shop. The Willie Wonka Special is a three-course prix-fixe dinner with chocolate in each course. Sounds gimmicky, but the food is divine (even when you skip the chocolate).

In my family we have a post-prandial expression: "I am soooo bloated." Delivered with a moan-y Yiddish inflection, this is a tribute of sorts to my Great-Bubbe, Pearl Gottler, who felt a need to share her state of distendedness with the entire family. (She was also fond of "I'm stoffed" and "Everyting vas delicious; vas it from a mix?" -- the latter invariably delivered with a narrow-eyed glare of suspicion.)

But I digress. Right now, I am soooo bloated. Literally. Veyizmir, I'm like a house. This year was a veritable cross-country pigout extravaganza, like an overblown Oliver Stone road movie with fat grams instead of guns. Pre-Thanksgiving festivities in Rhode Island, Turkey Day in Wisconsin, Christmas in San Francisco, New Year's in Marin County. I haven't stopped eating since, uh, 2:33pm on November 21st. I might have ceased chewing for approximately five minutes on Sunday, December 1st, when the car spun out of control on a snowy highway outside Park City, UT between meals, but then we drove to a hotel, hunkered down in a hot tub and began maniacally eating the cheese curds that had been left in the car since Platteville, WI.

I'm trying to justify this behavior: immoderate eating is very hip. Pundits as diverse as Ruth Reichl (New York Times food writer) and Richard Klein (author of the glinty-eyed polemic Eat Fat ) are encouraging us self-discipline-lacking losers to feel better about ourselves. Supposedly we're all rebelling against the era of political correctness, spa food, austerity, and fat-free Entenmann's Danish (which would make Bubbe plotz, incidentally). We've had it up to here with deprivation. We're demanding big huge slabs of meat and butter and cream and downing single-malt scotches and lighting up big ol' cigars -- even if we're girls -- and wearing more makeup and pulling our furs out of storage and if some little PETA freak throws paint on us we'll burn her with the tip of our stogie. The pendulum has swung back. Don't cry for me, Richard Simmons.

But, uh, one problem. We're supposed to suck down milkfat and martinis, but we're still supposed to be thin. Designers, who should be responding to societal cues by showing figure-hiding sack dresses and oversized sweatsuits with Duncan Hines frosting stains on them, are instead taunting us with the new long/lean silhouette. So not what the post-holiday, New Indulgence figure wants. The weather and the Zeitgeist call for BULKY, yet they want us in cigarette pants and shrunken pea coats. And inside the cigarette pants and shrunken pea coats, they want teeny bodies. I sure ain't seeing no Mae West bodaciousness in Cosmo. Oh yeah, they say the waif look is out.

Ha (I laugh scornfully). That means you still have to be as thin as Kristy Hume and Shalom Harlow but now you get to wear eyeliner. The age of the glamazons--your Cindy Crawfords, your Elle Macphersons -- is so '80s, so over. Boobs and hips are the sequined polyester kitty appliqué sweatshirts of the mid-'90s.

Maybe smoking will help me lose weight. It's sooo late-mid-'90s. I'll smoke a lot, and I'll get an ivory cigarette holder. It's got to be real ivory, so I'll know elephants died for it. Tres chic!