I started taking medication that makes me fat -- about 80 pounds overweight, which is a lot on a 5'7" female frame. Cutting calories and exercising will not change this, and I cannot stop taking this drug. It alleviates a serious mental health problem, allowing me to function normally, which is pretty much a miracle. Still, thanks to my weight gain, I am getting super-depressed. I think people must look at me like I'm some undisciplined pig. My cute clothes no longer fit, so I bought clothes that hide the weight. I'd love to date, but I'm so uncomfortable looking at myself naked that I can't imagine letting anyone else do it.

It isn't fair. It's not like you spent the year locked in a room with Ben & Jerry and Colonel Sanders, yet here you are thinking people must look at your butt and wonder whether you beep when you back up.

Although you say cutting calories doesn't help, you should ask your doctor whether cutting carbs might. There's evidence that a low-carb diet (with adequate fat intake) is the best way for most people to lose and keep off weight. It also seems to alleviate or even beat down some diseases -- for example, eliminating diabetes symptoms in Dr. Jay Wortman and very possibly being responsible for the reversal in progressive multiple sclerosis symptoms in Dr. Terry Wahls. (See drjaywortman.com and terrywahls.com, and read "Why We Get Fat," by Gary Taubes, for the dietary evidence based on his vetting of thousands of studies.)

But, let's say there's no way for you to lose the weight. Well-meaning friends will tell you things like "sexy is a state of mind," which will seem like the dumbest thing you've ever heard in light of how you probably feel you resemble the state of Texas. Actually, there are decades of studies showing that "walking the walk" -- acting the way you'd like to feel -- is one of the most effective ways to change how you feel.

For example, experimental social psychologist Dr. Dana R. Carney had people assume power-broker poses like sitting with their hands behind their head and their feet up on a desk. Subjects only assumed two different poses for a total of two minutes, but this led to measurable psychological, biochemical, and behavioral changes. Those who were assigned the power poses had their levels of the dominance hormone testosterone shoot up. They reported feeling significantly more powerful and "in charge," and their willingness to take risks in a subsequent gambling test suggests that they meaningfully increased their confidence.

Findings like Carney's make the "just walk the walk" advice I found in the book "Stop Calling Him Honey" sound a lot more hopeful than hokey. The co-authors, Maggie Arana and Julienne Davis, advise body-loathing women (of all sizes) who want to feel sexy to strut naked, in high heels, in front of their mirror. They tell you to watch yourself running your hands up and down your bare skin, tell yourself, "I'm sexy," and really mean it, feel it -- and to keep at it until it eventually starts to ring true.

If that still sounds like a fool's errand (even with the help of Jose Cuervo and James Brown), it might help to have a role model. Look up YouTube videos of 200-plus-pound indie rocker Beth Ditto, who struts around in body-hugging dresses, corsets, and fishnets like she invented sexy. Beth Ditto's fatitude inspired Nikki, a friend of Arana and Davis', to start walking tall and wide in form-fitting, cleavage-baring clothes instead of dressing like she's apologizing for not being built like a paper cut.

And sure, there are a lot of guys who won't date above a size 8 or 10, but you don't need to attract "a lot of guys" unless you're opening a sports bar. There are men who prefer the larger ladies and those who don't have a stringent requirement for any sort of body size, but what no guy wants is a woman who's piled on the shame.

Work on adjusting both your head and your appearance. Spend money on your hair, makeup, and a new wardrobe -- no tentwear! -- and go to one of those bra specialty stores where a little old Hungarian lady will yank you into a bra that fits. And keep in mind that in a world of people shoving their problems behind the furniture (especially stigmatized problems like mental health issues), you're doing what it takes to be mentally healthy and functional. If you look at your weight from this angle, it seems you've got good reason to march through the world like you're all that and 80 pounds more o' that.

I appreciate that you tell it like it is instead of telling people what they want to hear. I heard you on the radio saying that an online dating site isn't a very good venue for women over 40 who aren't very physically attractive. Honestly, on a scale of 1 to 10, I'm probably a 5. My marriage ended last year, and I'm ready to start dating again. Should I bother with online at all?

Like the 24-year-old part-time model you're competing with on the online dating site, you are female and have owned swimsuits. In fact, you'd wear that same tiny little gold bikini she's got on in her profile pic -- if it were socially acceptable to go out on the town in a little gold sleep mask.

Online dating is like going to a very snobby bar where everybody has the attention span of a firefly. People do find love and even marriage online, but those most likely to get lucky are hot 22-year-old women just looking to get lucky. Hot 40-something women will get dates, but because guys tend to go for younger women, many of those messaging them are one foot out of the nursing home (if they aren't using the computer in the nursing home's Activity Room to troll for younger meat).

The problem for anyone online dating is that the format -- endless choice -- is overwhelming to our quaint little human brains, according to research by social psychologist Dr. Sheena Iyengar. Although we think having loads of options is ideal, when presented with more than a handful, we often choose poorly and are bummed out afterward, or we find ourselves unable to choose at all. So, like a rat pushing a lever for more cocaine, even a man who sincerely wants a relationship and who's just gotten home from a promising date often can't help but make a beeline for the computer. (There's always another one...thousand where that last one came from. No need to stop and smell the 45-year-old roses.)

Especially for women who are over 40 and physically underfabulous, a more fruitful and less confidence-eating option than a dating site is a group meetup site like meetup.com or grubwithus.com, where you sign up for group dinners and other activities with people who share your interests. Some groups have hundreds or thousands of members, and the criterion for joining is whether you, say, like to combine tennis and Bible study, not whether you have a waist the size of a chewed pencil.

Also, online, the risk of humiliation is low for a guy who's a 5 messaging a woman who's a 9.6 (on the off chance she's bored with rich guys with movie-star looks). In person, it becomes clear that he can either go home alone for the rest of his life or go for the more evenly matched. That's when he starts talking to the nice 5 lady on his right -- giving you a chance to sparkle in a way you can't online. But, all the better if you sparkle inside and out. (Get "Staging Your Comeback," by Christopher Hopkins.) A little money smeared around in the hair, wardrobe, and makeup departments can be a powerful thing. Without it, as you see in shots of famous actresses caught sans makeup and groovywear, even some pretty stunning women can end up looking like they've taken a break from picking their pimples in the doublewide to duck into the holler and shoot a squirrel for dinner.

I'm a woman whose online dating profile states: "If you have or want kids, we are NOT compatible. Move on. Non-negotiable! I don't care if you think your kids are different. They're not." Yet, somehow, men with kids read this and still ping me! Are they stupidly optimistic? Horrifically lacking in reading comprehension?

Maybe they're hoping it'll be like getting a 6-year-old to eat his green beans: They'll just pour some ranch dressing on the kid and you'll suddenly find him appealing.

Your irritation is understandable. What about "No kids/non-negotiable!" says, "Octodad, I've been waiting all my life for you"? The answer is, you're hot. I'm guessing you are, anyway. In the face of female hotitude, men have an incredible capacity to rationalize: "Shouldn't have to miss out on a babe just because I got some girl pregnant in high school!" or "You'll change your mind when you see what a sexy beast I am." Consider the annoyance an attractiveness tax, and try to focus on the joys of unparenthood, like how you can spend the estimated $200K you're saving (by not having kids) on white carpet, sharp-edged furniture, and homeschooling your cat.

Do men in troubled relationships often seek someone to give them a nudge to get out? I often attract these men, some of whom I suspect just want a backup relationship before splitting with the wife. I happen to be interested in the current man confiding in me about his angry, obsessive wife. I won't tell him to leave on my account, but I hate to see such a great man putting up with her.

You've gotta give a guy points for an original spin on a tired pickup line: "If I said you have a beautiful body, would you let me sob on your shoulder about my mean wife?"

As a listener, you provide considerable cost savings over the guy with the gray beard, the monocle, and the couch, and it can't hurt that crying on your shoulder comes with a front row seat to your jigglies. Your presence can also provide a helpful thumb on the "I'm outta here!" side of the scale for a man who lacks a Ouija Board, a Magic 8-Ball, or the guts to make a decision. And while it is possible that some of these men fall for you, it's also possible that any "I love you! I want you! I have to have you!" a man blurts out is just a bad translation of "Eeek! I'll be alone, and you're cute and nice to me. You'll do."

It is a bit odd that, the way some women collect Hello Kitty, you collect "Hello, I'm teetering on an angry divorce." Are you maybe insecure about getting involved with a guy when all you have to offer is you? With a man in a troubled marriage, you start with a competitive advantage -- how endearingly sane and reasonable you seem compared to Mrs. Satan. And a man in crisis requires conversational triage -- attending to those bleeding out first. (No need to lay your feelings on the line; you can focus on his problems and bond over how you're the listening postess with the mostest.)

As for the latest man crying out to you from the Trail of Tear-Streaked Kleenex, consider the obvious: A man confiding in you about his "angry, obsessive wife" is a man who is NOT AVAILABLE. Maybe it's time you retired from running the Unhappily Married Man Rescue and take a run at the unencumbered. (At the very least, strictly limit the ear-time you give to other women's leftovers that aren't quite left.) You should find that a man has much more to give when he isn't panicking that his wife will take half of everything he owns, including his man parts she's got squirreled away in a drawer somewhere.

Last night, a girl I was seeing several months ago texted me, wanting to get back together. She'd cut all ties with me after accusing me of causing her brother to abuse her, both emotionally and physically. We'd been sexting, and her brother read one of my texts, and she blamed me for his behavior, either for making the abuse happen or for making it worse. She's no longer living with her brother, and I'm tempted to go back to her, but I don't want to ruin things with this new girl I'm seeing who seems kind, understanding, and more stable.

Think about how this works in an action movie. Typically, the film ends with the hero safe and sound in a bar, reflecting on his narrow escape. (In "Jaws," the guy didn't turn around and go back in for a swim.)

You can feel sorry for this woman and hope she gets some help, but a woman who blames you for another person's behavior is telling you something -- she's irrational and unstable and you've probably only grazed the tip of the drama iceberg. In a word, FLEE! -- unless you luck out, and she ditches you. (The self-removing problem girlfriend is the next best thing to a bag of trash that grows legs and walks itself out to the curb.)

It's actually pretty imperative to make rationality, self-respect, and emotional stability your top must-haves in a girlfriend and to be mindful of how easy it is to rationalize the behavior of the drama dispensers, especially when reminiscing about the hot times. (Red lingerie always pleads its case louder than red flags, and the crazies always seem more fun in bed.) But, getting together with an irrational, unstable woman -- especially one with irrational, unstable, meddling relatives -- is like sticking your life in a wood chipper. Ultimately, if a woman's going to take your breath away, it shouldn't be because there's only a little more oxygen left in the trunk of her nutbag brother's car.

My boyfriend of four years is a wonderful man who makes me incredibly happy. He was there for me throughout my breast cancer, making me feel sexy, beautiful, and loved. I'm 43, divorced five years. He's 41, never married, and his longest relationship was with a train wreck of an alcoholic on house arrest (I know, red flag). Six months ago, he moved in with his dad (45 minutes away) after his dad asked him to help renovate a house he bought to flip. We text daily and sometimes talk on the phone for 10 minutes, but I only see him every two weeks for a weekend. I'm lonely every day. I miss the day-to-day of coming home to the person who loves you, cooking together, working through life together. Realizing the renovation will take more than another two years, I asked him whether he'd ever consider moving in with me. He said he's already unpacked and it would be a pain to move again. Couples marry and have babies in the time we've been dating! He says they'll all be divorced in five years and we'll still be together, which could be true. I just don't know how to get past wanting more.

Sure, absence makes the heart grow fonder -- until it makes the heart yank out its calculator and notice that it's spent 85 percent of its year sitting next to a dent in the couch.

You're experiencing an unbreakup -- a breakup where you don't quite break up. Your boyfriend has managed to get out of your relationship, but without the wrenching breakup conversation or the bummer of no longer having you in his life. And although it's been six months since he had himself downgraded from boyfriend to biweekly houseguest, you're still referring to him as a "wonderful man" who makes you "incredibly happy." In fact, you can't help but bubble over with the language of joy: "I'm lonely every day" and "I don't know how to get past wanting more."

Wanting the man you love to be around to cook dinner with you isn't exactly a freakish sexual fetish. Still, he isn't a bad person if he doesn't want that -- just a bad person for you. But, consider that his relocation to Home Sweet Home Depot might stem from some emotional itchiness on his part. Maybe it's overwhelming when a woman just needs him because she loves him and not because she can't get to the liquor store herself while wearing her state-supplied ankle jewelry or because she's too weak to hitchhike to chemo.

Whatever your boyfriend's problem, it's making your happiness come a distant second to his dad's need to reface the cabinets. This isn't entirely his fault. It might be worth it to him to work through his commitment heebie-jeebies or whatever, but you can't just hint at what's bothering you (asking whether he'd "ever consider moving in"). You need to tell him flat-out that you're miserable without somebody there day to day. This tells him he'd better come through, or he'll lose you. (Spell that out if it needs spelling.) As for your priorities, you emailed me some wise words from your oncologist: "You deserve to be happy. You only get one life, and you worked really hard to keep yours." This suggests that the right guy for you will be there for you because you're there and alive and you want to be with him; you won't need to dress up as a leaky faucet to get his attention.

I'm a woman dating a woman who never really cooked until she met me. I'm not a professional chef -- just seriously into cooking. At first, she loved learning from me. Now, when she has me over for dinner, she gets upset when I make suggestions. I just hate to see her plan a great meal, sometimes with expensive ingredients, and have it not turn out.

She was probably planning on serving capellini, not Mussolini. Sure, it's got to be hard to watch her violate a tomato, but maybe the "right way" to dice one is the way that doesn't break you two up. To avoid meddling, don't think of her cooking for you as cooking; think of it as an edible gift. (If it were your birthday, surely you wouldn't tail her to the mall, lecture her on what to buy, and then berate her on how she's wrapping it all wrong.) Compliment her efforts, and when you cook, you can enlist her help and show her a thing or two. Ultimately, knowing your way around the kitchen sometimes entails knowing when to stay out of it and keeping your mouth clamped shut until it's time for Mr. Fork to fly a big load of oddly rubbery mashed potatoes into the hangar.

Loved your response to the bored-out-of-their-gourds parents of the 1-year-old. I'm three months pregnant and a little worried in the wake of a recent dinner party. There were four sets of new parents there, and all the wives seemed to resent the hell out of their husbands. The husbands, predictably, seemed defensive and angry in response. My husband and I have a really great partnership, and I'd like to keep it that way. Are there things we can do to avoid the parental hate stage, or...fret, fret...is it an inevitability that comes with the stress of having a child?

Today's marriage is reportedly a more equal partnership. For a lot of couples who become parents, here's how that works: The woman blimps out for nine months, spends hours and hours in agony squeezing a huge thing out an extremely small opening, and then becomes a 24-hour milk dispenser and poo-slave for the better part of a year. The man holds her hand and says "You can do it, honey!" while she's in labor, helps name the kid, and then, when friends come over to watch the World Series, picks it up and says, "Look what we made!"

Trophy dads aside, if there's one area of parenting that breeds eye-daggers of wifely resentment, it's unequal sleeplessness. Yeah, I know, according to The Beatles, "love is all you need," but they forgot the small print: This is only true of people who are not suffering from sleep deprivation, which, by the way, is not only a necessity for tending to one's newborn but a form of torture banned by the Geneva Conventions.

Sure, there are certain biological problems with sharing the nightly feeding duties. But, just because the booby with the drinks in it is on only one of you doesn't mean there can't be catering. In other words, Daddy can bottle-feed if mommy breast pumps, and nothing's stopping him from diaper-changing. What matters is that Mommy and Daddy are going halfsies on sleeplessness. As a happily married male friend with a new baby puts it, it's essential to "scrupulously share" wakeup duty, or a wife who used to look lovingly at her sleeping spouse may begin calculating how much jail time she'd get for smothering him with a pillow.

During daylight hours, a little time off for the stay-at-home mom, even for 20 minutes after Dad comes home, is a huge relief, as are playdates -- one night a week for her to go out with friends and be a person instead of a big udder. Just a little alleviation goes a long way in showing that a husband doesn't think women have babies and men have babies as props -- to parade around Starbucks in a BabyBjorn, making all the hot girls coo, and then hand back to Mom until the kid's old enough to be interesting: "Hey, little man, Daddy's gotta read the newspaper and putter around the garage for six or seven years. Let's talk when you're big enough to throw a ball around."

I'm thinking I should wait until after Christmas to break up with my girlfriend of two years. She is planning on accompanying me to my family's for the holidays and otherwise has no place to go. (I'm picturing her home alone, maybe calling her stepbrother she talks to once a year.)

When your thought is "I think we should start seeing other people," it isn't supposed to mean making your girlfriend spend a week with your grandma and 62 of your closest relatives. Although you're trying to be kind, delaying your breakup is the wrong thing to do. You break up with somebody as soon as you know, which means they can lick their wounds and get on to somebody who does want them that much sooner. (There are exceptions to the immediacy rule, like if it's two days before your girlfriend has finals or if somebody's just died and she's on her way to identify the body.)

Just think how what you're suggesting could play out. In the weeks before Christmas, she'll likely sense that something's not quite right. She'll gnaw endlessly on this with her girlfriends, and they'll come up with the perfect solution...Santa lingerie! When you finally end it, she'll likely drag out of you that you weren't really feelin' it -- starting around Halloween. So, besides the painful emotions that accompany any breakup, you'll be giving her the gift of humiliation as she replays the mental video of herself prancing around in a Santa hat and jingle bell pasties...on what turned out to be the biggest chopping day of the year.