See that pile of stuff in my dining room? That's what I pulled out of a couple of closets this past week.

Nothing like a couple episodes of Hoarders to put the fear of Martha Stewart in me.

I don't have a hoarding problem but something about that show propels me to clear out the clutter and get a nice tax deduction.

It got me thinking about the "body clutter" that Peter Walsh talks about in his book Does This Clutter Make My Butt Look Fat? Both excess stuff and excess weight are related -- take a look at many of the subjects on Hoarders and you'll see.

Why is that?

There's a lot of "maybes" involved in both situations.

• "Maybe one day I'll use this one recipe in this one cookbook."
• "Maybe I'll need this mattress pad with the ripped sides."
• "Maybe one day I'll get into these too-small jeans, even though they're high-waisted and stone-washed and totally out of style. But they still have the tags on them and I got such a great deal on them (IN 1999!) and I'm only 20 pounds away from them fitting (even though I'd look like a giant dork in them)."

Why am I holding onto that mattress pad, and why am I holding onto that extra padding around my thighs? It's not like I'm going to need the extra body fat for a coming famine but my body sure acts like it.

There's no real need for a ceramic space heater in Florida and there's no reason to hold onto the saddlebags for one minute longer.

Just as I need to dump the clutter out of the dining room and into a Goodwill trailer, I need to dump the caloric clutter from my eating. Less stuff in my coffee, less stuff on my salad, less stuff after dinner. Fewer calories overall.

I came to that annoying conclusion when I cut my Weight Watchers Points down below what is recommended (it's only 1 or 2 Points). Then I saw the scale move.

So I whine to myself (and to you): "But it's not fair! I want a Skinny Cow bar after dinner. I want that Larabar at 4 p.m. I want another tablespoon of nuts in my yogurt. I don't wanna have to workout for an hour every day (even though I feel really good and virtuous when I do)!"

Waaaaa.

Thinking about diets and calories and ounces and portions clutters up my brain. How do normal-weight people just eat to live and not obsess about this stuff?

Whew! There's a lot of clutter to remove. But imagine how freeing it'll be when it's gone. From my house, from my butt and from my brain.

Thanks for witnessing my self-intervention.