A few years back, Rubin accepted an assignment to chronicle her efforts to work out, eat right and lose weight for Shape magazine. From 1999 to 2001, Rubin tracked her progress in a series of monthly columns (with photos) that were as brutally honest as they were funny. “I agreed to do it because I figured that, ‘Oh, no one reads this’,” Rubin says. But in publicly obsessing over food before Shape’s 1.6 million readers, Rubin became a hit with her mix of Bridget-Jones-on-Atkins wit and painfully raw self-scrutiny, which included near-pathological accounts of sneaking and bingeing on chocolate-chip muffins and other forbidden foods. There is no happily ever “after” picture where Rubin magically finds what works for her and sheds the pounds for good. Her book, based on the columns, is a real look at real life: she loses, gains, loses again, binges and hates herself for it, but still gets up at 5 a.m. to hit the gym. Our heroine may have gotten out of the burning building, but her dress is still on fire. Rubin discussed her binges and blunders with NEWSWEEK’s Jac Chebatoris. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: This was such a brave and honest thing that you did–to put into the open something that is such a personal struggle. How did you get this going?

Courtney Rubin: I used to have an editor at the Miami Herald who said, “Every journalist has a book in them, and that’s where it should stay.” I was kind of that mind-set, particularly because it was such a personal book. I was so weary when I was done that I just thought, “I never want to speak about this again.” One of the things that encouraged me to do the book was that even two years after the column had appeared, people still ask me about it, people still ask Shape about me. When I was writing the column, people held me up for themselves as this example of “I am not alone.” But when I was writing the column, I felt more alone than ever. I just felt that there is so much weight-loss stuff out there, and it wouldn’t be a bad thing for there to be the book that I had always wished was out there-something really, really honest.

Because it does go beyond that–beyond just the what-you-eat part …

It does because one of the big issues is, is there enough space in your life to pull this off? Nancy Clark [Rubin’s nutritionist] would always say to me, “You have a limited amount of energy, and how much of it can you devote to losing weight?” People want you to say to them, “Don’t eat white things, or exercise 27 minutes,” but it’s not really about that.

How is your life now? Have you made peace with yourself and with food in your life?

It’s definitely still a struggle. Some days it’s much better than others, which is all you can really hope for. It used to literally be about 97 percent of my day, and now, some days, I really don’t think about it. And other days, it’s a big struggle. For example, someone that I really fancied, who I was flirting with for quite a while, went back to his ex-girlfriend, and the first thing I thought of was, “That’s it, I’m too fat.”

Oh, no …

You get past it, but you still think it even if it’s for a second.

It must have been hard to turn something so personal into something very public. How did the experience change your life?

The good thing about it is that it has made it easier, I think, for other people to talk about some of these things. Writing the book did remind me that I’m not like that anymore-I really have come a long way. Those were two horrible years of my life, not only because of weight, but I was very miserable then, and I kind of look at that and think, “Yay, I’m not that person anymore.” The bad thing, I suppose, is that I’ve had difficulty with anyone I know reading this book … Lots of my friends are reading it and they’ll say to me, “I had no idea,” and “I wish you felt like you could have told me.” It’s not that I didn’t think they were good friends, I just felt like I couldn’t tell anyone. I also thought there was no way to explain a lot of what I was doing, without sort of telling it. How do you explain that level of obsession and that level of despair without saying, “Well, here’s what actually happened”?

In the midst of dealing with your binges, you were also training for and finishing marathons. It’s not like you do a complete turnaround–you’re very honest that it still is a struggle.

Well, that was the goal because I had read so many of these books where you have this smiling woman in a size 6 trousers on the front holding out her size 20 trousers, being like, “Look at how fabulous I am!” … People had said to me that if you lose weight, your life will be perfect, and it’s not. I just felt like one of the things I really wanted for this book was that it not be wrapped up in a little bow the way it always is-here’s your nugget of advice, and go on from here … There is the passage in the book where I’m talking about all the relationships in my life that food has either ruined or poisoned or dirtied, and I talk about picturing myself Sumo-wrestler-sized, surrounded by a moat of food and everyone I know is on the other side. That to me was what those years were like, and I’m not like that anymore. Thank God. But it’s not like I still don’t deal with it.

Oprah Winfrey is an example of someone who has also been very public about her struggle with her weight, and after her various attempts with liquid diets, personal chefs, etc., she basically admitted what she’s done is to begin to like herself of all things. We all know it’s not that simple, and I don’t want to trivialize your situation, but along the way did it strike you that you were being too hard on yourself?

It didn’t occur to me during that period, really, because that sort of level of thinking was beyond me. One of my oldest friends in the world called me up after he read the book and said, “I can’t believe how hard on yourself you were. You were so hard on yourself. You didn’t do anything illegal.” But the one thing that I’ve kind of come to embrace is–and this goes back to the same point when you asked if I obsess now–and it sounds so cheesy, but it’s basically “three meals a day and life in between.” That’s what I’m working for. That, to me, is the ideal.