"Now, if you want to get a reduction on your health insurance AND lose weight, here is a list of approved weight-loss programs that we endorse."

The agent handed Suzee a colorful little brochure. The young woman wasn't THAT much overweight, but saving a little money was a good incentive to shed those last fifteen or twenty pounds she just couldn't get rid of.

None of them seemed especially enticing, until she came to one called the Pony Diet. There was little information, except to say that it took place on a horse farm. Horseback riding? Horse training? It didn't say, but that was good enough for Suzee. She liked horses.

"This Pony Diet sounds interesting."

"Good. Then I can sign you up for it?"

"Sure."

That was two weeks ago. As she stood there in her bra and panties under the hot sun, her body imprisoned in a network of leather straps and her reins tied to a hitching post, she was well past regretting her decision and was now resigned to the fact that she wouldn't be able to leave until she had dropped to her target weight. At a pound or two a week, it could be another two months before she experienced freedom again. Two more months of grueling exercise and swift punishment.

If only she had asked more questions. Well, at least she wasn't alone, she thought, as she looked out over the farm and saw thirty or so other overweight women toiling away on the farm or hitched to posts at various places on the grounds. There was even an already-thin woman that she was sure was a supermodel.

Each day it was something different-- the training carousel, the plow, the garbage cart, the sulky, the power-generating treadmill-- with the pattern repeating every five days. Every day, they were weighed, and their progress noted for their files.

It was so humiliating. Though most of the staff was women, there were a few men, and having them see her ugly body in her undies was probably the toughest thing of all. She had seen some of the other women driven to tears before they even started their first day.

And then there were the "showers." At the end of the day, they had to strip completely, then walk through sprayers like cars going through a carwash, their progress determined by moving overhead chains attached to dog collars around their necks.

Meals were nothing more than different types of granola bars which they had to eat off the shelves in their stalls with their tongues and lips, as their hands were cuffed to their harnesses. Suzee was horrified to find herself licking the crumbs up, trying to get every single morsel.

There were times when she wondered what the point of all this was. Was it to shame them into keeping the weight off? Was it to instill discipline? Was it even a legitimate weight-loss program at all, or did they con the insurance company into endorsing them?

Whatever the reason, the program was working. But then, how could it not, as they had no freedom to cheat. Suzee found her bras and panties getting looser and looser, guiding her ever closer to her goal.

Finally, the magic day arrived. Suzee was told she had reached her goal, and she was allowed to dress and go home. Her clothes were baggy, but she was free. Free! She wanted to celebrate with a big meal, but knew she couldn't go back to her old weight or she would lose her reduced insurance rate.

Still, the craving was there, and it only got worse as the days passed. She started with just a few cookies, promising herself she would go to the gym after work and sweat it off. But then it progressed to ice cream and doughnuts, and the trips to the gym grew less and less frequent. Before she knew it, she was even heavier than she was when she started her diet. She just hoped that the insurance company didn't find out.

Who was she kidding? One day two men showed up at the office where she worked and placed a scale on the floor before her. Panic hit her like a bolt of lightning.

"No!"

"I'm afraid so. The contract says we have to check your weight six months after completion of the program. Any backsliding and back you go."

She knew she should have read that contract better. "Couldn't I just pay the higher rate?"

They told her how much she would have to pay. It was more than she could reasonably afford.

They informed her boss, then led her out to the parking garage, where they stripped her to her longline bra and firm-control girdle. Her old harness cut into her soft flesh, and even the straps of her bridle cut into her chubby cheeks. They loaded her onto the trailer and strapped her in.

Suzee wept the whole way to the farm. When they unloaded her, she meekly followed every order. As they sent her out to the fields still dressed in her bra and girdle, she wondered what would happen if she went on a hunger strike. She envied girls who could stay thin. They didn't have to suffer like fat girls.

Of course, Suzee was unaware of the barn. Inside, anorexic and bulemic women were locked into pens meant for cows. On that very day, a famous and very naked Hollywood actress was being locked in, her upper body bent down in a horizontal position as her wrists and neck were imprisoned in a stocks. As she pleaded with her captors to give her one more chance, a leather hood with a feeding tube gag was worked over her head and tied shut. She would be unable to resist as they force-fed her several times a day, fattening her up. Her muffled obscenities could be heard as they strapped a milking machine to her chest-- lactation was the quickest and best way to plump up the breasts, and she would soon be milked three or four times a day. In a few months time, when she could finally leave, she would be nice and curvaceous.