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Trying to lose a few pounds, ladies? Put on the lenses that give you a jaundiced eye. I have for you the latest weight-loss flash.

For weeks or months you've been dieting. You eat rice cakes that taste like spray-painted Styrofoam. You're drinking so much water that when you talk your voice gurgles.

You're avoiding everything fun and good - fattening stuff, fast food, anything friendly to the palate. Three months now, and you've lost 4 ounces. What could be the problem?

Could it be that to shed unwanted pounds, we must first shed our female friends?

This premise comes from researchers at the University of Toronto in a brief blurb credited to the Tufts University Diet & Nutrition Letter: "... those [women) dining with other women ate almost twice as much on average as those who ate alone."

They did this study on "more than 100 women" to whom they served a meal of turkey, ham, cheese, bread, mayonnaise, mustard and Oreo cookies, then deduced that, yes, your girlfriends are fattening.

Now, I'd like to get a few things straight in my mind.

Turkey, ham, cheese, bread, mayonnaise, mustard and Oreos? They gave these women the basic contents of a young child's school lunch box. Why didn't they serve grown-woman food, like tuna from the can served dry on two Melba toasts? Talk about instant appetite restraint.

Or, for my gang of despot friends, throw out a jug of wine on the table, and watch everyone forget what and why she ordered, much less remember to eat it.

I'd like to know what time of the month it was for these test-group women. I know women who for two weeks a month will eat not only a pound of Oreos, but also the bag. Even alone in an airtight compartment, a woman with PMS will consume 6 pounds of Squid Jerky if it's salty enough.

Maybe the researchers did the dog food commercial trick - starve 'em for a week, then throw out all the comfort foods from their childhood and watch them fight over who gets to lick the mayo jar.

The report says that the explanation for the premise comes from "a growing body of evidence" (oooh, a lab-study pun) that "people eat more when they eat with others, possibly because social dining tends to last longer than solo meals."

I called upon an expert whom I've used before as a source, Judy Holland of Fort Worth. She's a counselor and overall disciple of life. For years she guided folks out of harsh dilemmas. She's also dieting and exercising and losing weight right now.

On the bit about whether eating with friends is fattening, Holland says: "People do use food to satisfy something, some emotion. But food doesn't satisfy depression, anger, loneliness. Being with friends, though, feeds the soul.

"You don't come to a meal with the women you like for what's on the plate. You come for the feast of friendship."

Sink your teeth into the flavor of that gentle wisdom, all you clinicians.

There is a world of women out there starving for sexual intimacy, emotional identity, hungry for the love of a partner who accepts them unconditionally, lumps, bumps and all. In the meantime and ever after the romance comes, friendship among us women is the healthiest spice of our lives.

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