Anyone can hit bottom. We all have a point when a problem becomes so big that carrying on without help suddenly seems impossible. Of course, most folks' Intervention moments aren't courtesy of legendary New York Times photographer Bill Cunningham. But what would be a triumph for many women — appearing in the famously competitive social pages of the paper's Sunday Styles section — was when Anne Grauso decided she just couldn't take it anymore.

"I remember opening the [paper] and seeing a picture of myself at a party and just crying. I was so heavy," recalls Grauso, who was then a size 14 and nearly 190 pounds. "It was awful. I thought, 'I need a plan. This isn't me.'"

Grauso's body was reeling from two years of in vitro fertilization treatments, a strenuous social schedule, and eating habits that would make any nutritionist cluck. But here she is, nearly two years of hard work later, in Manhattan's Mercer Hotel in SoHo one morning, having shed almost 60 pounds, with what's left of her five-foot-eight-and-a-half-inch frame in a short Louis Vuitton kilt and black top. Her peaches-and-cream skin radiates health. While passionately discussing kickboxing and her master-of-fine-arts classes at Parsons, she nibbles berry-topped Irish oatmeal. (Gone are the days of a puffy Starbucks muffin.)

"I had to do something," Grauso says. "I had to get back to what I was."

The answer for her was internist Louis Aronne, director of the Comprehensive Weight Control Program at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, recommended by Grauso's longtime dermatologist, Patricia Wexler. "I told Dr. Aronne I was an athlete and a model. Now I'm just a big red blob," says Grauso.

Back when Grauso was modeling, she weighed 129 pounds. Her body was toned from a tomboy childhood in Morristown, New Jersey, where she ran on track teams year-round and played tennis and golf. Such constant activity kept her family of nine's Irish diet of meat and potatoes from sticking. "She was a twig," says sister Julie Fox. Anyway, if an extra pound popped up, Grauso knew what to do: simply stop eating.