Fat people will look you straight in the eye and swear on their mothers' graves they never eat anything but a few bean sprouts. Their lying often takes extreme forms. An entire roast chicken, for instance, will disappear from the church social and it is the fat person who sputters indignantly that the parish is harboring a thief.

Fat people take no responsibility for being fat. They blame their excess on genetics, thyroid, metabolism, hormones and their last pregnancy, which was 22 years ago.

Think for a moment about prisoners of war. Do they ever look fat? Of course not. And despite genetics, metabolism and what-have-you, there will never be a fat prisoner of war, unless he has been trading secrets.

The same holds true for poorer countries. You see tall people, short people and extremely thin people in the third world, but the only fat people are the oppressors. Fat people are fat because they eat too much, period.

The time has come to confront our fear of fat. Let's stop running from the problem. Let's confront it head on, and get tough with fat people.

Look at what we accomplished with smokers. First, we were nice to smokers. That didn't work. Then we tried to scare them with pictures of charred lungs. That didn't work. Finally, we got good and mad at them. We started yelling about how disgusting they were and how we weren't going to sit around and watch them kill themselves any more. We did away with ashtrays and put up ''No Smoking'' signs and made them sit outside in the cold when they felt their self-destructive urges coming on. Smokers got the message loud and clear. They stopped. Now it's time to do the same for fat people. Here is my solution to the fat problem: All fat people will be taxed by the pound. Actuaries will design charts and tables so taxpayers in the fat bracket can compute their annual gross and net weight. Accountants will use scales with their calculators when they do tax returns.

To keep things honest, surprise weight audits will be conducted at selected tolls and road blocks. Of course allowances will be made for certain wrestlers and opera stars, but only if their excess weight is necessary to stay in their profession. People who resort to surgery, like liposuction, jaw-wiring, or stomach-stapling, will have to pay capital gains tax. Restaurant owners will report all single dinner tabs over $100 to the Internal Revenue Service.