Michael-Eddie

Sunday, March 14, 2010


As I near the third year anniversary of keeping a daily weight and calorie history, here’s the number one thing I’ve learned: I pay for peace with anxiety.

I’ve learned that recovery comes with a cost. Everything of value does. The ironic thing is—I pay for peace in the coin of anxiety.

Anxiety comes in many forms. Having to keep up a routine. Having to face the food facts every day. The inability to take a day off, to “relax” ( = do what I want to do). The annoying anxiety when I wake some mornings, wondering how my eating in the past few days, or one night’s excess, is going to register on the scale ( = restrict my eating today).

These anxieties I could easily avoid. I could, with one sweep of a hand, banish them forever from my life. But with that hand I would also sweep away the peace and absolute (what a word that is) security and control over my body’s future which I now enjoy.

For years I wanted recovery on my terms. I wanted the product without the price. In other words, I wanted to steal it. That enterprise came to grief because the one I was stealing from was Nature—and she, I have learned, is never, ever burgled. I can’t cheat her but then again she won’t cheat me. She tells me exactly what the rules are and without so much as a word, blesses me and everyone and anyone who lives in compliance with those rules.

So today, on day one thousand seventy one, I choose pay for what I take in the currency of the realm.

With a heart full of gratitude, having once more this morning paid for my peace, I sign off and send you my love:

―Michael-Eddie

Sunday, February 28, 2010

Dear Partners,

Recently I had my annual physical with Dr. Stern. I’ve been seeing him for over ten years, ever since we moved to Evanston. So he knows my story, my struggle with obesity, my history of Type 2 diabetes, and something of the history of my recovery.

It was a quick visit. He did the usual routine checks, asked a few questions, drew blood and then said, as he always says, “Have you written your book yet?”

In general, I’m happy with the report but there some numbers, like overall cholesterol, I want to improve. I’ve had an annual physical for a many years but only recently decided to keep my own record for comparison purposes. My goal is not just to have a healthy weight but to improve my overall health and these columns of numbers tell me just what I need to do to achieve that goal.

Thanks for walking the road with me. I send you my love and my intention for the week ahead: may it be filled with joy, good health, companionship and service to others.

Peace,

―Michael-Eddie

Sunday, February 21, 2010

Lorna sent an email to the family last week that sparked a spirited exchange. It was a quote from a training tape she’d been listening to in which the speaker said:

The people who are most successful in business and in life are the ones who do the most things they don’t want to do every day. How many things did you do today that you didn’t want to do? The more things you did today that you didn’t want to do, the more success you will experience.

My first thought was flossing.

I don’t like it. I suppose there are people who do enjoy snapping a waxed thread between the gaps in their teeth and then rubbing it up and down, but I’m not one of them. Flossing is annoying. Nevertheless, I do it, almost every day.

And it’s the same with my program. I have three mildly annoying activities essential to a stable weight and a strong body:

1. Stepping on the scale every day, writing the number down and then dealing with the anxiety this occasionally creates
2. Logging my food, doing the calorie calculation and then dealing with the irritating restriction this creates
3. Walking and weight lifting—sometimes some weeks, like this week, it’s like pulling teeth, and I procrastinate all week and then have to double up or triple up to get the job done.

So this is my flossing. These are the things I do that I don’t want to do.

But that’s not the whole program and it's certainly not the critical part. The core of it is a deep desire to be healthy, to be free of compulsion, to know the joy of living between meals. That’s the end. My three routines are the necessary means to that end. It helps to note that critical distinction, to focus not on what I’m doing but why I’m doing it.

Like my dentist says: you don’t have to floss all your teeth; just the ones you want to keep.

The energy of duty is limited. After a while, if all I have is a list of shoulds and musts and obligations, my will eventually shuts down.

Love’s energy, on the other hand, is endless. So, while I’m doing these small duties, I try to keep the big goal in mind. I remind myself that it’s the price I pay for a huge, enormously satisfying prize: Freedom, Joy, Safety, Certainty.

―Michael-Eddie

Sunday, February 14, 2010


This past week, Monday through Sunday, I was in Knoxville with my sibs to celebrate, a little early, my dad’s 91st birthday.

Most of the sibs arrived later in the week, but on Wednesday afternoon, my sister Karen and I sat alone with my father and heard the old story of his conversion on Christmas Eve, 1951. But this time we heard it with more detail and with all the significant facts now fitted in their proper sequence, including—and this was the most moving to me—those brief few moments after his prayer had ended but while he was yet rising from his knees, that still point half way up, between kneeling and standing, a moment which had commenced in doubt but ended in faith, when, as Dad now says it, God took possession of his heart, a moment which he has said and we all believe, radically and irrevocably transformed his life.

I was taking notes on my laptop—Karen and I were the family historians and I was the scribe—and I was typing as fast as I could to keep up with the narrative.

But then I said: “Dad, in the past you’ve hinted that you had trouble with drinking and smoking and gambling—how did this all factor into your conversion? Was that what drove you to ask the pastor to come to the house on that Christmas Eve? Was that what you wanted to be free of, to be saved from?”

His answer surprised me. He said he did drink and he did smoke and he did gamble but that was back in army days overseas. He told us how he’d gotten drunk once or twice and how he’d smoked but mostly because the cigarettes were handed out free with the rations. He said that later, in Milwaukee, he did have a few beers now and then and he did smoke a pipe, but it was nothing significant. He said, “I didn’t drink much then because of course your mother didn’t drink and it’s just no fun drinking alone.”

And I’m thinking to myself—this is no alcoholic! I’m not an alcoholic but I’ve known a few and alcoholics don’t talk like that. They’re only too happy to drink alone. Many can’t wait to get alone with their liquor.

So, what was it then?

So many times he’d told the story—and he was telling it again—how he’d paced the floor waiting for Pastor Hovda to get to the house. He was supposed to have been there at one in the afternoon but he was an hour late. It was two o’clock before he finally arrived. And Dad said, “I was beside myself. I was fit to be tied.”

Why the urgency? Why the pacing? What did he want to be free of? That’s what I wanted to know.

“No,” he said, “everything was going my way. I was content. I was happy. I was happily married, with good kids and a good job, no debts, a nice house.” He looked at Karen and me and said, as if to sum it all up: “I never had it so good.” But then, he took his right hand and with a quick slap to the chest right over his heart, he said, “There was a big empty place right here.”

----

I’d heard that before, about the emptiness, but I’d always assumed there was something more to it. I’d assumed it was the emptiness plus the liquor, or the emptiness plus the nicotine, or the emptiness plus the gambling. But for my dad that’s not what it was. For him it was just the emptiness, the emptiness alone. But it was a big emptiness.

There’s much I could say here and much I’d like to say. If this were a spiritual blog or a psychological blog, I could talk in terms of my own faith journey or explore the existential angst of modern humanity. But this is a diet blog about recovery from overeating (I’m winking here)—

So here it is—here’s what I came home with from my week in Knoxville:

It was a big emptiness, a huge, cavernous void which I attempted to fill for years with fast food and gourmet food and foods of all kinds and varieties. But trying to fill that void that way practically killed me. It brought me to my knees. And I have spent about twenty years now slowly rising up. And if you know me, and if you’ve read even a few of these weekly emails you know that I can’t possibly repeat all that has helped me in this journey up from me knees, but you know I know it’s not over and you know I know that you, my friends, are the single most significant part of it. That and the fundamental, wavering yet constant faith that somewhere someone wants me to be free. And so I believe I someday will be.

―Michael-Eddie

Sunday, February 7, 2010


Kay and I celebrated Valentine’s Day early this year. (We’ll be traveling next Sunday). We went to the top of Lake Point Towers in Chicago to dine at Cite, a restaurant with a sweeping view of the Chicago skyline. Then we went to the Goodman Theatre where Brian Dennehy currently stars in two one-act plays. The food was excellent, the play above average, but the real highlight of the day occurred before these two headliners: Kay and I sat in a coffee shop downtown and finished the last two chapters of the novel we’ve been reading out loud to each other. (Half Broke Horses, by Jeannette Walls). Then we started another.

Thinking back on the day, I reflected that the simple and small pleasures are the most memorable.

Speaking of small, at Cite we enjoyed caviar on little, quarter-size cornmeal blinis topped with a dollop of crème fraiche. This we chased with sips of chilled Stoli. It’s hard to imagine a more perfect combination of tastes. It was a spare feast taken in tiny bites.

It reminded me of something I’d just read in Michael Pollan’s new book, Food Rules. Of his 64 eating guidelines, #50 is this: “The banquet is in the first bite.” He goes on to say:

Taking this adage to heart will help you enjoy your food and eat more slowly. No other bite will taste as good as the first, and every subsequent bite will progressively diminish in satisfaction. Economists call this the law of diminishing marginal utility…as you go on you’ll be getting more calories, but not necessarily more pleasure.

Agreed.

I’m grateful this morning for the simple pleasure of reading a good book with the one I love. and for the small pleasure of banqueting on just one bite. Glad to have shared these experiences with my Valentine yesterday, and with you, my partners, today.

―Michael-Eddie

January 31, 2010


I was talking to my sister Karen several weeks ago. We were talking about how, when you lose the first ten pounds, sometimes people don’t notice, or if they do notice, they don’t say anything.

Then, as time passes and the weight continues to drop, that’s when your friends start talking. You’re on the glory road. The compliments are coming in.

However, as family, friends, and work colleagues—the people who see you frequently—as they start getting used to the new you, the compliments diminish and often stop altogether.

But now and then you’ll get a surprise. Karen got one recently and it made me laugh—it tickled me, as our mother would say—so I asked her if I could share it with you.

Recently she was in the Dallas airport on her way to Austin, and she was going through security. She came to the first checkpoint, the podium where the TSA guard sits, and she handed him her boarding pass and driver’s license.

The agent looked at Karen, looked down at the license and then he did a double-take. He looked up again at her and said, “Have you lost weight?” just like that. Not, “Are you in possession of any liquids, sprays or gels?” but, “Have you lost weight?”

Karen said, “I was a little taken aback by this. I mumbled and said, ‘Uh, well, yes, actually I have.’” The agent nodded, handed the documents back to her and said with a smile: “You’re looking great.”

Sometimes your friends and work colleagues fail to remember how hard you’ve worked to get where you are. Sometimes even you don’t keep it in mind. You take this great accomplishment for granted. But then somebody who hasn’t seen you for a long time, or, as in the case of this TSA guard, some complete stranger will notice the discrepancy between the mental picture they hold of you and the actual person you’ve become. And then, when you least expect it, you get a little gift.

Karen said, “Michael, it made my day!”

And I say, Karen, you made my day. Thanks for sharing this story with me.

―Michael-Eddie

Sunday, January 24, 2010


This past week I learned a lesson; re-learned it actually.

On my Thursday phone call with long-term partner, Sandra, I was complaining about my exercise procrastination. I said, “It’s like a lethargy attack. Let’s face it I’m a slug.”

There was a pause on the other end of the line. Then Sandra said, “Michael, that sounds a little harsh, the slug thing.”

I smiled and nodded. As soon as the word had left my mouth, I’d regretted it. And I figured she might say something. But actually “slug” was an improvement over what I’d really wanted to say, which was: “lazy lout.”

Sandra and I have been doing these Thursday morning calls for several years now and every now and then we review the issue of self-shaming.  She reminded me that I've called her on this too.  She chuckled and said, "You wouldn't let me talk to me that way, so I can't let you get away with it."

It’s easy to see how it gets going. It’s an effort to deal with a growing frustration. I’m frustrated because I procrastinate, under-doing it all week and then over-doing it on the weekends to catch up. This week was no exception.

But I was grateful for Sandra’s nudge. I’m pretty good at spotting the epithets when others use them. I’m glad she spot-lighted mine.

And then, having dealt with the negative behavior, Sandra made a really simple, positive suggestion. She said, What you could do—you could just commit to getting on the treadmill for ten minutes sometime today. You know if you do, you’ll do more than that but commit to just ten.”

I made the commitment. I said Yes. And then at noon I got on the treadmill. I didn’t want to be there. I was annoyed. And the first ten minutes felt like drudgery. I deliberately walked more slowly than I usually do, just out of spite I guess. But Sandra was right. I put in my dutiful ten and then another ten for good measure. Then I spent the rest of the noon hour doing my strength training.

Two things I’ve learned when I catch myself in negative self-talk:

1. Name-calling is a call for self-care. It means I need to forgive myself, take time to reflect on my life, find somebody who needs help and help them or just listen to them, get adequate sleep and yes, work out. Self-care improves my self-regard.

2. Name-calling is an evasion of responsibility. Instead of taking action or asking for help to take action, I opt for the easy way out: self-shaming. That way I can avoid the work I want to avoid and pre-empt the criticism of others—all in one easy act.

Thanks, Sandra, for keeping me honest. Thanks for reminding me to be kind to myself.

―Michael-Eddie

Sunday, January 17, 2010


According to nutritionist Monica Reinagle, the calorie counts on restaurant menus aren’t very reliable. On average, the numbers are off by 20%. But for some restaurants, it’s off by 50%. In other words if the menu says 900 calories, it may be closer to 1,800. (I’ve attached the article link at the end of this post).

That’s the bad news. The good news is: it doesn’t matter. Absolute accuracy is impossible anyway. And that’s why I don’t rely on calorie counting alone. I track several numbers, including

• aerobic and resistance training minutes,
• desert calorie ratio,
• body mass index (BMI), and
• the blood work from my annual physical

Taken together, these stats give me a much more accurate assessment of my health.

My rule of thumb is: if my weight is going up I’m eating too much (or moving too little) regardless of how many calories I think I’m taking in.

And since I keep a daily weight history, I’m never surprised by an extra five or ten pounds. If the number on the scale goes up, the number on my food card must go down. It’s an utterly simple and completely reliable weight management system.

Menus may not tell the truth; friends may not tell the truth, and clothing sizes are actually designed to shroud the truth. But the trusty bathroom scale never lies. It’s the most reliable tool I use.

Here’s the link to the article http://blog.nutritiondata.com/ndblog/2009/12/dont-trust-calorie-counts-on-menus.html?mbid=ndnl

Thanks for being there again this week. I love being on this journey with you.

―Michael-Eddie





The Numbers

Sunday, January 10, 2010

Don't surrender your loneliness
So quickly.
Let it cut more deeply.
Let it ferment and season you
As few human
Or even divine ingredients can.

This verse from the Persian poet, Hafez—I loved it on first reading. Then when I read it again, for “loneliness” I substituted “hunger”.

But you could insert other words too: Fear, Sadness, Anxiety. Because to me the poem is not just about loneliness but about any emotional or physical state which causes me discomfort, to which my first reaction is: RUN.

The poet says: Don’t let your hunger go. Hang on to it for a while, hold it close and let it do its work. It’s a topical potion. It will work but only if you rub it on and let it penetrate.

Can this be good prescription—the cure for hunger is hunger? That’s what Hafez says and that’s been my experience.


Here’s a list of things I’ve learned while holding my hunger.

1. The more I run from hunger, the more its power grows. It feeds on fear.

2. Hunger never wants me to get really hungry, and then actually wait and choose to feel it, because then I might find out just how pathetically inconsequential it is

3. When I got hungry and then held on to the hunger and got hungrier, on purpose, and then dared it to get worse and then when it did get worse, did not surrender my hunger but held on more and said, Bring it on! and held on yet more—I stopped holding my breath and gritting my teeth and ended up breathing deeply two or three times and then I found myself laughing: That’s your best shot? That’s all you got? This is what I’ve been running from all my life?

4. Hunger itself, the actual phenomenon, is 4% belly. The rest is brain. And head hunger?—if that’s where the emptiness is, no food on earth can fill it.

5. The hunger which I choose and embrace can enhance my concentration, release my creativity and build my self-confidence

6. When I hold on to my hunger I watch as my relationship to it gradually evolves from Fear to Tolerance to Familiarity. Reminds me of that old Simon and Garfunkel tune, “Hello, Hunger, my old friend.”

7. Hunger is holy; it’s the wafer-thin morsel which lovingly mocks the body while nourishing the soul. It’s nothing. But it’s a nourishing nothing. It’s what Jesus meant when he said to his disciple—when they were going into town to get lunch and asked him if he wanted anything—he said, I have food that you know nothing of.

Thanks for being there for me again this week. It’s great to be in league with you. Together we can do what alone we could not do.

―Michael-Eddie

Sunday, January 3, 2010

Dear Partners,

I reached a major milestone today.

It’s been exactly 1,000 days since April 9, 2007.

That’s when I made a commitment to log my weight and calories every day for three years.

So even though I haven’t achieved that goal, I’ve gone a good distance. In fact it’s like I can see the finish line and I’m starting to get excited.

I was going to say I feel like Moses climbing the mountain and looking into the Promised Land. But that’s not a very good metaphor because Moses never actually arrived. After trudging forty years through the wilderness with one goal in mind, after finally seeing the land he dreamed of living in, he fell short. He never actually set foot in the land. So close and yet so far.

So, the lesson for today is— it ain’t over ‘til it’s over.

In fact, even after it’s over it ain’t over.

The truth is: there is no over.

As they say in the twelve-step rooms: to keep getting what you got, keep doing what you did. Or as Santyana put it: “Repetition is the only form of permanence nature can achieve.”

Peace to you my partners. Thanks for traveling this road with me. And if behind us there are a thousand miles, before us are ten thousand more. In our prospect now is the longest leg of the journey, with more in store for us of adventure, of learning and best of all, of fellowship around our common goal.

―Michael-Eddie

Sunday, December 27, 2009

It was Christmas morning at our house. All was going well.


It was around 10:00 o’clock and Kay and I were hosting brunch for Meg and Lorna and Aaron and little Annika. We were sitting at the kitchen table. We hadn’t yet begun to open our gifts. And, as I say, all was going well.

Then Kay said something. Just a few words, and immediately we were back in the previous night, back in a discussion we’d had on Christmas Eve at Lorna’s place, a discussion in which, to be frank, we’d gotten a little edgy with each other. The discussion had been on racism. And though I’m pleased to say we navigated it quite well and though the evening ended with carols and hugs and good spirits—for a while it had been tense

So on Christmas morning when Kay introduced the topic again—my immediate thought was—actually it wasn’t a thought at all, it was a feeling, a tightness in my stomach, small, barely noticeable, the kind of thing which you only notice on vacation when you’re completely relaxed. It’s like the ambient house sounds you only hear in the early morning when everyone else is asleep: the hum of the refrigerator, the soft ticking of a small clock, the air whispering as it moves over the louvered vents.

But this morning I felt it, that tightness, that knot in my stomach. Then, the next moment, my eye fell on the bowl of pineapple in the middle of the table. I wanted pineapple! I laughed quietly to myself. Isn’t that odd, I thought. I’m feeling an emotional nervousness and I think food will soothe it. Then, while I was in the middle of this thought, Meg reached out to cut a wedge of coffee cake, a beautiful cake that Kay had made that morning.

I looked at Meg. I said, “Meg did what just happened to me happen to you?” She looked at me with a knowing look. And then we started laughing. “Wow!” she said, “You’re right.” And then the rest of the group wanted to know what we were laughing about. And we explained that we had, simultaneously, thought of using food to do something food was never meant to do: solve world problems or relieve emotional distress.

Here’s what we could have done. We could have said, “I sure hope we don’t have another edgy political discussion this morning, Christmas morning.” Or, “This makes me uncomfortable.” Or, we could have said nothing, dealing quietly to calm the inner turmoil. Those options and many others were open to us. But our first thought had been of food. And unfortunately, consuming food is a socially acceptable, perhaps the socially acceptable, way of dealing with interpersonal angst.

I am so happy this morning as I look back on the holidays—for moderate eating and a very satisfying time with family and friends. I used food as food was meant to be used.

One thing I’ve learned—but it’s taken me years and years and many holidays to learn it—is that the most scrumptious home-made coffee cake is not the antidote for a troubled soul. “Food for the belly,” the Bible says. And for the soul: emotional honesty and integrity and patience and, at times, the courage to speak up and say, “I’m not feeling good about the direction of this discussion.”

Merry Christmas! Happy New Year! And peace, good-will to you my program friends.

―Michael-Eddie

Sunday, December 20, 2009

Before I left the office he gave me two pages of pre-surgical warnings and instructions. Eddie and I noticed different words. I saw “general anesthesia.” He saw “fast” and “12 hours.”

For a full twelve hours before the procedure: no food or drink.

Eddie is verklempt.

I try to calm his mind. Eddie, it’s next March, I tell him. And remember, for 8 of those 12 hours you’ll be in bed, asleep. But to Eddie who has trouble putting his fork down between bites, 12 food-less hours is a millennium. He says, I’ll starve!

I say, Eddie, how long can human beings survive without food? (He hates this question. He’s heard it before. He knows the answer.) I continue. A healthy human being—if he has water—can last without one morsel of food, zero calories, for three weeks. That’s 21 days. 504 hours.

So, I say, Eddie, here’s a simple math problem: What’s 504 take away 12?

He sits there, sullen. His eyes glaze over. When his stomach growls his brain malfunctions. So I go slower. I patiently relate the fast facts. I explain that while a prolonged fast will eventually do some damage, human begins are actually genetically designed to go without food for very long time.

• In the first 3 days of a fast you’re still using up your body’s store of glucose, the sugar-fuel your body lives on.
• In the next 18 days you’re burning body fat in a process (made famous by Dr. Atkins) called ketosis. There are problems but they’re not life-threatening—weakness, light-headedness, insomnia and bad breath. But you’re not dead. You’re not even starving.
• Only after the 21-day mark—now your body starts eating its own lean tissue. Now you’re starving, but you’re still not dead.

I remind him—

• that my son, Kevin, did a water-only fast for 8 days and then went 2 more adding only a little beef broth “mostly for the salt” he told me
• that Gandhi’s last hunger strike lasted a mere 21 days but that’s because he was 70 years old at the time and already a pretty skinny guy

•  that in 1981, Thomas McElwee, a member of the Irish Republican Army, went on a hunger strike and lasted 73 days, which may be the record.
• that our ancient hunter ancestors delayed many a lunch but that’s because before they ate it they had to hunt it, kill it and cook it.
• that the last time he and I hunted anything was one morning fifty years ago in a frozen field near Pierre, South Dakota when, at point-blank range, we gunned down a pheasant. And for lunch that day we had meat loaf.

In other words, don’t necessarily trust your hunger, Eddie. If we can live without food for 21 days, we can certainly make it a mere 12 hours.

―Michael-Eddie

December 13, 2009

When I took up the piano a few years ago, I had a big problem. I had an adult ear and toddler fingers.


I’d taken piano as a young boy, but when I started practicing again, there was no way I could make my fingers perform to the satisfaction of my ear.

There was this one piece—when I tried to play it, it always sounded clunky and uneven. And that’s after I had worked laboriously for months just to get the notes right! But I continued to practice, day after day, month by month. And there was improvement. I could sense it was getting better, but you know how it is, it’s hard to gauge slow, incremental progress. I often wished I had recorded those earliest sessions when I was banging out the notes for the first time, because I knew I was improving, but since it always sounded less than perfect I was never satisfied and since I wasn’t satisfied, that meant only one thing: I had to keep practicing.

And then this morning, when I sat down to play, I realized something had changed. That piece I had been practicing for two years—and this is not an exaggeration—that piece actually sounded good. After the final cadence, I lifted my fingers, paused and said, Whoa, I really like that.

My fingers had flown effortlessly over the keys like a dancer running down a flight of stairs. And that pesky, difficult passage which had never once been right, not once, this morning it was very good. Not perfect, not by a long shot, but here’s the thing: this morning it satisfied me. That’s all I mean: it satisfied me.

I could feel, in my fingers, a new confidence. Do you know what I mean, finger-confidence? Actually it’s more like finger-sentience. It’s a strange, spooky experience. It felt as though these digits had acquired a mind. And it was my mind! Somehow the music that had been there for two years, in my head and in my ear and in my heart, after two years of practice, that music had moved down, had migrated down through my torso, down my arms and then further down into these ten fingers. So that this morning, as I played, my heart and my hands were one.

I sat there on the bench for a little while, savoring the moment. And then, in that moment of knowing, my very next thought was of Eddie. I thought: This is what’s happening to Eddie and me.

-----------------

Today is day 979. Every day for 979 days, I’ve been keeping a daily weight and calorie log and then sending it to you at the end of every week.

At first Eddie didn’t like this program. But we kept at it. Every time he’d say: I just want to eat the old way, I always replied: I’m sorry, Eddie, we’re not eating that way any more.

Now the change didn’t happen immediately. And I wasn’t perfect. But I was consistent. Every time he repeated his line I repeated my mine: I’m sorry, Eddie, we’re not eating that way any more.

And I supported my words with action. Every day I filled out a food card. Patiently, persistently, relentlessly, every single day.

I repeated my line 979 times.

C. S. Lewis said it: “We are more likely to act our way into right thinking than think our way into right acting.” That’s true for me. And it’s especially true of Eddie.


And so I just kept telling him—in the only language he really understands. Every day, day after day, even on those rare days when we pigged out, I filled out a food card.

Then yesterday, at the piano, I made the connection. I looked at my fingers and thought: Things are changing with Eddie and me, too. We’ve been practicing. Really hard. One of these days we’ll be making music together. Instead of a duel, it’ll be a duet.

―Michael-Eddie

Sunday, December 6, 2009

Let’s talk about cause and effect.

Let’s say I’ve lost ten pounds. (Almost everybody wants to lose ten pounds and many have done it. )

Now, if the effect I want to achieve is a perpetually stable body weight, how can I do that? What’s the cause of that effect? In other words, how can I be absolutely certain I never ever regain the weight?

There are many answers to that question. Here are just a few that I’ve encountered:

1. Get a sponsor, a life-coach or a personal trainer; you can’t do it alone.
2. Count calories—you’ll be amazed how much food you’re eating.
3. Don’t count calories; just eat when you’re hungry and stop when you’re full
4. Don’t count calories but do keep a food log, writing down everything you eat
5. Attend OA, Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig or a similar organization where you get support, fellowship and useful information
6. Adopt a plant-based diet—how many obese vegetarians do you know?
7. Try the Atkins Diet: eat the meat but skip the carbs
8. Weigh yourself frequently
9. Weight yourself once a month
10. Stay off the scale entirely. It just make you crazy and besides, you know you’re gaining when your clothes get tight.
11. Eat foods with a low glycemic index
12. Don’t eat out so much
13. Eat slowly and carefully chew your food
14. Stop dieting
15. Avoid eating in front of the TV
16. Avoid salty and sodium-laced food, like popcorn and pretzels
17. Avoid liquid calories like sodas–you hardly know you’ve consumed them
18. Always leave a little something on your plate. Resign from the clean-plate club
19. See a therapist: you’ll stop overeating when you figure out what’s eating you
20. Get a good, rigorous cardio workout two or three times a week.
21. Don’t kill yourself with heroic work-outs, just walk 30 minutes a day
22. Forget the cardio. Pump iron! The more muscle you have the more calories you burn
23. Eliminate or severely restrict sugar and refined carbs
24. Never eat after 8 PM
25. Read sound nutritional information—the more you know about the food you eat and how your body works, the less likely you will be to overeat

No doubt you’ve encountered these answers too. You’ve heard them from friends or read them in magazines or seen them on TV.

The problem is: these are not causes. At best they’re correlations. I can easily determine that by asking myself a simple question: if I consistently perform these actions will I absolutely achieve the desired effect? The answer, obviously, is no. We all know people who do these things and still regain lost weight.

So what we have is a list of 25 behaviors correlated with weight stabilization. But not one of them is a cause.

What then is the cause? A program which enables me to consistently equalize my energy (input and output). That’s it. That’s the cause. There is no other.

By performing certain small daily tasks which guarantee that I equalize my energy (the cause) I can be assured of a perpetually stable body weight (the effect).

I love that. I love being an agent of causation. I love being in charge of my body. I have banked everything on this simple cause and its inevitable effect. And while it would be great if all my problems were this easy, I’m very glad that this one is.


―Michael Eddie

Sunday, November 29, 2009

I was writing to a friend this week and the subject was weight loss and the topic was: can I do it on my own? We both agreed that while the responsibility was ours alone, we also needed help.

I’m pretty sure that my weekly reports to you each week, with full disclosure, all the numbers, is a critical component of my success. I can’t be sure of course, but it doesn’t matter right now because I made a three-year commitment to do the reports, so I don’t really have to think about it. I just do it.

It’s that principle of self-binding that you find in the Odyssey. Remember Odysseus asked his men to bind him to the mast as he nears the Isle of the Sirens? (The Sirens were ravishing nymphs who seduced sailors with their beautiful bodies and mesmerizing songs.¬ To these naïve mariners, it looked like pure pleasure, but Odysseus knew that the Sirens’ real purpose was not to love the sailors but to kill them.)

Odysseus knew this and he also knew he could not resist their allures. He was convinced that if he wanted to get back home to his wife, Penelope, he could not rely on will-power alone. So, he commanded his crew to lash him to the mast. In a moment of clarity he made a commitment, a commitment he literally could not break.

And we know how the story ends. He does make it home, home to his dear Ithaca, home to his son, Telemachus, home at last to his beloved Penelope.

It’s a powerful myth and I glean two lessons from it.

1. I cannot do this alone.

The central paradox for Odysseus was this: he alone could construct the solution, but he alone could not implement that solution. He could not bind himself. He needed help.

This is a perfect metaphor for my partnership with you all. I know my history. I know that every food plan I ever created for myself—from the most restrictive to the most liberal—I violated every one.

I actually tried 17 different food plans. I guess I was in search of the perfect one. And then one day it finally dawned on me: the fault was not in the plan but in me. There was a part of me, my Eddie part, who simply would not obey rules. It wasn’t that he disobeyed unreasonable rules. He disobeyed all rules, even the most liberal ones, the ones I myself had made. Once I figured that out—and it took me a good thirty years!—the solution came clear.

Prayer helps and meditation helps and affirmations and visualizations and positive thinking and preparation—all these things help, but all these taken together did not work for me. I needed real people, people outside my skin, outside my own limited subjectivity, who would help bind me to my cause.

2. Love is stronger than law.

I discovered years ago that I cannot build a program on resistance and will-power alone. I am not a machine. I am a human being called by dozens of siren songs. Over the years I’ve learned that the best way to resist a lower love is to pursue a higher one. That’s what Odysseus did. In the end, his love of home and family was more compelling than his love of pleasure. And it was this greater love which commanded his men to bind him. Odysseus wanted above all to be with Penelope and he simply did whatever it took to get there. He was, literally, bound for home, homeward bound.

That’s what my friends have helped me do. And here’s the best of it—even when my greater love was food, they helped me until I could find a better love. But at the beginning I had to admit my sad limitation. I had to admit I was selling my soul for a plate of hash. I hate to say it but it was true. Friends, so many friends, helped me look within and find a higher love.

So I’m happy today, my fellow mariners. Happy to be sitting at the oar-locks in this boat together, homeward bound.

―Michael Eddie

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Wednesday noon is an odd time to go to church. But my friend, Jeff, was celebrating the Eucharist and I was glad to be there—to see him, to connect with old friends, to say the good words together and take the bread and wine again.

In his homily, Jeff told of his recent trip to Turkey. He’d gone with an inter-faith group of Christians, Jews and Muslims. One day, in Istanbul, the group visited the Neve Shalom synagogue which had been the target of numerous bombings over the years. The rabbi took them on a tour and spoke about the challenge of being a religious minority in an increasingly hostile culture.

As they entered the sanctuary Jeff noticed something odd, something yellow under one of the seats and leaned down to get a better look. And then he saw them, a sea of bright yellow construction hard hats, one under every chair. When asked about it the rabbi said, with a shrug: We’re in Istanbul—we have to be ready for anything.

I thought to myself: this rabbi, I could learn a thing or two from him.

1. If I’m serious about security, I need to be prepared.
Sandra—my good friend and program partner for years—if you ask the key to her incredible, consistent success, she says: “Preparation. It’s all about planning what I’m going to eat; it’s about strategic shopping so I have the right food in the house. When I plan ahead it’s just makes everything easier.”

Friends don’t throw bombs but they do throw parties so I need to be prepared. One of the best preparations is a good food refusal script. Sometimes it feels awkward to say a flat-out No or even No thanks, especially when I’m told that this special dish has been prepared “just for you.” With the right script I can soften the message and at the same time honestly affirm the host.

 Thank you, they do look yummy, I may try some later.
 Thank you. Right now I’m really enjoying your __________. I may try some later.
 Not right now, thanks.

2. Match the level of security to the level of threat.
Kay and I live close to a synagogue. We walk by Beth Emet every day. And while the temple has many good programs, I’m pretty sure a hard hat program isn’t one of them. This is Evanston. In Istanbul things are different. There the risk is greater and so is the level of security.

In my early years in program I needed to work hard, a lot harder than I do now. But then, at nearly four hundred pounds, I was desperate. My eating disorder had the drop on me and I knew I had no hope unless I mounted a major offensive.

Almost from day one, I decided to approach recovery the way I’d approached eating: I overdid it. So, if my sponsor told me to make one phone call very day, I made three. If he suggested one meeting a week, I did two. In fact, there was a period—four or five years running—where I did three meetings every week: Wednesdays and Fridays at 7:30 AM and Saturdays at 9:00 AM.

Not everybody needed to work that hard. but I did. I’m glad to say the strategy paid off. And as time passed I was able to cut back, knowing that I could always beef up my program again if I needed to. I don’t go to meetings now, but I still use many of the tools I picked up in those early years.

3. Security is largely a series of oft-repeated boring routines.
At Neve Shalom, somebody had to order the hats, unpack the hats, make little slings for the hats and then nestle the hats up under every chair. Somebody else has to monitor the security cameras every day, day after day, staring hour after hour at a computer screen. That sounds like tedious work to me. And much of program work is equally tedious. I have to:

 write down, every day, everything I eat
 look up the calorie counts of the foods I don’t know
 add up numbers on the calculator and enter the data in my spreadsheet

Actually most of the time I don’t even think about these routines. They’re second nature to me now. But when I do get irritated, I remind myself that these small daily tasks are the bright coins with which I buy my freedom and my security.

One thing I’ve learned in all of this—one of the most important things—perpetual recovery requires perpetual work and much of that work is the consistent repetition of an extremely uninteresting routine.

But in return for that this is what I get: I get another holiday season where I know, at the outset, I will not gain weight. Another season in which I can honestly say: there is no holiday, there is no restaurant or party or travel destination, no challenge or threat but that my program is equal to it.

I love that freedom. And to celebrate it, Kay and I are thinking, this year, for thanksgiving dinner, we’ll put a turkey on the table and hard hat under every chair.

Happy holidays, my friends! Together we will be well.

―Michael Eddie

Sunday, November 8, 2009

Did you know there are three Thanksgiving laws?

#1: The Current Law
First, there’s the Current Law which mandates that on Turkey Day you stuff yourself (they do call it stuffing) then loosen your belt with a sigh while flopping down on the nearest sofa in a near coma. It’s an old rule, a well-known rule, and judging by how slavishly we obey it, you’d think it was mandatory.

Which got me to thinking—what if they passed a new law?

#2: The New Law
Hello, may I speak with Mr. Anderson.

This is Mr. Anderson; who’s calling, please?

Hi, my name is Francine and I’m the Food Czar and I’m calling to inform you that your Thanksgiving feast has been cancelled.

What’s that?

The big feast, sir, it’s been cancelled. Forever.

Who says?

I say.

And you are?

Francine, the Food Czar.

I know, Francine, but will all due respect, you can’t just cancel Thanksgiving. Look, I took 8th grade civics and I don’t think you can’t just repeal a federal holiday. The President has to issue an official proclamation, doesn’t he?

No, sir, he doesn’t. And anyway I’m not canceling the Thanksgiving part, just the feast part.

So what does that mean exactly?

It means you can keep giving thanks, but instead of stuffing yourself—and you know how miserable that makes you feel—this year you’re going to experience the Zen pleasure of deprivation.

Which means?

Which means basically you eat nothing.

On Thanksgiving? You’ve got to be kidding me! I don’t think the American people are going to like this one little bit.

Well, actually, sir, that’s not been our experience. The American people have been overwhelmingly positive. In fact 98% have expressed great relief and gratitude. They’re sick of the excess and they’re glad someone is stepping in to do something about it.

Frankly, Francine, that’s hard for me to believe.

Well, believe it or not, it’s true. People love it. But that’s not really the point, is it, Mr. Anderson? The point is, it’s the law. The fast is mandatory.

Mandatory?

That’s right. You remember when the feast was the law, don’t you, Mr. Anderson?

Well, yes.

And you obeyed that law didn’t you, Mr. Anderson?

Well, yes.

Well, this is the new law. From now on, on the fourth Thursday of November, your total caloric intake will be zero.

Uh, well, okay, so?

So, as a favor to you, I’m calling a few weeks early so you can, you know, prepare for a different holiday experience. Thanks and have a great day.

----

Now, let’s say I actually got that call from Francine. Let’s say there really was a Food Czar and that she had the gall to tell me I must observe a Thanksgiving fast. Would I obey the New Law? Certainly not. I’m not going to let some Food Guru tell me what I can and cannot eat. If I want stuffing and gravy on Thanksgiving Day, then stuffing and gravy it will be. But of course I also reserve the right to eat nothing, too. Because the point is, fasting or feasting, it’s up to me.

Which leads me to…

#3: My Law
As I thought about the rule I personally observe on Thanksgiving Day, it occurred to me, in moment of sheer delight, that it has nothing to do with food. It has absolutely nothing to do with what I eat or how much I eat.

In fact I went back to review my Thanksgiving meals the last two years. I actually went back to my stack of food cards—there are now 944 of them, bound with a thick rubber band in my desk drawer—and here’s what I found.

In 2007, my meal was just 1,275 calories. And the total for the whole day was a meager 1,846. Whereas last year, Thanksgiving 2008, I had a real feast of 1,859 calories (of which 500 was pie!) but my total for the day was, again, a modest 2,442, which is an average day for me.

This year, Thanksgiving 2009, maybe I’ll have more, maybe less. Maybe I’ll have a big gravy-laden feast of 4,000 calories. I don’t know and that’s not the point.

The point is, on Thanksgiving Day, no matter what I eat, I log it, add up the calories and write that number down. Then, the next morning, Friday morning, I get on the scale and look at the number and write that number down. Then, the following Monday I report to you, my partners. That’s my law: log it and blog it.

That’s the law for Thanksgiving Day. And Christmas Day and New Year’s Day and Today and Everyday.

It feels so good to have that figured out. What a relief! I got so excited I just had to tell you about it. And, in a minute, after I sign off here, I think I’ll call Francine and tell her too.

Peace, to you, my partners.

―Michael-Eddie

Sunday, November 1, 2009

I have a friend—I’ll call her Darla. I haven’t seen her for a while, but I was thinking of her this week.

Later, much later—and much heavier—she told me my compliment had freaked her out, causing her to regain the weight. She said, “Michael, it wasn’t just you. I got several comments in the space a few weeks where men at the office said nice things to me and then at the gym one guy actually wolf-whistled me—and it was just overwhelming.”

I said, “Darla, I feel awful. I knew you were trying to lose, so when I saw you were succeeding, I wanted to encourage you.” Unfortunately it had the opposite effect. Instead of encouraging her, it scared her.

Then she told me the whole story. As a young girl she’d been the victim of sexual abuse, so that, even years later, the thought of attracting male attention had set off alarms. Running somewhere in her mind, like an embedded software virus, was this syllogism:

• Thin=Sexy
• Sexy=Danger
• Therefore, Thin=Danger

And the tragedy is, even though the syllogism was flawed and out of date, she was still allowing it to rule her life. She was not in danger any more. She was not a young, defenseless little girl any more. She was, on the contrary, a brilliant, powerful, successful, professional woman.

In fact she was a psychotherapist. Which is why I was thinking of her this week.

On Tuesday, I got a phone call from an old acquaintance. In the course of our talk he said, “Oh, by the way, I have been wanting to thank you for something.” When I asked him what it was, he said, “You referred me to Darla, remember?” And then I did remember. It had been years ago. “Well,” he said, “my wife and I saw her for several sessions over the course of many months and she was a huge help to us. So I just wanted to say thank you.”

What an irony. Darla’s ability to analyze a problem and then coach to a solution had brought healing to my friend and his family. She had given them a gift, but could not, apparently, bestow that same gift on herself. The last time I saw her, just a year ago, she was still struggling. She had put on yet more weight, at least another fifty pounds, to the point where she was having trouble walking.

That made me think of the tragedy of limiting beliefs. Over the years, I’ve encountered many of them in myself and others. Here are just a few:

     • I don’t deserve to be thin.

     • Thin people are arrogant. I don’t like arrogant people so I don’t want to be thin.

     • I might be able to get thin but I could never stay thin, so why try?

     • Overweight people are underachievers. If I get thin, people will start expecting too much from me.

     • My best friend is heavy too. It’s our bond. If I lose the weight I’ll lose her.

     • I’ve been so heavy so long, my fat is my identity. If I lose the weight I literally won’t know who I am.

     • People get thin and then they want to get even thinner and then they don’t know when to stop and end up anorexic. I’d rather be a little heavier and avoid a serious eating disorder.

     • I like fudge too much (or pasta or pizza or ice cream). In order to get thin and stay thin I’d have to give up the fudge. I’d rather be heavier and happier.


Now, the problem with these beliefs is not that they’re untrue. Some in fact do contain a kernel of truth (which is why they’re so powerful). The question, with any belief is not so much is it right or wrong but rather: is it helping me or hurting me?

What to do with a limiting belief? Rather than argue with myself, with that part of me that holds onto it, I like to take the weak idea and mold it into one that’s more powerful. I start with whatever I think the truth is and go from there.

So, for example, I might say:


Or, I might say:

     • Yes, it’s true, some thin people are arrogant, but isn’t it also true of the overweight? I know some big people with pretty big heads. And I know some have a humble spirit living in a normal body. That’s what I want.

I’ve found that any limiting idea I’ve ever encountered yields to this treatment. And that goes for the most limiting idea of all: that I can’t change my body until I change my beliefs. But that’s another matter for another week.

In the meantime, I send you my thanks, my partners. It’s been good again this week to be on your team. We’re good for each other! That’s my, firm, unwavering and power-filled belief!

―Michael Eddie

Sunday, October 25, 2009


Thursday morning, I came into the office and said hello to Dorothy. She said, “Oh, I’m sorry, sounds like you’ve got the cold everyone’s come down with. Have you been coughing?” I laughed and said, “No, I haven’t been coughing and I don’t have a cold. It’s just that last night I was screaming.” She said, What are you talking about?

I said, Last night about 10:30 I got up and went down stairs. Kay and I had done our evening reading in bed and she had gone to sleep but I wasn’t tired so I slipped out of bed and went down to the kitchen.

I made a cup of decaf and turned on the TV hoping to catch a little late-night news but it was tuned to channel 11 (our local PBS outlet) and I was glad to see that there was a concert in progress, Gustavo Dudamel conducting the LA Philharmonic. It took me only a few bars to realize they were doing Mahler’s First, my favorite symphony. And I knew exactly where they were—in the middle of the third movement, the second-to-the-last movement, the slow, funeral march.

I was excited. I knew that Dudamel, this young genius, this phenom from Venezuela, had just taken the job at Los Angeles—at a mere 28 years old—and I saw on the screen that this was his inaugural concert.

How wonderful—this great young conductor conducting my favorite symphony. Heaven!

Then suddenly I remembered—Hey, I don’t have to listen to these miniature, tinny little TV speakers. So I grabbed my cup and ran downstairs to basement where we have a real sound system, hi-def, surround-sound. I cranked it up and sat down on the couch. It was loud and it was beautiful.

Then I thought I’d better close the basement door so as not to wake Kay. When I sat down on the couch again, I put my feet up and cranked it up some more.

The cameras—there must have been five or six—were strategically placed so that you get close-ups of the musicians and the conductor. In normal concerts you see only his back, but here he is, Dudamel, his black curly hair standing out from his head in short ringlets, a wild Einstein look but instead of white, it’s jet black hair. And you’re looking directly into his face, seeing every expression of the mouth and eyes, every gesture, the slightest lift of the wrist, everything.

And though it is a live recording, you know the cameras are following the score because just as the harp comes in, you’re right there and you see, close-up, as fingers pluck the strings. And then when the oboe enters with its plaintive solo, at the very moment, there she is, the oboist.

And I’m sitting there, thinking to myself, Wow, this is almost too much stimulation. And I’m remembering when, at Orchestra Hall in Chicago, in the lower balcony, a hundred feet from the stage, even at that remove I sometimes have to close my eyes to eliminate the visual distractions and concentrate on the music alone.

So, I’m sitting there, legs stretched out on the couch, when all of sudden, thunder! A huge thudding boom exploded and reverberated in me so I thought the house was coming down. With a great cymbal-crash and a booming throb of the bass drum, the final movement had begun, what Mahler calls “Stürmisch bewegt- Energisch” And it is a storm. Unbelievable.

Now, I’ve heard this symphony many times before, maybe a hundred times, maybe two hundred, I have no idea really. I’ve heard it a few times live, but mostly recordings. I remember listening to it again and again, this would be nearly forty years ago, on an 8-track tape as I drove back and forth from Wheaton to Geneva in our old green Javelin. I’ve heard it on scratchy LPs and then when they came out, on flawless CDs. There was a time, after college, where I experimented with new ways of hearing it. I’d lie on my back on the living room floor with my head between the speakers. But the point is I know this symphony, I know it, note for note, especially the final movement.

But for some reason this crashing, explosive entry took me completely by surprise and I jumped to my feet and stood up. I don’t remember doing it, but all I can say is, one minute I was reclining on the couch and the next minute I was standing up.

I think it was the sheer impact of the sound. It literally shook me, the bass drum that is. This isn’t the tympani, the kettle drum, but the bass drum, which looks about twice the size, and it’s mounted, suspended in a big metal frame and when it is struck, partly you hear it but mostly you feel it. The sound comes at you and goes through you.

So I’m standing there in my pajamas and the music is washing over me and I’m in the middle of the storm. And I know what’s coming next.

In the final movement there are two false conclusions, where you think it’s going to end but it doesn’t. It starts with a bright trumpet blast—like a call to war—and then a great crescendo coupled with a increasing tempo, like horses gathering speed and then galloping into the fray, but then it begins to diminish and die down. This happens two times, the rise and fall, but the final time, when the trumpets sound, it’s different. This time, there is the same flourish but then, after the slightest pause, a bright leaping up to a new, higher note, a thrilling, explosion of bright brass. And then it comes on, it comes down on you, the war horses.

And Dudamel’s face, the close up of his face—his eyes are wild, the hair stands out and the jaw opens crooked, lips tightened into a snarl, with teeth bared like an animal’s. And he’s conducting with the fingers of both hands rigid, crooked, like claws. I’ve never seen anything like it, the intensity. He was a man possessed.

I think that’s when I started shouting. I don’t remember really. What I do remember, oddly enough, is that from somewhere in the back of my head, back above my left ear, there came a sensation, the lightest, slightest sensation, an awareness of something other than the music. It was this thought: No, Kay can’t hear you screaming. If she hasn’t heard the entire orchestra, she can’t possibly hear you; the door’s closed, she’s asleep, forget about it. That thought crossed my mind. Other than that, I have zero recollection of that fourth movement. All I know is I was there, a 60-year-old man standing in his pajamas in bare feet in front of the TV in the basement with both arms thrust out above his head screaming like a lunatic.

When it was over, I stood there as they showed the ovation, every person in that vast hall in Los Angeles on their feet. And then I joined in with their Bravo! Bravissimo! Masestro, Maestro! On and on it went.

I turned down the sound as they began to advertise the DVD (ah, Christmas gifts, I thought) and sat down on the couch again. In a few minutes I went upstairs to go to bed, but first I went into the living room and played the piano. I don’t know how long I played, probably a half hour or so. I played everything I knew by heart, some things more than once. And then I went upstairs sneaked in under the covers and went to sleep and slept peacefully through the night.

The next morning when I got up, I did not immediately recall what had happened to me the night before. It wasn’t until I spoke my first words that I realized my throat was scratchy and raw and I thought to myself, Oh, rats, I’ve got a cold. But then, I smiled and said to myself, No, you don’t have a cold. Remember, last night you were screaming.

I went into the office and when Dorothy asked me about my voice, I told her the story. Then, just as I finished, my daughter Meg came through the door and Dorothy said, Ask your Dad what happened last night. And I said, Meg, I’m exhausted, I’ll tell you tonight at the meeting.

So that night—Meg and her friend Joy and I have been meeting to discuss life goals and what we want to do with our lives—I began to tell what had happened to me the night before. But whereas that morning in the office when I told Dorothy, I was laughing, that night at home with Meg and Joy I got all emotional. You know me, I never actually cry, but it was hard to get the story out because I kept stopping to catch my composure. It was so strange. Maybe it’s that ecstasy, when you turn it inside out, there’s a sadness there too. Or maybe they were just tears of joy.

I said to Joy and Meg, What happened last night was perfection. That’s what it was. Everyone knew it. Every musician knew it. Perfection. You could see it in their faces. The first violin, this debonair, older gentleman, with spectacles perched on his nose—how many concerts had he played in his lifetime? But you could see it in his eyes and in the whole orchestra. How many hours of practice? How many years in the course of their careers? But that night, all of it had coalesced and come together in perfection. That which is perfect had come.

And I said to Meg and Joy: that’s what I want. I keep thinking of the verse: “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might.” Whether it’s music, whether it’s work, whether it’s friendship or whatever it is, I want to do it with all my might.

And then there was the beauty of the group. Dudamel, genius as he is, could not have done this alone. No one could have done it alone. Not the trumpets, not the winds, not the strings, not the entire string section. It had to be everyone together, loving one thing, devoted utterly to that one thing, and then working together to make that love, like a dream, come true.

And that’s what happened to me this week. I don’t know all it means to me just yet but I know I needed to share it with you. Bless you, my friends.

--Michael Eddie

Sunday, October 18, 2009


Dear Partners,

Two travelers, a hiker and a hot-rodder, determine to journey from San Diego to New York.

The hiker has a deliberate but relaxed attitude. He wants to get to New York but he wants to enjoy the trip. So he often pauses to take pictures and chat with the locals, and frequently stops to rub his feet and air out his boots. At night he sleeps peacefully in little inns along the way. This hiker is forever stopping and resting and in fact, if you count up the actual hours in a given day, he spends more time on his butt and on his back than on his feet. At this leisurely pace, about ten miles a day, it takes him one year to make the trip. He touches a toe in the Pacific Ocean and then, 365 days later, dips it in the Atlantic.

Meanwhile, in that same time period, the hot-rodder in a high-performance vehicle, careening along at a feverish pace, engine roaring and tires screeching, has not made yet made it out of California.

How can this be? It’s simple: the hiker never changes direction, he never walks west.

Be well, my fellow travelers. It’s great to be on this journey with you.

--Micheal Eddie

Sunday, October 4, 2009

We’ve been talking about “how 2 want 2,” how to motivate ourselves and others to shed the excess fat and walk away from it for good. Of prime importance is a firm conviction that the goal can be achieved. Unfortunately, we’re hearing just the opposite. We’re being told it is a Mission Impossible.

For example, a recent issue of the New York Times carried an article by Gina Kolata reporting the following claims:

1. Obesity is a disease, in fact it’s an epidemic.
2. If you’ve got this disease, it is almost impossible to cure it.

I’ve attached the full article but here’s the final paragraph:

“The body establishes its optimal weight early on, perhaps even before birth, and defends it vigorously throughout adulthood. As a result, weight control is difficult for most of us. And obesity, the terrible new epidemic of the developed world, is almost impossible to cure.”

I couldn’t believe it. This isn’t the first time journalists have used defeatist language like this, but I was tired of hearing it, the same sad song, the same hopeless refrain. So I shot off a letter to the editor. Here’s an excerpt of what I wrote:

“When people say it's impossible to lose weight and keep it off, I ask: Can human beings breathe underwater? The answer is yes. Furthermore, it’s safe and uncomplicated. In fact it’s downright easy. All it takes is some SCUBA gear and about an hour of training. I know, I’ve done it. One Christmas vacation my three children and I stood in the shallow end of a swimming pool in Cancun with Carlos, our young instructor. We were complete neophytes but in less than sixty minutes Carlos had us in the ocean, in the deeps, behaving like fish.

“A good diet is like that.

“I've created a set of tools, a methodology, which makes sustained weight loss just as easy, safe and consistent as using SCUBA gear. It take a little instruction and it does require some effort, but with this method and with the help of my partners, I've been able to maintain a 100 pound weight loss for over ten years.”

Bottom line: we must challenge this defeatist propaganda, this can’t cant. Because if people start believing that permanent weight loss is a Mission Impossible and that only a Tom Cruise with super-human powers can accomplish it, many will simply give up. Apparently, many already have.

Thanks for being on my team, for being such a huge part of my program. Together we encourage each other not to give up, but to keep pursuing the possible: the life-long maintenance of a healthy body weight.

―Michael Eddie

Sunday, September 27, 2009

Dear Partners,

Last week I talked about motivation—how to want to. I got several good responses. Here are excerpts from two of them.

Lorna—Replace negative thoughts with positive thoughts
How 2 want 2? “I would say the biggest thing is replacing the 87% negative thoughts in your brain with more and more and more positive thoughts, every day, day after day and throughout the day. This will produce, as inevitable side effects, success and excellence across every area of life, from weight to wealth and everything in between. We are a product of our thoughts. If our thoughts are negative, so will our actions be. If our thoughts are inconsistent, so will our actions be. I think focusing not on the weight loss goal but on replacing and exchanging negative self-talk throughout the day, every day, day after day, will lead to the results we want in all areas of our life.”

I agree. Focusing too much on weight loss (or calorie restriction) is focusing on a negative. I don’t just want to be thinner. I want to be happier, kinder, more open-minded and expansive.

Karen—It’s nice to have support but in the end it’s up to me
“Do I really want it? It's good for me to be in an accountability group and get all the support I can when losing or maintaining weight, but in the end it comes down to me. I've got to be committed; I've got to stick to the plan; I've got to exercise daily; I've got to keep my food log, etc. In other words, I've got to own it. Granted, it's wonderful to have a morning workout partner, but I can't depend on him to get me up in the morning to exercise; I've got to be willing to get up and get going on my own. I've got to take responsibility for getting it done.”

Thanks, Karen, for pointing the finger in the right direction. In this and in so many areas of life, I want to take responsibility for my actions. Rather than blame or deflect or excuse, I simply say: I made the choice.

Thanks to you all. Your wisdom, your commitment, the careful way you think about your program is a big help to me.

―Michael Eddie

Sunday, September 20, 2009

Saturday night I officiated at the marriage of a friend.

Michelle was just a young girl in 1986 when I first arrived at the church. Twenty-three years later she’s a beautiful woman and it was good to be part of her wedding day.

It was good also to be surrounded by old friends from the parish, to catch up on everyone’s news.

At the reception dinner I was seated next to Joan. Joan and I have been friends for over 20 years and she has maintained her weight more consistently than anyone I know. So, after the champagne toasts, after the bride and groom clumsily fed each other wedges of wedding cake, I turned to her and said, “Joan, how did you do it? How did you keep your weight so stable for so long?” She looked at me and without a moment’s hesitation, as though she knew in advance what I’d be asking, she said, “You know, Michael, you have to really want it.”

She went on to say many things. She said she weighs herself every day, that she’s careful about desserts, and that she has a consistent, sustainable exercise routine. None of that surprised me because I know Joan. What did surprise me, though, was the intensity of that first utterance: You have to really want it.

I wanted to ask her more about that but Michelle and Tom were doing their first dance and the music was loud and soon we were swept up in the festivities. We never got back to that discussion.

But I wanted to ask: How? Obviously if you want something badly enough you can get it. But what if you don’t want it—or don’t want it enough? Can you make up in method for what you lack in desire?

This question fascinates me. In fact six months ago I scribbled something on a little yellow Post-it and stuck it in my closet. It’s there on the wall above my scale, right at eye level, so I look at it every morning when I weigh in. It says: How 2 Want 2

It’s not an inspirational statement like GO FOR IT! or YOU CAN DO IT! In fact, it’s not a statement at all. It’s a question: How 2 Want 2

Of all the questions, this is way up there. This is the one I want an answer for.

Now, I know from my brief, ten-year experiment in motivation, that success breeds success. I know that once you get going you want to keep going. But how do you get going? That’s the question. How do you get from a dead stop and then start moving to your goal?

I want to consider this question in the next few weeks. I’d love to know what you think and what you’ve learned. For now, here are some preliminary ideas:

1. It helps to believe the goal can be achieved.
2. It helps to have a sound method for achieving it.
3. It helps to know at least one person who’s already achieved it.
4. It helps to have help.

Thanks for being my support again this week. You’re helping me—there’s no doubt about that---but it’s more than that. You are my help.

―Michael Eddie

Sunday, September 6, 2009

Sunday was a perfect day.

It began in clouds and ended in clouds, so we’re not talking weather. But it was perfect in this one regard: Kay and I spent it together.

We decided in the morning to make it a totally together day and that’s what we did. We walked together and biked together and ate together. We even did our strength training together in our work-out studio. At one point, when I announced that I needed to take a few minutes to write a birthday email to my brother-in-law—he’s turning 65 on Monday—Kay said, “Bring your laptop down stairs” and so we even did that together.

But the bulk of the day was spent reading a novel by Wallace Stegner, Crossing to Safety.

It’s a beautiful story about married love and a long friendship between two married couples. Of the many books we’ve read this is one of the best.

For breakfast, we walked to Peet’s, our little coffee shop in Evanston, and read there for an hour until friends started arriving and our solitude was interrupted. We chatted a bit and walked home, sat in the back yard patio and read some more.

Then we biked to lunch and read at an open-air café. When we got home, we read again on the patio, first on the straight-backed chairs and then later on the chaise lounges. We took a break, made some coffee and tea and took our book up to the roof-top and read there to catch, in the late afternoon through cloud and tree-top, what little sun there was.

For supper we made a simple meal and retired again to the patio and read for another spell, then went to a movie, came home and went to bed.

It was a day of shared solitude, a day begun, continued and ended together. It was a perfect day.

--Michael Eddie

Sunday, September 13, 2009

We are what we repeat. Excellence is not an act, it’s a habit.
     ―Aristotle

Repetition is the only form of permanence that nature can achieve.
     ―Santayana


Today’s number is 888.

That’s the number of consecutive days (since April 9, 2007) I’ve kept a weight and calorie log.

888 days. 127 weeks. 31 ¾ months. 2.43 years.

The numbers are encouraging but they also give pause. Because I know that even after years and years of recovery, some people sometimes relapse.

So this morning I’m focusing on the wisdom of Aristotle and Santayana who tell me how to hold on to something precious: repetition, dogged repetition.

Which reminds me of the amazing animal Kay and I met on our vacation last month in California.

One night we were strolling lazily on San Diego Bay. It was a tranquil evening. Sunset was coming on, which, on the Pacific coast, seems to go on forever. It’s as if the sun stands still on the horizon, shimmering, boiling gold on the waves. It is sheer beauty and we two Midwesterners are captivated. We are, like Balboa five centuries ago, mesmerized.

We were standing on the wharf taking in this dazzling display, when suddenly, behind us—a loud, yap-yap barking sound. We turned to see what was making all the noise. Turns out it was two giant poodles attended by a young couple who were struggling mightily to keep them in tow. These poodles were gorgeous with their perfectly coiffed, jet black coats. They looked great but they were behaving very badly. They jumped up, yowling, straining at their leads, trying to get at something we couldn’t see, something hidden by a crowd of on-lookers. We moved in closer and then we saw, sitting on the grass, a small black dog with perky, pointed ears and a short, stub tail.

The dog—he was a mutt, really—sat gazing up at a slender young man who stood there holding a stick. It amazed me that, with all the commotion going on around him, this dog was sitting perfectly quietly, his gaze fixed, eyes focused on his master. He sat so still—not one muscle moved, not even in his little stub of a tail—for a moment I thought it might be a stuffed animal. But, no, it was a real dog. A really amazing dog.

Having by now completely forgotten the sunset, Kay and I stopped to see what would happen next.

Suddenly the man raised the stick above his head and the dog leapt up on his hind legs, dancing as he strained up to it. Then he lowered the stick and the dog lay down, front paws flat on the ground. Then he gave the stick a mighty toss, flinging it out a good twenty yards, out toward the bay, and the dog shot off after it, quickly returning to drop it at his master’s feet.

Again and again they repeated this three-part routine:

• man raises stick—dog rears up
• man lowers stick—dog lies down
• man throws stick—dog retrieves and returns

This went on and on, and though the poodles kept up their incessant yelping and though more and more people kept gathering, the dog paid absolutely no attention to any of it. Zero. It was as if the poodles didn’t exist, the people didn’t exist. Here was a dog who, by all appearances, was absolutely and utterly undistractable. This, I said to myself, is one extremely well-trained animal. I was determined to find out more.

So after the show was over, after the crowd had dispersed, I walked over to the man. He was helping the dog into the back seat of an SUV. I said, Wow, that was totally amazing! How did you train your dog to do that? How did you teach him to completely ignore everything and everyone, even those poodles?

His answer surprised me. He said, “I didn’t train him at all. That’s just the way he is.” And then he said something I’ll never forget. He said, “From the time he was a pup, it’s like I’m his entire world. There’s really nothing else this dog cares about. It’s like the only thing he cares about is me and this stick.”

Right then, right there I found myself wishing: I want to be like that dog. I want to be naturally, normally, oblivious to the poodles of food, of habit, of addiction, of history.

That’s what I wish for me, but that’s not who I am. I wasn’t born that way, so I’ll settle for the next best thing: repetition. I will do today what I’ve been doing every day for 888 days. I will faithfully perform my three-part routine, my little shtick:

• man gets on scale every day and writes it down
• man counts each calorie every day and writes it down
• man composes email every week and sends it out

Who knows, someday my wish may come true. Someday I may be like that little black dog on San Diego Bay. In the meantime I just keep repeating: you are what you repeat...you are what you repeat…you are what you repeat...

―Michael Eddie

Sunday, July 26, 2009

Recently I read about a man named Dave Scott who won the World Ironman Triathlon, not just once or twice, but six times.

Scott was famous for his grueling routine. When training, his daily regimen was:

• first bike 75 miles,
• then swim 20,000 meters,
• then run 17 miles.

That’s just one day’s work, in the course of which he figures he burned over 5,000 calories.

And speaking of calories, Scott believed that a low-fat diet would give him an extra edge. So, for instance, if he was eating cottage cheese, in order to remove every last particle of excess fat from it, he first dumped it into a colander and then rinsed it in the kitchen sink.

Was that the decisive difference? Was rinsing his cottage cheese what made him a six-time world champ? I doubt it, but that’s not the point. The point is, he was willing to do it. In order to win, he was willing to do anything.

This week I asked myself, How hard would you work to keep this weight off forever? Would you do a 75 mile bike ride every day? Yes, I answered. And the 20,000 meter swim and the 17 mile run—would you do that every day? The response came from somewhere deep inside me: Yes, I would do it. I would kick and scream and complain like crazy. And, I would, no doubt, collapse in the process, but, yes, I would give it my all.

Framing those questions was, for me, a critical exercise in perspective. It was like waking up from a very bad dream. Because I realized: the price I’m willing to pay is so much higher than the price I actually pay. I mean, scribbling a few words and numbers on my food card every day—compared to what Dave Scott does, this makes me a total slacker. And the weirdest thing I do with cottage cheese is: I weigh it.

--Michael Eddie

Sunday, April 19, 2009

"The intimate contest for self-command" is a phrase coined by economist and 2005 Nobel laureate, Thomas Shelling. It refers to a conflict between a disciplined, rational person and an erratic, emotional person. The conflict is intimate because both persons inhabit the same body.  In the next few weeks, I want to reflect on my own intimate contest. I begin today by naming the contestants.

Eddie is my middle name
I got it from my father’s father, a tall, lanky, big-footed, big-hearted guy. I loved my grandfather and I’m like him in many ways, but when I was an adolescent, I was a little embarrassed by his name. I would have preferred a more dignified moniker like Edward or Edwin or Edgar. What I got was Eddie. But then, as time passed I learned to accept, and eventually to love it.

No one I know has my exact name. To this day I’m the only Michael Eddie Anderson I’ve ever heard of. And so, for all three diplomas—from Bible institute, college and seminary—when they asked what I wanted on the sheepskin, I proudly gave my full name. I could have gone with the middle initial, but I didn’t. I could not leave Eddie out.

My recovery began before my disease took hold
In my late twenties, after Kay and I were married, as I journeyed through addiction and recovery, I found an additional lode of meaning in my name. Michael (which in Hebrew means “who is like God”) stood for my rational, spiritual, disciplined self. Eddie was his opposite: impulsive, earthy, Id-ish.

It is not an exaggeration to say the labor of recovery, for me, was simply negotiating a peace between these two men. It began with Michael getting to know and then learning to love Eddie, with Eddie learning to accept that love.

But before I developed an eating disorder, before recovery from that disorder, I see now that the process of self-integration was already underway. Embracing Eddie, putting his name on my diploma and displaying it proudly on the wall—I didn’t know it then, but that was how the healing began.

I want to talk in the next few weeks about how this all plays out in me, what I’m discovering and the progress I’m making in this intimate contest for self-command.

--Michael Eddie

Sunday, June 14, 2009

Sunday morning, when I weighed in, I thought of Kirstie Alley.

I read an article about her two weeks ago. It said she stepped on the scale recently and screamed. The scale read 2-2-8.

I didn’t scream but I was irritated. I was on the warning track again (at 2-0-0) and whenever that happens, I get the same three feelings: disappointment, anxiety and resentment. Of course I’m resentful! Hey, it interferes with my eating for the next few days and that irritates me.

But in a few minutes the irritation blew over like a summer squall. And I didn’t spend much time wondering why I’d gained. I assume it’s the result of a cumulative calorie surplus. It may be more complicated than that, but only slightly. So, after the wave of anxiety passed, what was left was the old rock-solid confidence—I am in control of my body—and with that I went about my day.

Why did Kirstie scream? Because the scale said 228 pounds? No doubt that was a big part of it. But that’s not the whole story. Here’s the lead sentence in that article: “When Kirstie Alley recently stepped onto the scale for the first time in 15 months, she screamed.”

I don’t know Kirstie Alley but I do know me. And in the past, every time I stopped weighing, no matter what the ostensible reason—the real reason was: I wanted to eat.

Daily weighing: the most significant program component
Someone asked me recently: Of all the components of your program, what’s the most important? I said, It’s hard to isolate just one thing, but if I had to, it would be daily weighing. I do many things each week: log my food, calculate calories, write this blog, make and take partner phone calls and do my exercise. And all of this is important, but the most important thing is stepping on the scale every morning and then writing the number on the calendar. By recording the data and then reporting the data to you, I create an irrefutable weight history which even I, the master of self-deception, cannot gainsay.

Yes, this daily weighing does create some anxiety, but when it comes, here’s what I say to myself:

1. It’s a small price to pay in the morning for the way I look and feel all day.
2. No, you don’t have to weigh every day, just on the days you plan to eat.
3. Anything’s better than a Kirstie Alley Scream.

--Michael Eddie

Sunday, June 21, 2009

Last week, in China, Tiananmen Square was filled with umbrellas. Not because it was raining but because CNN was trying to film a retrospective on the massacre there ten years ago. The government didn’t jail the reporters or unplug TV stations. What they did was: anyone in the Square with a camera immediately got tailed by a state umbrella operative.

And this week, in Tehran, there was a similar crack-down of the more ordinary kind: journalists were simply forbidden to report. However some California news agency had smuggled in 10,000 tiny cameras disguised as ballpoint pens. With these micro-cams we are able to monitor the rioting.

Despots thrive in isolation. It’s the journalist’s mission to let us see what they don’t want us to see.

I was thinking this week: bad habits are like bad leaders—and openness robs them of their power. That’s why this blog is important to me. It’s a way of eluding the umbrellas of denial, a way of shedding light on that murkiness where part of me doesn’t want you or anyone to know what’s really going on in my life. Or into my mouth. This blog is my broadcast from the inside. Thanks for watching.

--Michael Eddie

Sunday, June 28, 2009

It’s been a good week…at least program-wise.

On Friday I got a speeding ticket. On the ticket, along with the date, the infraction and the fine, the cop had copied all the data from my driver’s license. It said my weight was 210 lbs. I smiled. Most of my adult life, I’ve weighed a great deal more than what my license said.

At my peak I was pushing 400 pounds. Much of the time I didn’t think consciously about my appearance. I couldn’t face it. But every now and then I was forced to face it, like when a cop stops you and writes it on a ticket and thrusts it in through the window at you. Attention must be paid.

I remember, years ago, being summoned by a smaller, but no less imposing, authority.

It was Sunday morning after the service at the church where I was the minister. The Murray twins, Cathy and Chrissy, came up to me in the hall. (This was 15 years ago when they were about 8 years old). Chrissy looked up and without warning said, “Fr. Anderson, you eat too much.”

I will never forget that rebuke: innocent, direct, pure. You eat too much. There it was. In a simple declarative sentence this little girl had told the truth. This one child had said out loud, in public, what all the adults had been thinking privately. My face burned with shame and I sputtered out some clever, deflective reply, but I have never forgotten her words.

About two months ago, I went to a Hinsdale eatery to get some take-out. I gave the cashier my credit card. She swiped it, looked twice at the card and said, Fr. Anderson? It was Chrissy Murray. We talked for a few minutes and she told me all about her life, including her recent engagement. I didn’t re-visit the old church hallway incident, of course. She probably wouldn’t have remembered and it would have awkward for both of us. We exchanged phone numbers and emails and promised to stay in touch.

But we both laughed at how, if I’d paid cash, we would have never reconnected. I didn’t recognize Chrissy because in 15 years the girl had become a woman. And she didn’t recognize me because time had changed me too: notably the color of my hair and the circumference of my waist.

Some day maybe I’ll call her up and say, Thanks, Chrissy, for telling me the truth. And then we can laugh again.

--Michael Eddie

Sunday, July 5, 2009

I’m reading a business book called Thinking in System by Donella Meadows. In it she tells how the Dutch solved a small mystery during the energy crisis of the 1970s. In a subdivision of one city, a study had revealed an intriguing zone of frugality: one small group of homes in that subdivision was consistently using one-third less electricity than all the other homes. No one could figure out why.

It didn’t make sense because the houses were so similar. All had been built about the same time and there were no significant differences in house size or family size, no difference in the furnaces or major appliances. However, further investigation did reveal one crucial difference: the location of the electric meter.

In most of the homes, the meter was down in the basement in the furnace room. But in a few homes, the meter had been placed, no doubt by mistake, upstairs in the front hall.

From a design standpoint, that front hall placement was klutzy, but from an energy conservation standpoint it was brilliant. Every time you entered the house you saw the thing. You couldn’t avoid seeing it. Through the clear glass dome you could see the silver disc spinning and the little black numbers click-click-clicking away, adding up the kilowatt hours.

You looked at the meter, and if the disc was spinning faster than usual, you immediately looked around for a thermostat to dial down or some lights to switch off. No surprise then that these homes consumed a lot less energy.

That’s why, when I travel, I put my scale in my suitcase. It’s my program meter and I want it right there in my face every day. So, no matter what town I happen to be sleeping in, first thing in the morning I weigh in and write the number down on my food card. The card then goes in my shirt pocket and stays there all day long, a constant reminder of my commitment to good health.

It reminds me that while I do occasionally take a vacation from work, a vacation from the daily grind, from the schedules and regimens and structures of work, I never take a vacation from program. Ever. That’s my rule, and having my meter with me on the trip reinforces it.

--Michael Eddie

Sunday, July 9, 2009

Just got back today from a weekend in South Dakota—a Paulson reunion (my mother’s side of the family). Loved being with sister Karen and brother David, and uncles and cousins and kin. I could talk for days about family but this is my program blog and I want to focus on those issues. So let’s talk about squares.

The first thing I saw as we opened the door to our cousin’s home was one entire table covered with capacious platters of “squares”, those high-fat, high-sugar, home-made desserts.

Right then and there I made my weekend goal: Square Management. I wanted to have a few of them because they looked so yummy, but I didn’t want to spoil it all by overdoing it. Bottom line: by the end of the weekend I’d had just three squares.

--Michael Eddie

Sunday, July 19, 2009

Good news: my back is improving. I’ve been off pain meds all week and while I’m still sore and listing a bit to starboard, the back’s in pretty good shape. I decided to take another week off my weight-lifting but will resume this week. Thanks for all your good suggestions about how to prevent this in the future. Here’s what I heard from you:


• Before lifting, do some light aerobics and stretching
• Do some core-strengthening work, e.g. Pilates
• Get a massage

Predictive confidence
I’ve been in recovry for over ten years, but just in the past two weeks I’ve found a new level of confidence. In the past I’d lost weight many times but never kept it off for more than a few months. I could lose but I could not maintain. Now, today, having done it for 18 consecutive months, I feel different. I have confidence.

It is the confidence that month after month, year after year, I am in control of my body; that a stable weight is not a mystery, not a matter of hope or chance; that I can, in fact, pick a point in the future and predict, within a pound or two, what my weight will be at that point.

It’s predictive confidence and it’s something only experience can give. Oddly enough, I first learned it writing movie reviews.

Can you do it again?
Thirty years ago, before I went to seminary, I worked selling ads for a small suburban newspaper. I had noticed that the paper didn’t do movie reviews, so one day I asked Peggy, the editor, if I could submit a sample. She said, “Sure, give it a shot. If it’s really good we might actually print it.”

So I gave it a shot. The year was 1980 and the movie was Ordinary People starring Mary Tyler Moore and Timothy Hutton. I worked like crazy all weekend, writing and re-writing, refining and tightening the text. By Monday morning I was exhausted but I laid two type-written pages on Peggy’s desk. Ten minutes later, she called me over and said, “Hey, you’ve been holding out on us. This is good. I’m going to do this.”

“Thanks!” I said. I was beaming. But then she leaned forward and said something I wasn’t prepared to hear. “Now,” she asked, “can you do it again?”

I paused, my bliss turning to panic. Could I do it again? I had no idea if I could do it again. I had just spend the entire weekend on it: two days producing two pages. I had done it, but my brain was fried and the thought of doing it again hadn’t entered my head. Nevertheless I found myself saying yes. Peggy replied, “Good. Copy’s due Wednesdays at 10.”

The following Wednesday I submitted my second piece, and the next week a third and then a fourth. Somehow, as the Wednesday deadlines came and went, I always managed to get something on Peggy’s desk by 10 AM. And in short order I began to find a formula that worked, so that what used to take me a whole weekend to write—now I could knock it out in a few hours. Eventually the paper would publish more than a hundred of my columns, one a week for over two years.

With every week that passed, my confidence grew. After week one, after Ordinary People, I had almost none. However, somewhere around week 10 or 11, it was different. If Peggy had asked me, at that point, “Can you do it again? I would have said, “Sure, no problem.” And it wouldn’t have been swagger or bravado or hype. It would have been simple assurance, the assurance born of experience. I had done it before. I knew I could do it again. And again. And again.

That’s predictive confidence. I’ve had it for years as a writer and a speaker. Now, thank goodness, I have it as a weight manager. Thank goodness. And thanks to you, my friends.