The Numbers

When I was in eighth grade my mother and I joined Weight Watchers together. Dutifully we would go to the weekly meetings Saturday morning, weigh in, and attend the lecture. In those days the counselor would hover over you and shift the scale weights up or down the balancing thingy, and if you lost weight, smiles and applause would ensue. If you gained weight, there would be frowns and harsh questions - did you follow the program? Did you eat your 1100 calories a day? Did you CHEAT? Are you the PIECE OF FILTH we always suspected you to be?

Later, at the beginning of class, the counselor would call out the weight losses. "Edna lost a quarter of a pound!" (Applause.) "Susie lost a pound and three-quarters!" (Applause.) "Margie lost FOUR POUNDS!" (Wild applause.) "Congratulations to all the losers this week - give yourself a hand!" (Sustained applause.)

Those of us who hadn't lost weight for the week sat guiltily, knowing our names wouldn't be called out, so by deductive reasoning everybody else KNEW we had gained weight. If we had lost a disproportionate amount the week before, and this week we showed a gain, maybe the others would look expectantly at you and say, "How much did you lose this week?" And you would say something like, "Oh, I was bad last week - I gained." And the smiles would vanish. Maybe someone would pat you on the shoulder and commiserate, and maybe you feebly offered a good excuse and would get some clucks of understanding, but mostly people would move away from you, like you had bad breath. The halo they put over your head the week before was snatched away and replaced with a Hester Prynne "A" - A for adipose, A for absolute failure, A for agonizing shame.

Now, most people who have gone on diets know that the body can metabolize at most 1/3 to 1/2 of a pound of body fat a day. At most. That means that if you lose more than 3 1/2 pounds in a week, maybe as much as 3 1/2 pounds of it is fat, and the rest is water, muscle, an emptier bowel, an emptier bladder, lighter weight clothing, etc. But it's not fat.

If you lose 6 pounds this week, maybe half of it is fat, and the rest is something else. Next week, when you weigh in, maybe it shows you didn't lose anything - but you could've lost another 3 pounds of fat and gained 3 pounds of water.

We know this. But when it comes time for before and after pictures, it's the grand total pounds lost that makes our hearts flutter. "150 pounds" or "80" pounds. The captions aren't "Before: didn't like himself very much." "After: learned to love himself."

In AA, the "number" is how long a person has been sober. "15 days." "23 years." Medals are handed out for each anniversary. A person's relative success is determined by how long they've remained sober.

But the number doesn't really tell the whole story. It's easy for a person to remain sober if they're in jail serving a 10-year sentence. No access to alcohol equals sobriety. A person who's out in the world of access and availability and remains sober for 10 years - now that's a different accomplishment. In other words, the "number" may not be relevant. Charles Manson hasn't killed anyone in 30 years. Neither has Squeaky Fromme. Are congratulations in order?

Please, let me take you by the hand. I'd like you to come with me for a moment to Scoreville.

Scoreville is a place where everything you do and everything you think about is scored, and your score hovers in the air above your head in numbers two feet tall. Each moment throughout the day, your score changes to reflect the "good" and "bad" things you do and think. You know and the whole world knows your number.

The relative "goodness" and "badness" of the things you do and think are unique to you; for example, eating a Krispy Kreme might be considered a "good" thing for a hungry, homeless man, and a "bad" thing for someone on a low-carb diet. Your aggregate score has a color, too, like a mood ring or a litmus paper - when your score is on the rise, it's blue, and the higher it goes at any given moment, the brighter blue it is. When your score is plummeting, it's pinkish, and if it's dropped a huge amount, it's almost blindingly bright, a fiery red-orange. When it's neutral, it's white. All things being relative, the Dalai Lama's score is neon blue, and Jeffrey Dahmer's score is usually safety orange. You get the picture.

So here we are in Scoreville, and we're on our way to work. Two-foot-tall scores are hovering over everyone's head, visible for all to see. It's early in the morning, so most of the numbers are pale blue, reflecting the fact that most people got up on time (+1), brushed their teeth (+3), and locked the door on the way out (+1). A few have brighter blue numbers (worked out to a Jazzercise video, +4; petted their dog before leaving the house, +5). One or two people have electric blue scores (stopped in to visit their sick mom before work, +8; ate a rice cake instead of a cinnamon roll for breakfast, +7).

There's a bunch of people with neutral white scores (brushed their teeth, +3, but had a nasty thought about a co-worker while brushing, -3). Pale pink numbers are everywhere, too (brushed teeth/petted dog/locked door, +9, but ate two Egg McMuffins, smoked five cigarettes and forgot to take their multivitamin, -11). There are some brighter red numbers scattered here and there (snarled at the wife before storming out of the house, -14). A few bright red numbers can be seen clearly (jacked off in the shower fantasizing about having sex with the underage Olsen twins, -29, surruptitiously ate a booger, -6, and wished their mother would go to hell, -9). There's also plenty of scores that glow psychedelic orange for non-apparent reasons (the handsome, clean-cut young man who tortures and kills cats for fun, -40 billion).

So now we're all waiting in the subway. Seems like the train is late. Little by little, the sea of vaguely equivalent pink/blue numbers starts to become more red as people react to the late train (anxiety about being late for work, -2; frustration at the imbeciles who run public transportation, -4; increase in blood pressure, -3; disgust at themselves for dropping out of law school and having to take the subway instead of driving a Mercedes to work, -8). A stinky, drunken guy starts yelling obscenities for no apparent reason. Waves of red scores flow around him like ripples in a pond (contempt and loathing for another human being, -12; painful memories of Uncle Walt who would drink a fifth of Jack Daniels and make you sit on his lap, -18).

Finally the train comes (relief, +1). A fat woman stands in front of you on the platform (revulsion at the size of her ass, -4; fear that you might have to sit next to her, -7; a reminder to yourself not to eat the Snickers in your desk drawer, +1). The fat woman sees all the blue scores around her dimming, and the red scores becoming more bright, so her own score plummets. Yes, she lost three pounds this week (+8) and she wrote notes of encouragement for her kids' lunch bags (+12) and she pulled out the clumps in the cat litter this morning (+9), but the dress she's wearing is feeling a little too tight (-6), her husband hasn't had sex with her in a month (+4 for relief and -12 for shame), she didn't do the laundry last night (-5), the lipstick she bought from her Mary Kay-selling co-worker (+2) looks garish on her (-4), she just realized there's a piece of toilet paper attached to her left shoe (-7), and now the humiliation of her fatness kicks in as she sees the numbers around her get redder (-18), the memory of being the last one picked for volleyball teams in fifth grade makes an appearance (-10), she starts wondering if her husband is having an affair (-14), she remembers being dumped at her high school prom (-12), gets the sudden desire to kill her PE teacher for making fun of her (-5), a craving for a Venti Caramel Macchiato with whipped cream sweeps over her (-4), along with a the humiliating feeling that her life is shit (-30).

As the fat woman's score starts to glow fiery hot orange, most of the scores around her get even more red ("That woman is not only disgustingly obese but she's obviously a mass murderer or something - I mean, look at her number!" -5). A few numbers get more blue, reflecting a little compassion ("Poor thing." +1). A surprising number of scores get very red (smug superiority, -10).

The woman gets onto the train and sits down ("Thank God I got a seat!" +2; "Everybody is avoiding sitting next to me," -6). Like a game of musical chairs, the other commuters are frantically looking for seats, anywhere except for the empty seat next to the whale (-1 all around). A few commuters choose to stand instead of sitting next to her (some consideration, +2, some repulsion, -3, some relief, +1, some foot pain, -4). An older lady sits next to the fat lady ("Live and let live, that's my motto!" +30; "Thank God I got a seat!" +2). The fat lady is mawkishly grateful ("Maybe I'm not such a monster" +8; "Old ladies are so nice" +10; "She smells like urine" -5).

And so it goes. Minute by minute, hour by hour, scores hovering in the air above everyone's head constantly reflecting "good" and "bad" actions, experiences and thoughts. The transparentness of life in Scoreville is mind-blowing: no secrets, just a number. Everyone is quantified.

Guess what? Life in Scoreville can be harsh. For most people, the good words and deeds seem to be outnumbered by the bad ones, and most days they end up in the red. So many thoughts and actions have contradictory scores (run five miles, +8, possibility of arthritis in the knees and ankles, -8). You try to do the good thing (smile at your neighbor, +2). You try to think the good thought ("I'm basically a kind person," +2). And you feel good about your number for a few minutes or a few hours at a time, maybe even longer. But, as they saying goes, shit happens, and life has a way of evening out the score. Even a great day's progress (+36) can be wiped away (anxiety about an unexpected medical expense, -18, fear about the future, -20). A lot of people walk around with perpetually red scores no matter what they do (felony conviction in 1972, -160; recent bankruptcy, -23; ran over a dog and kept driving, -280; cheated on their taxes, -30; rationalized about cheating on their taxes, -10; never said "I love you" to their father, -143).

So many people start the day so deep in the hole (40 pounds overweight, $6,000 in debt, a toothache, a history of procrastination, bad taste in clothes, estrangement from their sister, free-floating resentment = a grand total of -275) that no matter what they do they can't seem to get anywhere. The hopelessness, the shame and the guilt bring their score even lower. Some people just give up, resigned to their low score. Many others punish themselves and the people around them, which lowers their scores even more.

And time can be an enemy, too. Take Bob. As a boy, Bob served as the community pool life guard and saved 14 lives (+6000). Now Bob's 50, and for 30 years he has not weeded his lawn (a small thing, but at -6 per week x 52 weeks x 30 years, Bob's score equals -9360). Life-saving Bob, heroic Bob, who rescued all those people so many years ago - Bob's got a fire-engine-red number hovering over his head these days.

It's time to leave Scoreville now, and what a relief. To be judged by others and to judge ourselves by affixing values - numbers - to what we say and do is devastatingly difficult, and no matter how absolute a number may appear to be, it doesn't tell the whole story.

Numbers on a scale, numbers on a calendar, numbers on a credit rating and numbers on a report card are just numbers. They tell us very little. Really.

I cannot be explained by a quantitative score. I am not a number. It would take a gallery of paintings, a troup of dancers, and a 120-piece orchestra to explain me.

No wonder I hate math.

Adjusting

Now that I've lost 120 pounds, I find I have a little body/mind disconnect on occasion. My brain, well-trained through experience and habit, doesn't seem to know that the vehicle it's steering has changed. I've traded in a lumbering, gas-guzzling Hummer for a slightly more agile Lincoln Navigator. But my brain still operates in Hummer mode.

Here's an example: I was playing fetch in the living room with one of the dogs a couple of days ago. It's going well until I toss too hard and the chew toy goes all the way under a chest of drawers. Immediately I think, "Well, that's it. The fun is over." You see, when I was heavier and less fit, I didn't get up off the couch unless I needed to leave the room, pee, or get more provisions because moving around meant sweating and panting and an elevated heartbeat and light-headedness. Besides which, getting down on my hands and knees to retrieve the damned chew toy would have been pretty much impossible - excruciating on the knees, hard on the heart and a risky endeavor to get back up without twisting, straining or dislocating something. Even the task of fishing out the chew toy with a coat hanger would have been fraught with difficulty: bending at the waist for more than a few seconds meant gasping for breath and getting light-headed, as well as getting a mouthful of stomach acid.

It took about three seconds for me to remember that I traded in the Hummer.

At which point I got up, walked over to the chest, bent over, reached under, snagged the chew toy, and started playing fetch with the dog again, all without a problem. No sweat.

Literally.

But for three seconds my brain forgot that I was different.

Another difference: the Hummer needed quite a bit of caffeine to keep running. The Navigator apparently doesn't.

You have to understand, I have a "thing" about caffeine. It all started 15 years ago when Starbucks opened a shop in the lobby of my office building. In the lobby, folks. Yes, it was in Seattle. My usual order: 3 shots over ice, with a big sluice of cream. From the start the caffeine intake wreaked havoc with my sleep, even when I had none after mid-morning. But I needed the kick to get going, so I started to take a couple of Tylenol PMs to get to sleep. This went on for years.

Later, in San Diego, I lived two blocks from a Peet's (mmmm, damn good espresso) and my business partner and I would start the day with a stroll in the sunshine to the coffee shop. At the time I was staying up late and partying a LOT, so the standard order was 6 shots over ice, to which I'd add an inch of cream. The looks I got at Peet's from the other customers - well, they were a mixture of awe and grudging respect. Of course, I had to up the Tylenol PM dose to 4 every night to counteract the caffeine. When I moved back to Seattle, I found a little mom and pop drive-through espresso place on my way to work and kept up the 6 shot/4 Tylenol PM routine until I moved here to Albuquerque.

Things changed a little - my housemate Ande has these great french espresso makers you put on the stove, and since I'm the homebody, I make the espresso. We both prefer it cold, so I would make 12 shots every other day and we both have 3 shots over soy milk every morning.
I cut back the Tylenol PM to two and all was peachy keen.

Then I started eating well and exercising and losing weight, and the caffeine I relied upon to get me going was instead making me a jittery psycho. I also had to go back to 4 Tylenol PMs to get to sleep.

Two months ago I thought, time to get off the caffeine/Tylenol PM train. At first it was hard to give up the espresso. I know, I could make decaffeinated, but I'm an all or nothing kinda guy. In a couple of weeks my body accommodated to the change and now I spring up out of bed in the morning without requiring the jolt. It was also hard to drop the reliance on the Tylenol PM after 15 years of use. At first I couldn't sleep. But it got better after a couple of nights and now I get a good night's rest pretty consistently.

Yesterday I had a ton of chores and cooking to get ready for a party last night, so I thought I'd drink some espresso. Three shots. In ten minutes I was buzzing around the house, vacuuming with one hand and dusting with the other, throwing laundry into the washer, mopping the kitchen floor, rearranging furniture - it was something! By the time people arrived last night, I was a cooking hosting fool, whipping things in and out of the oven, making drinks, giving tours of the house, all the while chattering away like a magpie. I was a whirling dervish. At some point late in the evening I caught myself in a rambling monologue about a book I recently read. I was talking a mile a minute and expounding away, oblivious to the glazed look in the eyes of my reluctant audience. After the guests left and I had washed all the dishes, I read for four hours before I was sufficiently free of caffeine to fall asleep.

No espresso this morning.

We all know what's it's like to have to adjust to new limitations. If you've ever broken an ankle and suddenly found yourself flailing around awkwardly on crutches, you know what I mean. But this is different: I'm adjusting to new freedoms.

Turns out, freedoms take practice.

Another Stumble

Changing your core beliefs is an ongoing process. It's not a switch that is flipped. I sort of hoped it would be, but I'm discovering that old core beliefs are hard to lose. They lurk in a million different places, attached to memories and fears, and can be triggered when you least expect it.

I had a trigger the other day. It was a simple, friendly email from an old boss of mine, looking for something in the files that she couldn't find. She asked me where I thought it might be. The short answer is, I don't remember anymore if I did the thing she's looking for or not. And that's the end of it. If I didn't do it the way I was supposed to, it can be fixed very easily.

But for me, suddenly I was reliving that job, and remembering the filing system I never did update, and the little tasks I never completed, and the sense that I left a trash heap in my wake when I left the job. It wasn't long before I was running a list down in my mind of all the things I did wrong on that job, three years of mistakes, three years of laziness and procrastination and work done poorly. One after another, the list of mistakes became an indictment, a litany of everything that's wrong with me, everything that's "less than."

In twenty minute's time I went from upbeat to despondent. And my inner critic went to town: "They're gonna find out now. You had them fooled, they thought you were fantastic, but now they're gonna discover you were a fraud, you never did anything right, you weren't fantastic, you weren't perfect. You're lame, that's what you are, and they'll know it."

As I spiraled down to a place of self-loathing and fear, a sadly familiar place, all memories of the good things I did on that job went out of my thoughts. It was just me, embarrassed, humiliated, ashamed at myself, guilty guilty GUILTY for all the things I didn't do that I should've done.

I stewed in sullen self-hate for awhile, zapped of energy and feeling defeated. It was a terrible afternoon. I desperately wanted to eat - but there wasn't anything in the house that was "bad" so I considered jumping in the car and hitting some fast food places. I could have a big fatty burger in my mouth in less than two minutes if I wanted to. Instead I made my chicken breast and rice as usual and paced the house while it cooked.

About two hours into my cesspool experience I realized that the old beliefs had reemerged and were quick to bring me to this negative place. I thought to myself, "What can I do to change this?" I cannot go into the past and undo my mistakes. But I can stop beating myself up about them, and that will be better than falling back to self-loathing.

Still hungry and with a nervous ache inside, I sat down in a quiet place and talked to myself out loud:

• I have forgiven myself already for the mistakes I've made in the past. That includes mistakes I remember and mistakes I don't remember.
• For every mistake I made, there's ten things I did right.
• Everybody makes mistakes and can remember times when they didn't do as well as they could. I'm just like everybody.
  
• Just because a former employer realizes I made mistakes doesn't mean they will think I'm horrible, and besides, I remember many things I did that were above and beyond expectation.
• Remembering past mistakes or having them pointed out to me does not have to cause me such distress.
• I am creating this difficulty because I have fallen into an old pattern that was based on core beliefs that are no longer valid (I'm not good enough, I'm a fraud).
• When past mistakes are remembered or pointed out to me, I can use that moment as an opportunity to remind myself that I have forgiven myself for all of my mistakes.
• Whatever regret, guilt and shame that used to be attached to the mistakes I've made, and the self-punishing behavior I engaged in, is more than enough punishment for the crime.
• I have engaged in a lifetime of self-punishing behavior because I have not forgiven myself for all the mistakes and missteps I've made. It is time to let go of this destructive process.
• Today is a new day.
• I love, approve of and forgive myself.
• I will use this experience as a way to reestablish my new self beliefs and to reconfirm how the old self beliefs were simply wrong.
• I am a human being. I make mistakes. I accept that I have made mistakes and will make mistakes in the future.
  
• Perfection is not the goal or the expectation.
• I forgive myself for mistakes of the past.
• I let go of fear about what other people might think of me if they discovered my mistakes.
• I remind myself that I am a work in progress and that there may be challenges ahead.
• I am grateful for this opportunty to be reminded of how negative core beliefs color a memory.

Let me say that this process wasn't easy. I really wanted to wallow in familiar, comfortably uncomfortable self-loathing. I wanted to jump on a plane, go to Seattle, sneak back into the office and correct my mistakes. I wanted to punish myself with a huge binge, a sleepless night, and a sour disposition. Because I made mistakes in the past.

I'm going to spend the rest of the day remembering all the good things I did on that job.

In the Kitchen with Grandma

I've been cooking a lot lately.

I make all my own meals. Lean protein, brown rice, veggies galore and fresh fruit, basically, in various combinations five times a day. Generally speaking, I cook the rice in big batches in advance, cook a day's worth of chicken or fish at a time, and then cut up a fresh veggie or two to go with each meal. It's steaming or stir-fry (with Pam, can you believe it) or the good ole microwave, which is fabulous with veggies. Tonight I had chicken breast that I had roasted in the oven, a cup of chewy brown rice, and a huge pile of spinach that cooked down to almost nothing. For flavoring, it's Mrs. Dash on the chicken (I'm pretty much salt-free), this garlic-ginger-basil paste I make for the rice, and a squeeze of lemon on the spinach. I also do this thing where I cook up a couple of red onions, thinly sliced, and slow-cooked in a pan with a healthy splash of balsamic vinegar on them. It's a great condiment to almost everything I eat.

So it sounds pretty boring, huh? It constantly amazes me that I find it all delicious, satisfying as hell, and a total snap to prepare.

But today I got to thinking about how my Grandma taught me to cook. Grandma Kathryn was a brilliant cook, half Italian and half German Jewish, so her background was steeped in two food-loving traditions. Her people-pleasing food skills really took off in the 30's, when volatile Grandpa Alex would fly off the handle at his current employer, quit abruptly, and move Kathryn and their daughter Cookie to a new town, usually some cockamamie place in the South. Kathryn would take over a listless boarding house in the new town and in a matter of days start producing meals that the tenants raved over. Her good cheer, dazzling cooking skills and inate ability to make everyone feel at home guaranteed that her little family landed on their feet wherever Alex lead them. In town after town, Kathryn made breakfast and dinner for twenty or thirty people a day, incorporating local specialties in her repertoire until she could turn out a wide variety of first-rate cuisines.

Grandma and Grandpa lived next door when I was a kid so I spent many a Saturday at her side, learning about brisket and marinara and gefilte fish and roast chicken. She had a million little tricks. She would put a teaspoon of good whisky in each bowl of chicken soup - she said it made the flavor complex. She added fresh herbs to wine and vinegar because in those days there weren't shelves of specialty items. Her simplest salads had twelve ingredients. She showed me how to make matzo balls that were flavorful as well as light as a feather. The day before Thanksgiving, she roasted a chicken until it was dark brown, then would pick all the meat off and use it to make an intense gravy that served as the base for what would become the next day's turkey gravy. She made sour cream coffee cakes and mandelbrodt, perfectly shaped tartlets and melt-in-your-mouth almond crescents. She would get upset sometimes when one of her admirers asked her for a recipe, and when she shared it, they said, "Would it be okay to leave out the mushrooms?" Her answer was, "Of course, but then it won't be the same, and it won't be what you loved so much."

Grandma would gently saute chicken livers in perfectly flavored schmaltz, with a few thin onions and a splash of sherry. Then I'd put them in the big wooden chopping bowl and take them out into the living room, where I would sit on the floor "Indian style" leaning against Grandpa's knees, and chop chop chop. Grandma would come to me with hard boiled eggs, one at a time, and I'd incorporate them into the liver pate. A little salt, a little pepper, another egg, and finally the consistency would be deemed perfect. We would sample the finished product on a fresh matzo, then store the rest away for the evening's relish plate.

Grandma taught me well, and over the years friends have oohed and aahed over my culinary exploits. I even cooked for a year in a tiny seafood place in Manhattan Beach, California, when I was still in college. I didn't think it was surprising that sometimes people would come back to the kitchen to tell me thay enjoyed their dinner, even tipping me a dollar or two. After all, I had learned from the best.

One time I made a special dinner for friends of mine, Trish and Pete, and Trish said, "Everything you cook is so rich!" I was taken aback. I thought, "Yeah, everything's rich - because I'm having company and I want everything to be special." But it made me realize for the first time something that had never been stated: one of Grandma's main tenets was that anything could be made "better" with a handful of walnuts or an extra dollop of butter or a grind of good parmesano reggiano. When company was coming, you upped the ante with adding extra stuff - cheese, cream, butter, toasted nuts, bread crumbs, smoked salmon, roquefort dressing, gravy, dark chocolate, Kahlua, brandied cherries, whipped cream. That way your guests knew how much you cared, how much you loved them. Extra was better, rich was better.

It was unthinkable to have "ordinary" food when company came. And it was unthinkable that people wouldn't exclaim over how delicious everything was, eat too much, and (frequently) have to lay down on the living room floor after stuffing themselves with the magnificent food. That was the sure sign it was a helluva good dinner - visible gastric distress. It was all part of being generous hosts, of showing people a good time, and Grandma derived a great deal of satisfaction from the groans of pleasure that rose like bubbles all around her dinner table.

Think "Chocolat" or "The Big Night" and you'll get the picture.

No doubt about it - food was a way to express affection, and really delicious, really rich food was like being served pure love.

I don't know if Grandma would approve of the way I cook these days - there's nary a walnut or dollop of butter in sight.

Milestones in Weight Loss

Drumroll please . . . . . . . I can now FASTEN MY SEATBELT! So bring on the bumpy night, kids!

Fat Politics

I just finished "Fat Politics" by J. Eric Oliver. It's a fascinating look at America's so-called obesity epidemic from a political-social point of view. Oliver is a political science professor at the University of Chicago, and he starts by saging, "This is not the book I intended to write." He thought he would be writing a book about how America was going to overcome the political challenges posed by the obesity epidemic.

Instead, the book Oliver has written is a thoughtful, well-constructed indictment of the influences and motivations behind the panicky claims of epidemic that we swallow without questioning, and how a focus on fatness/weight obsures the real issues facing us.

Oliver shows how a handful of doctors, government bureaucrats and health researchers, with huge financial backing from the pharmaceutical and weight-loss industries, have campaigned to misclassify more than 60 million Americans as "overweight," to grossly inflate the health risks of being fat, and to promote the idea that obesity is a killer disease. It is, in fact, not a disease. There is little proof that obesity causes so many deaths (the CDC claimed in 2004 that 400,000 deaths each year are "caused" by obesity, but in 2005, after a scathing analysis by Harvard of the research the CDC based this number on, they were compelled to revise the number to 24,000, and even admitted that people classified as "overweight" statistically live longer than people who are normal weight). And for a vast majority of people who are 20, 30 or 40 pounds overweight, there is scant evidence that losing those pounds makes them healthier.

It's all a smokescreen. Our concern - our anxiety, fear and panic - about fatness is fueled more by social prejudice, beaucratic politics, and industry profit than by scientific fact. Oliver makes it clear that by pushing forward the concept of fat=unhealthy and thin=healthy, what he calls the medical-industrial complex has billions of dollars to gain.

Telling Americans that they need to be thin (instead of saying they need to be more active and more selective about what they eat, regardless of their weight), proponents of the "epidemic" push millions of people towards dangerous surgeries, crash diets, harmful drugs, and - most distressing of all - a focus on the wrong thing - unrealistic expectations for losing weight and keeping it off. For most people who are 20, 30 or 40 pounds "overweight," the biological predisposition for them is to be at that weight, to store a certain amount of fat and to be that size. Their efforts to fight against their body's weight set-point are mostly in vain.

Oliver talks about why we hate fatness so much, in others and in ourselves. A Protestant distaste for the sensuous pleasures of the flesh and anxiety about class and position (fatness=poor, thinness=rich) is a large part of it. He also talks about how the dramatic changes in the place of women in society created greater pressure to be thin for millions of women entering the expanded sexual marketplace. He talks about the self-perceptions of (primarily) white women on thinness and how this developed.

Oliver says that our freedom to eat what we want, when we want it, is very "American" - life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness - but that maybe our freedom has consequences. He also says that our free market economy predisposes the vast array of fatty, salty, sweet snacks readily available for us, along with government-subsidised high fructose corn syrup and dietary guidelines promulgated by food manufacturing giants.

His discussion on how food and consumption used to be constrained is very interesting. Not so long ago, we used to eat our meals with our families, at certain points of the day, because the meals had to be prepared (usually by Mom). And Mom made our food choices for us. Between-meal snacking, except for apples and bananas, were unheard of, and the opportunity to snack wasn't available. He says our freedom to snack in the car, in the living room, to eat our meals wherever and whenever we want, to basically have no constraints on consumption, is a major change that our society hasn't learned to handle well yet.

Oliver makes it clear that our food choices and our lack of activity are at the heart of our modern-day health problems, but that there's not the huge profits to make by recommending a return to unprocessed foods and encouraging people to exercise, as there is in telling everyone to lose weight. Enormous profits are made in the food industry by processing food. Telling people to eat a celery stick instead of a nutter butter cookie makes nobody rich. And since exercise can be done without special equipment or a pharmaceutical, telling people to move more is not nearly as profitable as performing a $50,000 gastric bypass operation.

I haven't explained this book very well. There's an enormous amount of information here. It's an overview of a complex issue, along with an analysis of the complex ways in which it's been "sold" to us, and it gave me much to think about.

Dieting Down Through The Ages

Belly Laughs at Early Fad Diets

Tasty Morsels From Weight-Loss History

By BUCK WOLF

Jan. 10, 2005 — - Centuries before the world obsessed over the sudden weight loss of Lindsay Lohan and Mary Kate Olsen, there was William the Conqueror, who apparently got so fat he had trouble staying on his horse.

In the years after his triumph at the Battle of Hastings, the French royal grew so rotund that he devised his own weight-loss technique: He confined himself to his room and consumed nothing but alcohol.

Poor William subsequently died of abdominal injuries in 1087, when he fell from his saddle at the Siege of Mantes. He was so obese, clergy had trouble fitting him into his stone sarcophagus, and the stench of his body filled the chapel with a foul smell.

At least his horse must've felt some relief.

Nearly a millennium later, humanity is still vexed by fad dieting, forever searching for that painfree formula for slimming down. While there's a general consensus about the basic rule of the metabolism -- that the calories you burn must exceed the calories you consume -- achieving that goal is up for debate. And of course, a new diet scheme comes out all the time.

One minute diet gurus are saying, "Eat no carbohydrates." Then it's "Watch your fats." Just when you think the Atkins and South Beach diets are here to stay, the Sonoma Diet comes along.

And what of the diets of yesteryear? The Scarsdale Diet, the Cabbage Soup Diet, the Astronaut's Diet, the F-Plan and the Zone have all come in and out of fashion, and some people still swear by them.

Remember back in 1988, when Oprah Winfrey dragged a wagon piled with 67 pounds of fat before her audience, announcing she had lost that much with Optifast? Later, she became an advocate for good eating and portion control.

Celebrities can offer the worst weight-loss examples. In the mid-1970s, when Elvis Presley was squeezing into those white jumpsuits, he had reportedly tried the "Sleeping Beauty Diet" in which he was heavily sedated for several days, hoping to wake up thinner.

Sadly, the King's waistline was overwhelmed by his famed weakness for peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches deep fried in butter.

From Vision Dieter Glasses to Breatharians

In the last 25 years, it seems we've seen it all: Vision-Dieter Glasses to make food look less appealing; The Mini-Fork system to help people take smaller bites; even a cultish group called the Breatharians, who claimed that ancient yoga practices could remove the need for eating altogether.

Then there are books, some with titles like "The Three-Week Trance Diet," "The Blood Type Diet Encyclopedia" and "More of Jesus, Less of Me," that have sparked endless debate in the diet world.

"One thing you'll always see is that people are always looking for magic, and they're surprised when you tell them otherwise," says Dr. Sanford Siegal, a Miami diet book author who has treated obesity for 40 years.

"Many of the new diet schemes today are actually just warmed-over fads from yesteryear, but people still want to believe."

Many believe that dieting is a relatively new phenomenon. Up until the 20th century, food was so scarce that corpulence was a sign of affluence. The Fat Man's Club of Connecticut -- once a proud group of businessmen -- didn't close its extra-wide doors until 1903.

1903 might have marked a turning point in fat status. It was that year that 355-pound President William Howard Taft -- the most well-rounded commander in chief in history -- got stuck in the White House bathtub and vowed to reduce.

Nevertheless, fad diets and popular diet books even predate bathroom scales. On Siegal's bookshelf is "The Causes and Effects of Corpulence" by Thomas Short, who, in 1727, advised overweight people to move to more arid climates, observing that fat people were more likely to live near swamps.

"It's really no crazier than some of the things people have come up with in recent years," Siegal says.

If you're confounded by the mixed messages brought forth by each new fad diet, sink your teeth into these tasty morsels from the history of dieting.

Tasty Morsels From Diet History

1830: Graham's "Cracker" Diet -- Gluttony is not only bad for your health, it could make you sexually promiscuous and morally corrupt. That was the opinion of one of America's first avowed vegetarians, Presbyterian minister Sylvester Graham, who is best remembered as the namesake of the graham cracker.

At his health retreats, Graham preached the virtues of a bland, meat-free diet. He urged his followers to swear off coffee, tea, tobacco and alcohol, and to eat plenty of whole-grain breads and crackers.

Perhaps it was Graham's preaching that inspired the practice of leaving crackers by the Christmas tree. It might be our subconscious way of saying, "Hey, Santa, maybe you ought to think about lightening the reindeers' load."

1864: Banting -- The floodgates for diet-book publishing opened when the first popular diet book was written by William Banting, a rotund English casket maker who was so fat he had trouble tying his own shoe and had to ease himself down steps by going backward.

Banting's "Letter on Corpulence" documented how the 5-foot-5 author shed 50 pounds on a diet of lean meats, dry toast, unsweetened fruit and green vegetables. Early editions of the book sold 58,000 copies and, for decades after, English dieters referred to the battle of the belt buckle as "Banting."

1857: Zander Rooms -- Dr. Gustav Zander of Sweden helped usher in an age of mechanized exercise equipment with the first belt-driven fat massager -- a device that would wrap around your body and giggle you to perfection. For decades to come, health spas offered "Zander Rooms."

Training films of Babe Ruth showed baseball's ultimate heavy hitter trying to shake off his 12 hot dog lunches. Of course, the Yankee great hit a lot of homers but took his time waddling around the bases. Who knows how many more he would have smacked had he not missed a good portion of the 1925 season with what the sports world dubbed "the bellyache heard round the world."

1903: The Great Masticator -- San Francisco art dealer Horace Fletcher is better known in the fad diet world as "The Great Masticator" for advocating a weight-loss technique that involved incessant chewing -- but absolutely no swallowing.

In 1898, after being denied health insurance because of his girth, Fletcher claimed that he slimmed down from 205 pounds to a svelte 163 by chewing each morsel 32 times -- once for each tooth -- and spitting out the remains. By his way of thinking, your body would absorb the nutrients it needed, and you'd get to enjoy the flavor of the meal without gaining weight.

Fletcher became a celebrated author, and spittoon sales must have skyrocketed, although you could hardly be surprised if he didn't receive many dinner invitations. Among his famous followers who wore their jaws out singing his praise and following his advice were novelist Henry James (whose dense writing is hard to digest) and oil baron John D. Rockefeller (whose business tactics some considered unpalatable).

Another proponent of "Fletcherizing" was John Harvey Kellogg, better known as the father of the corn flake. He ran a sanitarium in Battle Creek, Mich. (where cereal eaters would one day send box tops), and to inspire patients to Fletcherize, he wrote a "Chew Chew" song.

It was Kellogg's younger brother who added sugar to breakfast cereal, causing sales to explode, along with a few waistlines.

1917: Calorie Counting -- By the early 20th century, kitchen scales became commonplace, and Lulu Hunt Peters accurately predicted that "Instead of saying 'one slice of bread' or 'a piece of pie,' you will say '100 calories of bread,' '350 calories of pie.' "

Peter's landmark book, "Diet and Health, With Key to the Calories," sold more than 2 million copies, promoting a 1,200-calorie-a-day regime. While calorie counting is still the principal method of mainstream dieting, diet mavens would still argue over the proper amount of calories for weight loss and the proper food combinations for appeasing hunger. And, of course, there has always been a parade of contrarians.

1925: The Cigarette Diet -- In the age before tobacco advertising restrictions, several cigarette companies hailed the appetite-suppressing qualities of their products. One ad for Lucky Strikes urged smokers to "Reach for a Lucky instead of a sweet."

1928: The Inuit Meat-and-Fat Diet -- The dietary preaching of arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson -- author of such books as "The Fat of the Land" -- could make the most ardent Atkins follower look like a vegetarian.

After living among the Inuit in the frozen tundra of the north, Stefansson raved about the salubrious effects of an all meat-and-fat diet. The Inuit still amaze anthropologists by their ability to live on a diet consisting of caribou, raw fish and whale blubber, with less than 2 percent of their diet coming from fruit, vegetables and other carbs.

To prove his point, Stefansson checked himself into New York's Bellevue Hospital in 1928, where doctors monitored his health for several months, and he claimed to have finished the year on his special diet.

While doctors still chew over the results, legions of protein proponents would sing his praise. Another pre-Atkins meat advocate, New York cardiologist Blake Donaldson advocated Inuit-style diets well into the 1960s, advising some patients to go to their butchers and ask for fat -- preferably kidney fat. His appropriately titled dietary tome was called "Strong Medicine."

Early 1930s: The Hay Diet -- Unfortunately, the Hay Diet, a Depression Era rage, didn't allow followers to eat like a horse without gaining weight. Dr. William Hay -- who developed his diet philosophy to cope with his own high blood pressure -- was the first to promote the virtues of separating your food, arguing that the human body couldn't adequately cope with combinations of proteins and starches at the same time, and warned of "digestive explosion."

Several miracle diets in the decades to come bore similarities to Hay's oft-debated theory of "harmonized food selection," including Judy Mazel's "New Beverly Hills Diet."

Hay advised patients to consume fruit, meat and dairy at separate meals, separate from bread and potatoes, and also recommended enemas several times a week, if not daily.

Early 1930s: Slimming Soap -- Just in case you thought late-night TV gave birth to the craziest diet products, slimming soaps were the rage in the 1930s, with products like "Fatoff" and "La Mar Reducing Soap" that were nothing more than hand soap laden with potassium chloride and other impurities.

The advertising for "Fat-O-NO" on display at Minnesota's Museum of Questionable Medical Devices, promises a tablet that "Helped over 100,000 women to their normal weight" and was purportedly "recommended by doctors and chemists everywhere" and required "no starvation diets or strenuous exercise."

1935: Early Diet Pills -- When doctors noted weight loss among workers at a munitions factory during World War I, heavy research into dinitrophenol -- one of the first heralded miracle diet drugs -- had begun. The chemical was used in the manufacture of dyes, insecticides and explosives. But doctors found that it raised the body's metabolism, making it easier to burn calories.

The Russian Army was experimenting with dinitrophenol as a way to keep soldiers warm. But in America, by 1935, an estimated 100,000 dieters had tried the pill for weight loss. Three years later, several cases of blindness -- and a few fatalities -- were linked to the drug, and it was taken off the market.

Dinitrophenol continued to be used as a weed killer and as an illegal performance-enhancing drug by athletes seeking rapid weight loss.

1954: The Tapeworm Diet -- Years before the diet secrets of Hollywood stars became a national obsession, rumors spread of a tapeworm diet. Supposedly, a pill existed that allowed a very rich person to ingest the same sort of parasite that a very poor person would suffer from by eating uncooked meat.

As the tapeworm fed off your innards, you'd lose weight, and you could apparently take another pill to keep you from dieting your way into an early grave.

According to urban legend, obese opera star Maria Callas lost 65 pounds with the help of the tapeworm diet. But historians say the stout soprano's fondness for raw steak and raw liver may have accounted for an unwelcome guest residing in her intestines.

A few years after Callas lost all that weight, she left her husband and began dating famed shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis. Of course, he ultimately left her for former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy, only proving that losing weight doesn't always bring happiness.

1961: The Calories Don't Count Diet -- Dr. Herman Taller, an obstetrician, claimed you could eat as much as you want of a high protein diet, provided that you washed it down with three ounces of polyunsaturated vegetable oil, delivered in a pill he provided. The doctor was eventually convicted of mail fraud for peddling safflower oil capsules, said to be essential to his diet but of questionable value. Still, his "Calories Don't Count" book sold more than 2 million copies.

1964: The Drinking Man's Diet -- Raise a glass to the man who said it's possible to wash down a juicy steak with a martini and still manage to lose weight. Robert Cameron's "The Drinking Man's Diet" -- another best-seller -- was a sensation tailormade for the swinging '60s, offering a weight loss scheme shagadelic enough for Austin Powers.

Title notwithstanding, Cameron and his co-authors weren't advising that you drink yourself silly until you fit into your favorite Speedo. Actually, it was just another tome expounding carbohydrate control while pointing out that gin and vodka are low-carb indulgences. The book gave birth to a cornucopia of even more outrageous clones, including "The Martinis and Whipped Cream Diet."

If nothing else, "The Drinking Man's Diet" suggested that William the Conqueror's twisted logic wasn't completely out of step with dieting nine centuries later. And even today, people are falling off the horse, falling off the wagon, and tipping the scale to the side of desperation.

Just in case you thought it was all bad - - -

Here's a very happy story just to let you know it isn't always crappy to be me.

When I was working for the government about 15 years ago, I had a pretty high-profile, "important" job and I wore a suit and tie every day. Years before, I stumbled across this exceedlingly kind big-n-tall shop owner in Los Angeles who knew my shape, what worked on me, and kept an eye out for clothes I would like. But mostly the selection was poor. I wore navy or black slacks, white or light blue dress shirts, ho hum ties and, I'm afraid to say, dark acrylic sweater vests like Benny on L.A. Law. They covered up my belly and hid the gap between the bottom of my tie and my belt (I didn't know there were extra long ties). I was so reliant on the sweater vests that I wore them in the summer, in L.A.

We big guys usually have to pick from polyester crap in colors you just wouldn't believe - I remember a tomato soup-colored blazer that was on the rack in the store for months, and the variety of biege, tan and Ace Bandage-colored polyester suits was so unflattering and so depressing that for years I had to rely on either a navy blazer or a tweed sports coat to go with everything I wore. There just wasn't anything available.

By the way, the names for the big man's shops were sooooo bad. King Size Shoppe. High-N-Mighty. BigFella. I particularly hated BigFella because their bags were egg-yolk yellow and emblazoned with their name on both sides, so when you bought something you became a waddling billboard. It was awful. Once my Grandma noticed I was wearing something new and she said, "Where did you get it - Mr. Fat?" I said, "No, I got it at Mr. Humongo!"

So one day my clothes scout called me and said, "I just got two Armani double-breasted suits that I think would be perfect for you." Armani? No way! I didn't want to get my hopes up, but I said, "Charge it!" and a week later they arrived. Oh my, they were so beautiful, and they fit perfectly! The first one was a dark gray wool with a nice heft to the material, and it was stylish - it was a quality garment, something rarely available to fat men.

The second suit was really a gorgeous thing - a handsome olive khaki color with a subtle stripe in a creamy, dense wool fabric, and it was double breasted, with wide lapels and perfect tailoring. Really, it was beautiful. I ran to Nordstrom and got a pair of wing tips in oxblood, some jazzy olive socks, and an absolutely gorgeous extra-long tie which was sort of a rusty maroon color with gold retro designs on it. At the local BigFella I found a cream-colored cotton dress shirt with french cuffs that fit perfectly, and a belt to match my new shoes.

The next morning I gave myself twice as much time as usual to get ready for work. Since I had to use cufflinks, I reached into my old jewelry box and fished out a handsome pair of gold cufflinks and my grandfather's gold watch (it pinched my wrist and tore hairs from my arm every time I wore it, but it looked great). Everything fit, everything was stain-free, and I never felt so "together" in my life. I was bubbling with joy. I wasn't wearing a sweater vest! I even switched to a brown leather brief case because it looked better with my outfit. I skipped the Starbucks that morning for fear I would spill. Who needed caffeine anyway? Not that morning. Man, I was so happy.

Our offices were in a skyscraper in downtown Seattle. I pulled into the parking lot and came up to the grand lobby. I could tell I was jaunty as hell, just trucking along with a big grin. I rounded the corner and stood waiting at the bank of elevators, practically purring.

An attractive woman in her 30's joined me to wait for the next elevator. I gave her a smile and a jaunty "Good Morning!" and she said, "Hi" and smiled back. I felt her look me up and down, with a smile on her face. The elevator arrived and we were the only riders, both facing forward. I was wearing a touch of cologne, and she sniffed the air approvingly.

As the express whisked us up 30 stories, the smiling lady turned to me, looked me up and down again, and said, "You are the best looking fat man I ever saw!"

I chuckled and said, "Thank you," and a moment later she got off the elevator, still smiling.

It was maybe the greatest compliment I ever got about the way I looked. It acknowledged my fatness and somehow incorporated it in the compliment without turning it into one of those, "You would be so attractive if you were thin" sort of sideways remarks. And it came from a stranger who did an appraisal and felt compelled to tell me I had scored. I realize someone else might look at what she said and think it was insulting, but it didn't feel like that to me.

When I got off the elevator I dumped off my brief case in my office, grabbed a manila file (it looked perfect with my outfit) and went for a little tour, you know, just to show off the look. I stuck my head in various doors, chatted with everyone, and worked it. I even went to the other floors of the office just to parade. I got compliments left and right. I was ebullient. I don't think I got anything done that day. I just existed in a bubble of happiness.

It was a sunny day, and I went to meet my friend Victor for lunch at a nearby glam restaurant. I happened to have a new pair of sunglasses with turtleshell frames, and I thought, "God, it never ends! It's all so damned perfect!" I walked the three blocks to the restaurant, bouncing on my feet like Mary Tyler Moore, smiling and winking at passersby. God, I was ridiculous, but who cares? You would think I was in love. Well, maybe I was - with myself.

My gorgeous friend Victor was "suitably" impressed and caressed the fabric appreciatively. He showered me with compliments and it was hard to concentrate on our conversation, because I was so damned happy. I ordered something solid, and I didn't spill. I felt like a movie star.

On the way back to the office I found myself humming "What a Feeling" by Irene Cara and it was all I could do not to burst into a Fred Astaire moment. And I just felt invincible.

Did I ever tell you about the time . . . . . .

. . . . . I went into a Big N Tall store and the clerk rushed up to me and said, "You've probably never been here before, but we cater mostly to tall guys, not big guys like you. Sorry." And he gave me one of those grimace-smiles that make you wanna puke.

. . . . . I went to a job interview and the chair they had was one of those tiny thin wire jobs, so I delicately wedged myself into it but kept all my weight on my feet (I basically squatted for 30 minutes). I have no idea what the hell I said, or what they asked me - I was so focused on not breaking the chair/collapsing on the floor/breaking my neck. By the way, I got the job.

. . . . . well, about the hundreds of times some ditsy restaurant hostess has shown me to a booth that had a fixed table, fixed seats, and about 10 inches of room between the two? I mean, shit! What's the point? Do you think humiliating me will garner a larger tip? I learned to run down a list of specifications, like Joan Crawford's dressing room demands. "Could we have a table instead of a booth, please, and could one of the chairs be armless? And maybe not in the most crowded part of the restaurant, please?" This usually works, but it aggravates me that I have to do it. I mean, if someone came in using a wheelchair, would they show him to the bar?

. . . . . I embarrassingly whispered to a flight attendant that I needed a seatbelt extension, and after she did her little demonstration for the passengers of how to buckle it, while all eyes were still on her she grandly came to me with the extension in her hand and loudly proclaimed, "Here you go, honey!"

. . . . . I was standing in front of a theater waiting for a friend and this tall, very cute guy came up to me and said, "Excuse me, have we met before?" And he tossed his Axl Rose tresses back and tucked the hair behind his ear, which had an earring: a silver pig. Evidently the pig earring signified that he was interested in screwing pigs. Like me. I never got the memo, I guess.

. . . . . I was standing in line at the supermarket and the jaunty retired man behind me turned to his wife and said, loudly, "What do you think - 400? 450? Hoo boy, just look at that. Maybe I should just ask him. Naw, he won't mind. Maybe even more. Jesus Christ!" And then he tapped me on the shoulder. I turned to him, red-faced and heart pounding, and in the most contained voice I could muster, said, "DON'T ASK! Don't ask!" Like in Bullets Over Broadway. And the old man, all smiles, said, "Naw, all I want to know is how much you . . . " And I shouted, "DON'T ASK!" And he looked crestfallen. And then he started examining the stuff I was purchasing, and mumbling comments to his wife. For some reason, I did not have a stroke.

. . . . . my mom and dad were invited to a high-falutin Navy function in DC. Mom was feeling depressed about her weight and nothing she had fit her, so she asked my dad if she could skip the affair. My dad immediately called the hostess, and in a calm voice, in front of mom and me, said, "I'm sorry, we won't be coming to the party tomorrow night. My wife Carol is obese, and she's uncomfortable in social situations." I was about seven. When my mother fled from the room in tears, my father looked at me with a triumphant, smug grimace.

. . . . . I got to a parking place just a tad sooner than this other guy, took the spot for myself, and when I got out of the car he said, "Fat fucker, you fat lardass fucker, fat fat fat lardass fat fuck, fuck off you fat lardass fucker, fuck fuck fuck, fuck off, fat fat fat fuck, fat fuck!" And I said. "My, how articulate!" And he said, "You dumb fatass fat fat fucker, fuckin fatass fat fuck!" And I laughed in his face.

. . . . . I was in ninth grade and a new kid moved in across the street. He was in tenth grade and looked cute and athletic (from my side of the street, anyway). One day I was washing my Grandparents' car in the driveway and he was standing on his front stoop with a friend of his. I must've done something girly, although I was self-consciously deep into keeping my wrists straight and speaking in a low voice. He laughed with derision, turned to his friend, and said loudly enough for me to hear across the street, "Fat faggot." His friend laughed, then they went inside. I finished washing the car, rinsed out the sponge and chamois, went inside, and that night took 20 aspirin tablets. About an hour later, when I hadn't died, I called the poison control line and, imitating a concerned mother, said my daughter had just taken 20 aspirin. The operator said, "how much does she weigh?" And I said, "225." And the operator snorted, laughed a little, and said, "Well, she's big enough - it shouldn't hurt her." So I took another 30 aspirin. I spent the night rocking my head back and forth like an autistic child, waiting for death. I couldn't hear and there was a terrible ringing in my ears. I was nauseus but I didn't throw up. About 5 am I fell asleep. At 6 my mom woke me up for school. I went. Nobody ever knew about it.

. . . . . I tried to break my ankle to get out of gymnastics in seventh grade. I knew I was in for some huge embarrassment so I thought if I broke my ankle I could ride out the class. I started by jumping from the fourth step up onto the landing. Then the fifth. Then the sixth step up. Then I tried landing cockeyed, so something would snap. It didn't. I climbed higher up the stairs, and kept landing in a heap, but nothing broke, nothing sprained, nothing dislocated. The next day in gym class I had to leap over the pommel horse. I slammed on the springboard, tried to do a squat jump, my feet got caught on the horse, and I went over, landing in a heap to howls of laughter from my coach. Nothing broke.

The reappearance of a negative core belief

I've been working on a "big project" these last three weeks. To be honest, I spent the first two weeks thinking about it, and just this last week getting down to business. I have a self-imposed deadline (tomorrow) and a ton more work to do, and it's gonna be okay. The thing is, it's been an amazing window into a tangent of core beliefs I have about myself that at first glance aren't specific to the weight problem but are, in fact, very specific:

"I always procrastinate." (not good enough)
"The work I do is good but it's never as good as I hoped." (not good enough)
"I'm not worth the money I'm being paid to do this." (not good enough)
"If the person I'm preparing this for doesn't love it 100% I'm going to be pissed." (expectation of failure)
"I'll probably be disappointed and defensive at her reaction." (expectation of failure)
"I'm no good." (not good enough)

It's no surprise that I've been having cravings pretty much nonstop. I haven't acted on them, but as the anxiety of the project grows, as the deadline looms, I've got peanut butter cookies and wedges of cheese dancing around my head to a cute little ditty called, "Come on and eat me, baby! It's okay! Let me comfort you! Let me soothe your troubled mind!"

Other things are going on, too.

I'm a little antsy and defensive with my housemate. I feel like she's not appreciating the humongousness of this challenge for me (silly girl, she has confidence that I'll do just fine). I'm also on the lookout for added pressure - the money I'll make is gonna help out around here, but (gulp) what happens if I don't succeed? Did she leave out that telephone bill to work me? Is she pissed that I'm not helping her in the yard this weekend because I'm busy? Am I letting her down?

A number of little physical ailments have cropped up, too. I've fallen into a narcolepsic period. Can't get enough sleep. I've got a strange sensation of tightness on the left side of my face. I feel a little queasy. I'm pretty sure a cold sore is about to make an appearance.

So. Anyway. As I sit here cataloguing all the ways I (ineffectively) process anxiety, I realize that it's all built on a shaky foundation. I've tapped into a long-held core belief - I'm not good enough - as it manifests for me during a work project. I literally can turn it around right now by seeing that I am plenty good enough. These feelings, concerns, maladies, fears - and cravings - are floating on a sea of self-doubt. I don't need to create this pressure on myself in order to obtain a result. I don't need to make it such a big deal in order to "earn" the money.

As Jack Webb of Dragnet would say, "Just the facts, Ma'am."

It takes a period of time for me to think through a project and allow the creative juices to flow before I can attack the project more directly. This is my process, and it's an effective one. It works for me. I could make allowances for it when I create timelines, and I could acknowledge that the hours spent in cogitating are as valuable as the hours spent constructing.

I have good ideas and I have strong writing skills. The work I do is professional, well-executed, and built on strong insights and ideas. I acknowledge my talents and skills and make good use of them.

I deserve the money I earn from projects like this.

I can expect success.

When it comes time to submit the project, I can let go of expectations and simply know that any reaction to it is subjective. Like an artist who hangs a painting on a gallery wall, I know that some people may love it, some people may hate it, and most people will be in the middle.

My goal is not for the project (and by extension, me) to be perfect; my goal is to deliver a strong product that is true to what I said it would be and is well-worth the money being paid for it. It is not necessary, or even expected, by me or by the recipient, that it be perfect, whatever that is.

Caveat Emptor - let the buyer beware! (Ha ha ha, but there's something to that after all, I suppose, in that I don't need to hold myself to expectations miles higher than the marketplace. I am another vendor, a farmer who has promised his next crop to the squire. If it's bounteous and worm-free, then we both rejoice; if it's not quite the bumper crop, well then, we are adults, and we recognize that it was a possibility when we struck the deal. I dutifully tended to the crop.)

I don't need to get sick so I have an excuse if I miss the deadline or I turn in a less-than-perfect product. I don't need to let myself off the hook. I don't need to fail.

I don't need to make the person who hired me into a disappointed parent.

I don't need to make myself into the disappointing child.

I don't need to test their love for me by failing.

I don't need to use this project to confirm core beliefs I no longer see as valid.

I am good enough to do this project.

I approve of the work I've done so far on this project.

I love and approve of myself and the skills and talents I have, and I forgive myself for falling into old patterns of behavior.

I have all the skills and confidence and time I need to well-execute this project.

- - - - - -

I wish I had known all this was coming at the beginning of the project instead of at the endgame, but it's been an important thing for me to realize about myself. In so many ways, it's our interactions with the world that allow us to have experiences that bring out thoughts and feelings that are based on core beliefs we no longer hold. If I lived in a cave, I wouldn't be challenged. But it's through the challenges that I can shed a light on the beliefs and make the changes I want to make. Like just about everything these days, this experience is invaluable.

- - - - - -

POSTSCRIPT - Monday

I finished the project.
I made the deadline.
I put the report in the mail (and had a delightful conversation with a very sweet older lady while waiting in line at the post office).
I think I did an excellent job - I'm pleased with it.
My various physical ailments have all cleared up.
I didn't get a cold sore.
And I didn't binge around the experience.
Yippee for me!

Fittest and Fattest Cities 2005

From Men's Fitness Magazine

TOP 25 FATTEST CITIES OF 2005:

1. Chicago
2. Las Vegas
3. Los Angeles
4. Dallas
5. Houston
6. Memphis, Tenn.
7. Long Beach, Calif.
8. El Paso, Texas
9. Kansas City, Mo.
10. Mesa, Ariz.
11. Indianapolis
12. San Antonio
13. Fort Worth, Texas
14. Miami
15. Detroit
16. Columbus, Ohio
17. Oklahoma City
18. Cleveland
19. Wichita, Kan.
20. Charlotte, N.C.
21. San Diego
22. Fresno, Calif.
23. Philadelphia
24. San Jose, Calif.
25. New York

TOP 25 FITTEST CITIES OF 2005:

1. Baltimore
2. Honolulu
3. Virginia Beach, Va.
4. Tucson, Ariz.
5. Milwaukee
6. Colorado Springs, Colo.
7. San Francisco
8. Seattle
9. Louisville-Jefferson, Ky.
10. Boston
11. Sacramento, Calif.
12. Nashville-Davidson, Tenn.
13. Albuquerque
14. Tulsa, Okla.
15. Phoenix
16. Atlanta
17. Portland, Ore.
18. Washington
19. Oakland, Calif.
20. Denver
21. Minneapolis
22. Arlington, Texas
23. Austin, Texas
24. Jacksonville, Fla.
25. Omaha, Neb.

Just a moment of gratitude

"People, let me tell you 'bout my best friend, she's a warm-hearted person who will love me till the end."

She's the steadiest, most good-for-me friend I ever had. I've had lots of flamboyant, amazing friends along the way, eccentric and neurotic and brilliant and hilarious, mostly. She's all these things, but in a more subdued version. I usually am drawn to the peacock when I'm in the aviary. She's more like a mother quail. A beautiful, kind and understanding mother quail.

We met fifteen years ago in the copier room of the government agency we both worked for. I had seen her around for a couple of months - it was a large office - but had missed the window of opportunity to introduce myself during her first week there, so I affected the charade that she wasn't a new employee, but an agent working on a case with our office. The day we met, in the copier room, I introduced myself, then asked her what agency she was from. She looked at me like I was a little touched in the head and explained she worked there. I acted all surprised to cover my ridiculous charade, but when it was done and she could've - should've - rolled her eyes at my poorly executed lie, instead she grinned wryly at me, and I could see the twinkle in her eyes. It was like she somehow understood my bizarre moment of social ineptness and forgave me, all with that wry smile, and I looked at her with a sense of, "Who's this person?" My curiosity was piqued. It was an ignominious beginning, and I still can't believe I did it, but we laugh about it now.

There was never any expectations made by either of us, and over the course of daily chats in the office and very occasional after-work forays to Thai restaurants, our friendship just evolved into a trusting, mutually supportive relationship without either of us trying.

A few years later, she moved away, and I expected we would lose touch, but we didn't, and soon we fell into the habit of checking in with each other two or three times a week. Sometimes we would just report what was going on at work, or what we did over the weekend, but she became the one person who knew everything about me.

When I moved to Palm Springs ten years ago she took time off from work to help me. The plan was she would drive my car while I drove the huge enormous rental truck with my convertible on a trailer. That was the plan, but after the first sixty miles I confessed to being scared to death and she switched with me. She had to duct tape one of my shoes to the bottom of her own shoe so she could reach the pedals. She was heroic. The night we drove through the Los Angeles grapevine in a torrential downfall - during rush hour - is an experience I'll never forget in all my life. I still don't know how she did it. Sheer grit and determination, I think. She was awesome.

When I went through an extremely difficult unrequited love/work situation, a few years ago, she was with me every step of the way - during the infatuation period, and then through all the ups and downs that came as I got more and more embroiled in the mess. All through it she somehow refrained from giving me advice - she's a great advice giver - but because she was there with me throughout, she "understood." And that's what I needed.

We visited each other when we could, and we were there for each other, by phone, when our fathers died, listening, understanding, offering no advice or platitudes or even solemn words of sympathy. We didn't need to. We were sympathetic to each other, in the true meaning of the word - we were in sympathy, symmetry, aligned. We understood each other.

About a year ago she started saying, "Why don't you come live with me?" She was outraged at the amount I paid for rent (I lived on the waterfront in Seattle), she knew the job I had was completely unrewarding, and she thought it would be good for me to calm down a little, maybe start working on my weight, you know, take a "real world" break and hang out with her for awhile. I dismissed it the first few times she mentioned it - me, give up Seattle and the waterfront and my independence, just to move to Albuquerque? But she persisted, gently, and little by little I realized maybe she had something there.

It was not a "no big deal" thing, her invitation. She's as comfortable living alone as I am, and has a good life for herself in New Mexico. I could've screwed everything up for her. We knew each other very well and we love each other, but everyone knows living together is a whole different potential can of worms. But still, she opened her house to me, invited me to live with her, welcomed me and my animals into the menagerie (she's got lots of animals) and it's been seven months now. No fuss, no muss, we're just very comfortable with each other. I love it here.

Without a word or expectation, she accepts me just as I am. Without a word or expectation, I accept her just as she is. I think this may be the most important gift anyone ever gave me, at a time when I needed it most (and didn't even realize it). She understands me, she accepts me, she is in sympathy with me.

It is because I live with her that I have begun to feel good about myself.
It is because I live with her that I have the space and freedom to make changes in myself without a clock ticking or a deadline looming.
It is because I live with her that I can afford to spend my days slowly growing my business and concentrating on the concepts I talk about on this blog.
It is because I live with her that I've lost over 100 pounds and make my bed every morning.

She's uncomfortable with visible signs of affection; we hugged when I arrived, we hugged when my dog died, and we'll probably hug again sometime, but it's by no means a daily occurrence. So instead we smile at each other a lot, and laugh, and enjoy each other's steady company. I used to drip with gratitude when I first got here, rightly so, but she shut me up fast, saying that this was a mutually beneficial thing and I shouldn't make a big deal out of it. When I first started doing chores around the house, I waited for her acknowledgement, her praise - and I waited in vain. As it turned out, this is another part of our interaction that is enormously beneficial for me. Now, when I do something nice for her and her critters, I don't look for acknowledgement or outward signs of gratitude from her anymore - it was a hard lesson for me to learn, admittedly. I could never repay in chores and tasks and thoughtful gestures the enormous gift she's given me - but she prefers us to keep our mutual appreciation to ourselves, and that's fine with me now. Little Stevie has let go of any sense of entitlement and/or resentment and/or guilt for the things she does, and he also doesn't expect a gold star to be affixed to some report card somewhere when he "shows his gratitude" by doing tasks well performed. It's amazing how perfect this is for a person like me who believed my parents loved me conditionally - so long as I did well in school or stayed closeted or made breakfast. My friend's love is unconditional. So the emphasis on doing things to earn love has melted away, and what's left is just a genuine joy to do things that both of us quietly appreciate - a clean kitchen, a good meal every once in awhile, a well-running house, and happy, well-fed critters all around.

I wish that everyone could have the opportunity I did - to live with someone who allowed - supported - made room - for this grand experiment I'm conducting. I never realized until I experienced it how critical these ingredients were: Acceptance. Understanding. Love. Without fanfare. Without expectation.

She doesn't read this blog. She won't see this post. This would embarrass her horribly. That's why I haven't mentioned her name.

She wouldn't want me to express it in words, or even surruptitious glances, but I think it every day, all day long: Thank you, thank you, thank you, my dear friend.

For Sheila and Alex

Classic beauty has its own rewards.

Ummmm - a 93 PERCENT downward adjustment

The Top 10 Junk Science Claims of 2005
by Steven Milloy, www.junkscience.com

It’s that time of year again when we at JunkScience.com reflect on all the dubious achievements and irresponsible claims made by the junk science community throughout the year.

These “lowlights” have a lot in common — namely exaggeration and hidden agendas — but they cover a diverse range of scientific themes, from child development to embryonic stem cell research to everyday radiation exposure to trying to lay blame for hurricanes.

1. Obese Statistics Get Liposuction. After years of alarming the American public with ever-scarier estimates of obesity-related deaths, the Centers for Disease Control finally backed away from its exaggerated 2004 claim of 400,000 deaths annually and made a 93 percent downward adjustment to just 25,814 deaths. It’s not clear that even that number can stand up to scrutiny.

From the University of Chicago Chronicle

Despite its growing weight, America does not have an “obesity epidemic,” according to new research by Eric Oliver, Associate Professor in Political Science.

The idea that Americans’ increasing girth is a catastrophic disease is largely a myth promoted by the weight loss industry and diet doctors, writes Oliver in a new book, Fat Politics: the Real Story Behind America’s Obesity Epidemic. “It is our panic over our weight gain rather than the weight itself that is probably causing the most harm,” Oliver argues.

Oliver contends there is no scientific evidence to suggest that people who are currently classified as “overweight” and even most Americans who qualify as “obese” are under any direct threat from their body weight.

Oliver explains that this is partly because the current standards of what is “overweight” and “obese” are defined at very low levels—George Bush is technically “overweight,” while Arnold Schwarzenegger is “obese.” But it also is because most people confuse body weight with the real sources of health and well-being—diet and exercise, he says.

In most cases, the relationship between fat and disease is simply an association, says Oliver. People who are overweight may also have heart disease, for instance, but there is no proof that being overweight causes the heart disease.

“There are only a few medical conditions that have been shown convincingly to be caused by excess body fat, such as osteoarthritis of weight bearing joints and uterine cancer, which comes from higher estrogen levels in heavier women, although this can be treated medically without weight loss,” he says. “For most medical conditions, it is diet, exercise and genetics that are the real causes. Weight is merely an associated symptom.”

Yet Americans continue to be told that they need to lose weight, Oliver believes, partly because weight is so much easier to measure than diet and exercise. It also is because of American values that consider overweight a sign of sloth and thinness a mark of social status, he says. “But the most important factor,” Oliver argues, “behind America’s ‘obesity epidemic’ is the weight loss industry and public health establishment.”

Weight loss is a multibillion-dollar industry in America, Oliver notes, and this industry is trying to put a health spin on what is a largely cosmetic product. Diet doctors and weight-loss companies have established organizations with names such as the American Obesity Association to promote their interests. That group convinced federal health officials to designate obesity as a disease in 2004 and has lobbied for tax deductions for obesity treatments. Yet the American Obesity Association is largely funded by weight loss companies, including, Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, Hoffman-La Roche (makers of the weight-loss drug Xenical) and Slim Fast.

The federal government also has been complicit in this, Oliver contends. He writes that officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have used maps that distort America’s weight gain, making it seem like a spreading epidemic. The also have released faulty estimates about the amount of deaths attributable to obesity, and made false claims that obesity was soon to be America’s No. 1 cause of preventable death.

Oliver argues that by making body weight a barometer of wellness, public health officials and doctors are sending the wrong message—that being heavy, even if you exercise and eat right, is unhealthy, while being thin, even if you smoke or starve yourself, is good.

As a result, Oliver contends, millions of Americans are putting their health at risk with fad diets, dangerous drugs, or even extreme measures, such as gastric-bypass surgeries, which cause more than 1,000 deaths annually and complications such as kidney diseases, cancer and heart failure. “The irony,” Oliver says, “is that stomach stapling does not guarantee weight loss.” After the surgeries, most people gain some weight back and 30 percent of the people receiving the surgeries gain all their weight back.

Oliver argues that it is time to stop making body weight an indicator of a person’s health.

“We could end the obesity epidemic right now if we desired—all we would need to do is to redefine obesity according to the real criterion of a disease. If we simply classified obesity as a level where body fat is incontrovertibly pathological, only a fraction of Americans would qualify, and this ‘epidemic’ would vanish,” Oliver says.

A little hardcore porn from the New York Times

Pavlov's dogs have nothing on me. My mouth is salivating, my eyeballs are bulging and serotonin is coursing through my veins. Now comes the caption:

"A pound of cheddar and half a pound of macaroni results in a creamy cassarole."

No kidding - really? Thank you, New York Times, for clearing that up for me. And thank you for spelling cassarole in the French manner, as befits such a gustatory treat.

Meet Phinney the Chinnie

Ain't this cute? It's an Ad Council ad for a new campaign called "Take a small step to get healthy" and the lines of demarcation on this, um, person's (male or female? You tell me) chin read, from bottom to top: "Starts doing sit-ups during commercials," "Gets 30 minutes a day of physical activity," and finally, "No longer dependent on vertically striped shirts." Oh ha ha ha, soooooo cute! The vertical stripe allusion. Yes, that's what this, um, person is dependent on - vertical stripes, because a foray into the horizontal stripe aisle at the Hefty Hideaway would incite all those derisive comments about bumblebees and beach balloons, whereas those vertical stripes are so slimming! Ha ha ha ha ha, it's all about fashion sense, inn nit?

Have I mentioned how fun it is to have a serious problem that SHOWS? Well, it's really really FUN! It's so fricking fun! FUN, I tell you, FUN FUN FUN!!!

My "issue" is out there for all the world to see (and disdain). If only it were this easy to spot smokers, obsessive-compulsives, alcoholics, drug addicts, sluts, overspenders, gamblers, manic-depressives, ten-dollar-a-day Starbuck's drinkers, three-hour-a-day internet porn surfers, procrastinators, blamers, victims and neurotics. I know - make'em all wear horizontal stripes! Ha ha ha ha ha, that would be sooo fun! Sort of a walking prison population, and all the REST of us could point, stare, mock, and humiliate. If there were anybody left NOT wearing horizontal stripes. I bet everyone would LOVE getting up in the morning, go for a nice stroll. Maybe everybody could wear cute little yellow and pink Stars of Davids - oh, somebody already tried that. Nevermind.

Back to the ad - let's see, where to begin - oh I know: a person this big cannot do sit-ups. It's like trying to open a door when there's a balloon wedged in the jam - there's just too much in the way. Besides, the amount of stress sit-ups would put on this person's back would end the Let's-Get-Fit strategy right off the bat, because it's rully rully hard to do sit-ups with a slipped disk, doncha know. Of course, that first line doesn't say, "Turn off the TV," because we wouldn't want to draw a connection between obesity and sitting immobile all day, having a constant stream of advertizing beamed at you which makes you feel ashamed, humiliated, and ugly. No, that has nothing to do with the double chin. I mean, the Ad Council wants you to be thin, right? And so does Burger King. Sure. Kinda like how RJ Reynolds wants you to quit smoking. Hmmm. Yeah.

I certainly get the concept - encourage people to be more active, and weight starts dropping like sacks of potatoes all over town.

Dear Ad Council: do you REALLY think that the fat person reading your ad doesn't already know that increased activity will lead to weight loss? God, I love simplistic bullshit like this.

Debtors: pay off your debts.
Cigarette smokers: quit smoking.
Fat-assed lazy mo-fo's: stop eating and start exercising.

The sound you hear is millions of people smiting their foreheads and saying, "Why didn't I think of that?"

"You know, I was addicted to crack; I smoked every ten minutes when I could score; I paced back and forth like a caged tiger when I couldn't. Then one day I saw that picture, you know the one, with the two eggs sunny side up in a frying pan? I thought, wow, and I just put down my crack pipe. It's been ten years since I used!" - fictional, nonexistent former addict (all right, maybe one or two people saw the eggs poster and quit using. Hmm. What did they spend on that campaign - ten million? Twenty million?)

Maybe - maybe - the fried egg poster prevented some people from trying crack. Most likely it made a larger number of non-crack-using people feel smug about their willpower and self-control. It definitely made someone rich and successful. "Clever!" "Dynamic!" "Completely ineffective at helping people stop using crack!"

Could it be that this double-chin ad campaign is meant to be preventative as well? You know, making people who are thin shudder in horror at the spector of becoming fat, so they run out and spend money on exercise equipment, diet food, and "programs."

I think the message is clear: when you have a double chin, smiling won't help - you UGLY!

Oh, and a personal message to the photo model here: did the photographer make you push your head back so your double chin would look worse? Cute shirt, by the way - hope you got to keep it!

Stuart Smiley's Legacy

There's a reason we laugh derisively at a man in a pale blue cardigan staring at himself in a mirror and saying, "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and gosh darnit, people like me!" And that's . . . okay.

It IS a funny characterization of the classic new age acolyte - trying everything possible to somehow improve their life, yet it all seems in vain. Another self-help book by another guru, another well-meaning program, another failed attempt to feel . . . okay. This week it's a macrobiotic diet and hatha yoga, next week it's Dr. Phil's bootcamp and spinning classes. It all has the potential to help, and some of it is based on researched-based scientific fact, but our friend Stuart Smiley still has an emptiness in the pit of his stomach when he lays himself to sleep, so he'll go on trying to convince himself that he's good enough and smart enough to face another day.

I was thinking today how an insight or a good idea can so swiftly become trampled in the name of selling product, until the demands of making a buck morph it into something useless or even harmful. With just the slight change in emphasis, an insight goes from being able to stand alone and inspire as it is, to being a hard-to-assimilate concept that requires books, tapes, seminars, workbooks, weekend retreats, week-long conferences, and firewalking ceremonies to understand. Like an unwitting Scientology novice, the innocent believer nods his head when some complicated theory is explained in a purposely obfuscating way, and not wanting to seem like an idiot for failing to grasp the concept, he pays for a "clearing" or some other expensive product so he can finally undeerstand what all the fuss is about. If done correctly, the insight is never well explained, and therefore never grasped, leaving the seeker in a constant state of need, searching and searching for what seemed at first a simple idea.

This is assuming, of course, that an insight or a good idea lies at the bottom of this empire of income-producing product. The beauty of it, as far as the merchandizers are concerned, is that there doesn't even need to be a new insightful idea to make millions. I'm not the only fat person out there who has spent hundreds on books and tapes and programs and systems that boil down to the same concept - take in less calories than you burn, and you lose weight. But it's been glamorized and guru-ized and modernized and tarted up in evey imaginable scientific lab coated, celebrity-endorsed way, and there it is - the promised land - the big secret - the magic idea that will forever change your life.

If you go to a surgeon with a problem, the solution will most likely be surgery.

If you go to a pharmaceutical company with an issue, the solution will most like be a pharmaceutical.

If you go to a great big money-making corporation to help you, it will cost you lots of money to get their assistance.

AS you seek, so shall you find. Isn't that the way it goes?

There's a funny little ancillary to this, of course - everybody claims to, but nobody ever really wants a super simple solution to a problem, especially one that has caused them years of trouble. If the answer is really that simple, doesn't that imply that I've been a stupid idiot all this time for not seeing it? No, my problem is too complex to be solved simply. I am too unique to have a simple solution apply. I need a "program" or a "system" or a "surgical procedure" and boy, will I pay through the nose for it, but it'll be worth it.

Richard Simmons's empire became so important that he turned to bulimia to keep thin enough to go on selling his weight-loss program. And I don't question Richard's sincerity - I know he believes in what he's doing. So does Jenny Craig and Susan "Stop the Insanity" Powter and Dr. Atkins and Oprah's personal chef and Tony Little and a host of other "experts" who made fortunes - FORTUNES - selling product. At what point did Jared go from a guy who ate Subway sandwiches to lose weight, to a guy who does God-knows-what in order to stay thin so he can keep making the lucrative salary Subway pays him? What if he found that eating white flour-based bread products each day caused serious health problems? What does he have to say about Subway's new salami-bacon-provolone-cheddar-alfredo sauced masterpiece?

I am moving toward a better life and I am doing it here, for all to see, and it's about a very simple idea - core beliefs. At this stage, I cannot say for certain that this idea will result in a "successful" outcome. Nor can I say for certain that what works for me will work for others. But I will say this:

My goal is to succeed at "solving" a life-long problem, and if I succeed, to explain what I did as plainly as possible so that others with the same problem can try it for themselves.
You will never see my name associated with a Guthy-Renker product.
You will never see me tout a "program" or "system."
I may write a book, if I am so lucky, because I see value in information collected in book form, but I will make every drop of its contents available free of charge online.
If I find that, over time, my ideas have not succeeded, I will state it.

And that's . . . okay.

Self-Worth is NOT Self-Aggrandisement

{this article appeared in the LA Times and is written by the author of a booked called "SHAM: How the Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless." The thing I find fascinating is that his entire premise is predicated on identifying boastful conceit and self-aggrandisement as self-esteem, WHEN IT IS EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE. My comments are in italics throughout.}

By Steve Salerno for the LA Times, 1-1-2006

EVER SINCE the United States began weaning itself off the sociological junk food of victimization and its culture of blame, the pop-psychology menu increasingly has been flavored by an antithetical concept — empowerment — that can be summarized as: Believe it, achieve it.

Nowadays, Fortune 500 conglomerates draft business plans with bullet points drawn from Laker coach-cum-inspirational guru Phil Jackson's Zen optimism. Couples write partnership covenants based on the utopian blather of John Gray. Millions of everyday Americans owe their feelings of "personal power" to erstwhile firewalker Tony Robbins, arguably the father of today's mass-market empowerment. And there is Oprah, who is seldom categorized as a guru in her own right but whose status as the movement's eminence grise is beyond dispute: The road to self-help's promised land, and a bite of its $10-billion fruit (as tracked by Marketdata Enterprises), runs straight through Harpo Productions. The nostrums delivered by these and other self-help celebrities form a cultural given, an uncontested — and, we are led to believe, incontestable — foundation for today's starry-eyed zeitgeist.

Lost in the adulation is the downside of being uplifted. In truth, the overselling of personal empowerment — the hyping of hope — may be the great unsung irony of modern American life, destined to disappoint as surely as the pity party that it was meant to replace.

{Interesting point, and I agree to a great extent. Hope is integral to any life; the problem is that the marketing whizzes attach hope to hopelessly ineffective products so that hope is dashed again and again. It's the process of hope disappointed that is harmful, not hope itself.}

In U.S. schools, the crusade to imbue kids with that most slippery of notions — self-esteem — has been unambiguously disastrous (and has recently been disavowed by a number of its loudest early voices). Self-esteem-based education presupposed that a healthy ego would help students achieve greatness, even if the mechanisms necessary to instill self-esteem undercut scholarship. Over time, it became clear that what such policies promote is not academic greatness but a bizarre disconnect between perceived self-worth and provable skill.

{Okay, this is the nitty gritty. Self-esteem has nothing to do with boasting, braggadocio, conceit, or proclaim your greatness, especially in light of less than stellar provable skill. The writer is pointing out - correctly, I believe - that conceit does not take you anywhere except to the stupid shack, and to places like American Idol and the Apprentice, where we get to laugh at the talentless fools who nonetheless proclaim their talents. This is NOT self-esteem: this is the puffery and self-deception that comes with a LACK of self-esteem. What this writer has done is point out a legitimate problem, but falsely fingered the cause.}

Over a 20-year span beginning in the early 1970s, the average SAT score fell by 35 points. But in that same period, the contingent of college-bound seniors who boasted an A or B average jumped from 28% to an astonishing 83%, as teachers felt increasing pressure to adopt more "supportive" grading policies. Tellingly, in a 1989 study of comparative math skills among students in eight nations, Americans ranked lowest in overall competence, Koreans highest — but when researchers asked the students how good they thought they were at math, the results were exactly opposite: Americans highest, Koreans lowest. Meanwhile, data from 1999's omnibus Third International Mathematics and Science Study, ranking 12th-graders from 23 nations, put U.S. students in 20th place, besting only South Africa, Lithuania and Cyprus.

{Yes, yes, "supportive" grading policies promote self-aggrandisement, not self-esteem. A pox to that.}

Still, the U.S. keeps dressing its young in their emperors' new egos, passing them on to the next set of empowering curricula. If you teach at the college level, as I do, at some point you will be confronted with a student seeking redress over the grade you gave him because "I'm pre-med!" Not until such students reach med school do they encounter truly inelastic standards: a comeuppance for them but a reprieve for those who otherwise might find ourselves anesthetized beneath their second-rate scalpel.

{Yes, good, a little reality would be fine now. And when that medical intern does well in a class, she can garner a legitimate sense of self-worth from the accomplishment.}

The larger point is that society has embraced such concepts as self-esteem and confidence despite scant evidence that they facilitate positive outcomes. The work of psychologists Roy Baumeister and Martin Seligman suggests that often, high self-worth is actually a marker for negative behavior, as found in sociopaths and drug kingpins. Even in its less extreme manifestations, confidence may easily be expressed in the kind of braggadocio — "I'm fine just the way I am, thank you" — that stunts growth, yielding chronic failure.

{What could possibly have lead these psychologists to label sociopaths and drug kingpins as people who had "high self-worth"? Bravado, braggadocio, conceit, or an attitude of "I'm fine just the way I am, thank you" have NOTHING to do with self-esteem or a true belief in the person's self-worth. They are about self-deception, self-puffery, self-ignorance. A person with an inate sense of his worth would never say no to growth, change, insight, or acknowledgement of truth. }

Then again, one never really fails in this brave new (euphemistic) world. "There is no such thing as failure," posits a core maxim of neuro-linguistic programming, the regimen from which Robbins drew much of his patter. Among empowered thinkers, reality becomes an arbitrary affair, with each individual deciding his or her personal truth.

{"There is no such thing as failure" is a classic example of an affirmation that is false on its face. Of course there's failure. Anyone who tells themselves this "belief" is not being honest. If what you mean is, "I can learn from every experience, even if I don't succeed," then okay, maybe we've got something. It what you mean is, "Success is measured in many different ways, and sometimes looks like failure," all right, I can get behind that, too. My personal belief? "Failure does not affect my sense of self-worth - lots of people fail at things they try to do, and not everyone can succeed. Outcome is not always an indication of the effort and desire put towards a goal. There are many factors that affect outcome. Just like most people, I will succeed at many things in my life, and I will fail at many things. " I hope you can see that these materially false affirmations are set-ups for ineffectiveness, because they are not "beliefs," they are "wishes." I wish I never had to fail. I believe I will fail on occasion. I believe my self-worth will remain strong through many instances of success and failure. I am not setting myself up to fail just because I acknowledge it's a possibility.}

Consider healthcare, where vague notions of personal empowerment are a key factor in the startling American exodus from traditional medicine. A comprehensive study reported in the medical journal JAMA pegged the number of patient visits to alternative-medicine practitioners at 629 million a year, easily eclipsing the 386 million visits to conventional MDs. In theory, these defections represent a desire for "self-empowered healing" that will "put people in charge of their healthcare destiny," to quote one holistic health website. In practice, the trend puts hordes of Americans at the mercy of quacks who shrewdly position themselves at the nexus of mind and body. It behooves us to remember that feeling better about a health problem is not the same as doing better.

{I think we've come to the writer's true agenda here - he's pissed that people are rejecting traditional medicine. He teaches in a Pre-Med program. Aha! Isn't the exodus from traditional medicine more about factors such as cost, availability, and effectiveness of treatment? People are disillusioned about traditional medicine because it's a multi-billion dollar factory run by self-proclaimed Gods who don't have the time to listen to their patients, and who prescribe solutions that may not take into account the unique attributes and experiences of the patients. To proclaim that America's search for alternative treatments is based on feelings of self-worth just might be true - after all, if you believed in yourself and wanted to get yourself excellent care, it might be reasonable to look at the traditional medicine machine and say, "That's not for me." It doesn't mean that alternative treatments are better, necessarily. I love how the writer says that "qwacks" are shrewd to position themselves at the nexus of mind and body. Qwacks or not, this is exactly what people seek and don't find in traditional medicine. The body is processed like a plucked chicken on its way to the deep fat fryer at KFC. }

Nonetheless, with such highly visible exponents of latter-day empowerment as Robbins, Winfrey and Winfrey's principal protege, Dr. Phil McGraw, fanning the flames, a generation has come of age on the belief that a positive mental attitude will carry the day. Far from helping his disciples, the empowerment guru does them a disservice by making them "think positive" about a situation in which the odds of success are exceedingly low. As top management consultant Jay Kurtz argues: "The most dangerous person in corporate America is the highly enthusiastic incompetent. He's running faster in the wrong direction, doing horribly counterproductive things with winning enthusiasm."

{Well, I happen to agree that "think positive" is not very effective, although it's certainly a lot more pleasant for the people around you. I think that "believe truthfully" is a MUCH more effective way to live. Enthusiasm is usually a good thing, and a little cheerleading can work wonders. But at the core, a wrongly-held belief will not work. If you think "I'm competent" but you aren't, there's gonna be trouble. If, however, you think, "I can improve my competency with work, study and experience," then guess what? You will have a much greater likelihood of being more competent.}

You cannot have a life plan predicated on the belief that everything is equally achievable to you — especially if that same message has been sold indiscriminately to all comers. In the grand scheme of things, knowing one's limitations may be even more important than knowing one's talents.

{True. I'm glad to see the writer has ended his poorly considered piece with a statement I can believe in. But I want to point out that "knowing one's limitations" and "having good self-esteem" are not mutually exclusive. "Knowing one's talents" and "having good self-esteem" are not mutually exclusive. "Being a self-aggrandizing person" and "having good self-esteem" ARE mutually exclusive.}