faulker053

I’m typing this from my office computer, where I still retain power after Hurricane Irene. But last night I dreamed that I lost the power to speak. I could hear and listen, I could see, ‘though I have no knowledge of taste (as I didn’t eat anything during this brief period). I was in unidentifiable, unfamiliar surroundings, but somehow did not feel uneasy. Even experiencing this loss felt familiar, like when I temporarily lost sensation in my left arm, due to MS, and was unable to dress myself. Powerless. In the morning, the windows were open, and I felt the cool, dry air across my skin. I saw the beam of dust particles shimmering in the morning sunlight. And I heard my voice as I said goodbye to my husband, as he departed for work. Ahhh, all was well—my body was fully functioning. The electric and telephone, however, remained non-functional. But all was not lost. I could drive to work, and get in touch with the world from there. Even in the absence of modern life’s distractions—cut of...

The verdict is still out, but I’d bet on Sally’s success. Over the past 12 months, this formerly mid-200-pound woman has lost 54 pounds, since we began our work together. But she’s done that before, without my help. In fact, she’s lost weight faster in the past, each of the past three times, even. These previous diets yielded a weight loss of 70 pounds, I’m told. Yes, in each of her decades of life, she managed to lose, and then to regain, approximately 70 pounds. Back then, after about a year, she’d slip into old habits. She’d get bored with her eating routine, overeat, and then feel like a failure, letting the “What the heck effect” take over.  So I probed Sally, given her one-year anniversary working with me, to summarize what has changed, why this time is different. And here’s what I heard. Clothes Of course you’d expect her clothing size to change, with a more than 50-pound weight loss. But this time, she discarded her “fat clothes”. No sense holding on to things you hope neve...

Imagine the disappointment! Didn’t you want to believe it? “Finally, a diet pill I can endorse! Check out this link”, with yours truly as the sender. Yes, my Twitter account was hacked, or hijacked, as they say. Someone managed to get into my account dispensing a bunch of tweets as if they had come from me. And this was just one of the creative gems they sent.  Now, if you have been reading Drop It And Eat for a while, I suspect you were a bit skeptical. And hopefully, you even had the wisdom to stop yourself from clicking and perpetuating the myth. Maybe you even believed it, but knew it would be trouble, a slippery slope, getting into diet pills. You knew it was too good to be true. Perhaps you feel addicted to hope—hope for a solution to your daily eating struggle—for assistance with binge eating, obesity, or body dissatisfaction, in spite of a normal body size. Yes, at times a pill may seem like the only answer. But, dear readers, there are no pills, no magic bullets. Nev...

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us…”  Charles Dickens Taken after surviving my 9th annual 150+ mile bike ride for MS I barely understood A Tale of Two Cities when I read it as a young teen. Yet somewhere in my memory the very first sentence has stuck. Ten years ago I experienced 2 years of Hell. The list of craziness included, but I can assure you was not limited to, the following: My father was diagnosed with lung cancer. He was a non-smoker with no environmental or genetic risk factors that we know of. He died 14 months later, at the age of 68. My dog died the day after my dad’s funeral. I experienced double vision leading to a diagnosis of MS 4 months after this symptom. My hu...

An RD’s lessons from the Harvard Study Thanks to Right Angle Tutors for use of this photo Harvard researchers just discovered the cure to the so-called obesity epidemic. Or so you may think from their press release June 22, 2011 and from the media blitz that followed Effect of Lifestyle On Weight Gain, published in the NEJM. Powerful statements linking specific foods and food categories with resulting weight change emerged. And any progress we had made as a society toward a balanced approach to eating, to a move away from rigid food rules, crazy diets, and food paranoia was destroyed. They concluded the following: There are ‘good’ foods and there are ‘bad’ foods  Focusing on specific foods to avoid versus counting total calories is the way to consume less  Changing carbohydrate type is the answer for weight control, by eating less sugars and other sweets Fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts and yogurt prevent long term weight gain Do the fruit and nuts get to count as a fru...