Michael Prager

This website is misleading!

Michael — Wed, 21 Feb 2018 17:51:02 +0000

I built my website to help me reach my audience — for speaking, coaching, and writing. I hope the site conveys that.

Here’s the thing: I’m not doing that any more.

I have surrendered wanting to be a professional speaker. Having valuable information to share is absolutely no assurance of success.

I am not pursuing coaching clients, and for today, would probably not take one on.

Check the date stamps on my blog, and you can see how much I’ve been writing.

So why does my website still say that stuff?

One, it’ll cost more money than I want to spend to revamp the site, especially since for now, I don’t have a new shingle to hang. I could take the whole thing down, but still want the platform to opine into the ether, whether anyone’s reading or not.

Second, it took me just about a year to face changing just my LinkedIn page, which I finally have done. Failing at these pursuits has brought substantial emotional loss that still hurts. Yes, I know that casting it as failure is a bad idea. I might tell — or, before this happened, might have told — others what I’m being told now. "It wasn’t failure. You felt you had something to share, and bless you, you did your best.”

The way I receive that now is just “blah, blah, blah.” I concede that my stance reflects poorly on me. I agree that I’m deriving some “benefit” from holding onto the hurt. I accept that I’ll be better off when it’s just something I tried, without emotional ballast and harsh self-judgment. That would be better, and is what I would want for a dear loved one. But I ain’t there yet, and to say otherwise would add to the shame I feel.

I consider it a milestone to be discussing this. I stopped pursuing the work in December 2016, and 2017 was a pretty hard year, emotionally. I feel like I’m making progress.

What am I doing now? I’m seeking jobs that would exploit my highly honed writing abilities (no shame there!), and driving for Lyft and Uber. No need for a website for that.

Blog categories:

blog

professional speaking

coaching

writing

shame

I don't have a nutrition credential. Doesn't seem like that's very valuable, anyway.

Michael — Wed, 21 Feb 2018 17:10:02 +0000

Up to now, it would be wrong to describe this as sparring, because you have to have a partner for that. In the recent past, I’ve been opining, and someone whom I’ll keep nameless has been vehemently dismissing my perspective. Not just disagreeing, but dissing, and responding to claims I don't make and beliefs I don't hold.

OK, sure, it’s just another moment in social media.

But his last couple of comments have been worming into my serenity, until I decided today to address them. But I’m not just talking to him.

He thinks, apparently, that I’m seeking to give people professional advice on nutrition, and he finds that impertinent, horrifying, and unacceptable. Very clearly, I am not a nutritionist, and I have long been clear where my “authority” lies. I want my readers to know, so they can make up their own minds.

So here it is again: My training and professional experience was as a journalist. I practiced it for more than 30 years, during which time I never sought or earned any certification regarding nutrition. From childhood and into that period, I gained and lost hundreds of pounds, experiencing the multi-fanged misery that I have always equated with being obese. (Long ago, I wrote a collection of my assumptions, one of which is, "Being fat sucks." I did this so I didn't have to lengthen my lengthy posts by restating common themes.)

In my early 30s, I was finally led to a path that allowed me to lose the weight — about 160 pounds — and keep it off — for more than 30 years. I do not claim greatness, or even cleverness, from my experiences. In fact, it was mistaken belief in my great cleverness that led me ever downward, and surrender of that belief that let me experience the broad changes that have included freedom from obesity.

As most people know, losing a lot of weight and keeping it off is fairly rare. I think many people who try to lose weight and keep it off, but have failed, would be interested in hearing the experiences of someone who has; it’s why I wrote my first book, “Fat Boy Thin Man.” The second paragraph makes my “authority,” as I perceive it, quite clear. “Well, I’m no guru.”

Despite consistent commercial advice to present myself as an oracle, I’ve avoided any hint that I have professional nutritional credential.

On that score, I will state, again, that I have a wonderful nutritionist, Theresa Wright of Renaissance Nutrition in East Norriton, Pa. She has been helping me cope with our processed-food, relentlessly marketed obesogenic world for about 20 years. I put great stock in her caring advice, and have referred her, as well as a small group of other nutritionists whom I believe in, myriad times. (Go to this link if you want to see the whole list. Please be in touch if you think your nutritionist deserves to be on the list. Or if you’re a nutritionist and think you belong there.) So the facts show that I believe in nutritional advice.

But I’ll also say, again: Why would I *want* to have credentials as a dietitian? As an institution, it’s pretty much a failure: Two out of three adults, and one out of three children. are obese or overweight. Is that the fault of dietitians? No, and it would be unfair to say otherwise. But it sure is hard to see how the institution of nutritional advice-giving is leading to healthy nutrition in a macro view.

I think it is very supportable to opine, meanwhile, that the Academy for Nutrition and Dietetics, the licensing body that fights tooth and claw to retain its monopoly on registering dietitians, has little credibility. For a long time, ten percent of its budget came from Big Food — Coke, and Pepsi, and McDonald’s, and others — and its annual trade show has had huge exhibits from all of them on the floor. (I don't know if this is still true. Its website no longer lists them as sponsors, which may or may not mean they're not. I have queried AND and will update if I receive a reply. I do know that AND's leadership defended the relationships for many years.)

I opine that Big Food is a leading cause of overeating and undernutrition, and therefore should be the foe of a group that insists it has sole authority to advise us on nutrition. Instead, it’s on their payroll.

Professionally, I have had opportunity to ask RDs why they belong to such an organization, and the reply is pretty uniform: "I have to belong so I can be an RD, which I trained for. I don’t respect the organization’s accepting money like that, but there’s nothing I can do about it.”

So there you have it. I'm not an RD, and have no other like credential. I have experience that may or may not justify my opinions. You decide. But please, be respectful. I try to be.

Blog categories:

food addiction

obesity

nutrition

registered dietitians

Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics

Big Food

Out of relapse, for today

Michael — Tue, 23 Jan 2018 13:47:29 +0000

I don't want to be blogging right now, but I realize that I need to update the previous post, about my being in relapse, 'cause for today anyway, I'm not anymore. I can't have such a dangerously misleading headline being what readers see first.

For 46 days, I've been abstaining from foods and food behaviors that are unhealthy for me. In early December, I went away to Acorn Food Dependency Recovery Services, a Florida-based group from which I've sought help for more than 20 years, and I've been better since.

I came away with a renewed conviction that I *must* practice the disciplines that have brought me so far. (I'll list them, again, some other time.) They'd become "optional" over the past couple of years, and my relapse is proof again that they are what keep me from falling into a trough of food and despair. And, I can only keep them green when I ask for help, accept it, and offer it to others.

I'm spending more time on these things, and oddly, I find I have more time, not less, because I'm not mooning in front of the TV. I've returned to the gym (five times so far, and expect to go today), am doing more cooking for me and the family, and in general things are looking up. I have no guarantees, except for the one that says I will — typically, though certainly not exclusively — experience the results of the choices I make.

For today, I'm making healthier, more sustaining choices. Decades of experience tells me that with help, I can continue doing that — but that I can also fail to continue, if I let it slide.

Blog categories:

I am in relapse

Michael — Fri, 01 Dec 2017 14:38:24 +0000

I’m writing it anyway, but I fear that this post will be a blog cliche: Writer posts often for a while, even a long while, but then fades away. Then she/he writes again, saying “I’ve been gone, but XXX happened, and now I’m back.”

I frickin’ hate being a cliche, almost enough to not even write this. But, here I am, albeit without any promise that I’ll ever write after this. But like every writer ever, I have something I think I should contribute.

My writing has centered on my experience as a recovering food addict who was obese for years, and who has been maintaining a 155-pound loss for about 30 years. Because it hasn’t been my experience for a very long time, I haven’t written much about relapse.

But it’s where I’m writing from today. I have been on a downward path (spiritually, emotionally, and now, finally, on the scale — down as in up!) for maybe a couple of years, and my eating is, presently, as bad as it has been in … I honestly don't know how long it's been since it's been this bad. 15 years, anyway.

To illustrate (certainly not to brag), here’s what I ate yesterday: A facsimile of a typical breakfast — yogurt, fruit, and grain — but with larger portions. At mid-morning, a 2-oz packet of peanuts and a bag of chips. For lunch, $15 worth of wings and fries, following immediately by a bag of corn nuts from the drug store whose lot I’d parked in to eat my deep-fried dishes. Maybe 90 minutes later, I went to TJs for a bag of dried figs and a big bag of parsnip chips, and then went to a different lot to eat them. I felt pretty ill after that, and ate only apples and grapes from there.

It’s not my worst day since I entered this ever-deepening crevice of self abuse, but it’s bad enough. I can’t live like this. For a little while now — months? —I've been experiencing, occasionally, little blips of consciousness — which I know is barely descriptive, but I don’t know how to say it better. It’s like if they sustained, I’d pass out, but they last less than a second. They came yesterday at a greater rate than ever — a couple of dozen, maybe? — and I wonder whether I need to go to the doctor about them. What would I say? And what annoying flurry of tests would such an amorphous report trigger?

So you see: I fear that my eating is directly threatening my health — never mind the obvious long-term peril — and I’m not going to a doctor, but I am continuing to eat. This is how it has always been for food addicts not in recovery— suicide on the installment plan.

I am talking with a caregiver who has helped me repeatedly when I’ve been in the shit about going away again — I’ve checked flights, car rentals, and other scenarios. But for today, I’m “thinking” about that, and still eating.

There’s plenty more I can share about it, but, I've always written longer than readers want to read. Maybe, I’ll cover those in further posts, but no promises.

Blog categories:

relapse

weight

food addiction

And yet, I remain committed to what I can change

Michael — Wed, 07 Jun 2017 15:21:28 +0000

This is a reply to Dr. Jon Robison, with whom I occasionally spar gently on the LinkedIn platform. I began it as a comment on the platform, but it said I’d exceeded the allowable character count.

The conversation began over a post I shared about a sugary-soda tax being implemented in Catalonia, Spain. His most recent comment was …

I am so glad you can see that Michael - It is a huge problem in the health promotion industry and has been for decades. All of the focus on personal responsibility for health ignores the reality that our individual health behaviors account for only about 25% of the disparities in health across our nation -and of course eating (food) is only one of those behaviors. No on will ever get away with taxing Starbucks and other expensive sugar and caffeine laden drinks because rich people will never permit it. And ongoing pressuring to get people to eat mostly fruits and vegetables, organic, lean meats etc. will continue to fail as well until there is social justice and equity in this country. Until that time - all of this just ends up heaped on the backs of people with little ability to follow through - creating more stress and less health. Health and weight issues are much, much more complex than we make them out to be and it is easy to do more harm than good if we are not very careful. For example 1/3 to 2/3 of people who participate in weight loss programs gain back more weight than they lose. How is it possibly ethical to subject people to these without advising them of the likely outcomes and potential iatrogenesis? - Dr. Jon

This begins my reply:

Jon, I am familiar with your slant, as I'm sure you are with mine. I don't say you're wrong about anything you say. I just have a different perspective.

Absolutely, financial ability dominates the options people have, for food as in for all things. Instead of considering all those who can't eat more nutritiously under current conditions, I consider all those who can, and who might do so more often if encouraged to. Not only would that help them, but the increase in demand for healthy foods would bring their prices down, a boon for everyone.

You excoriate dieting not only as a non-working institution, but as something worse. I agree with that, wholeheartedly. I also agree that prospective dieters should know the success rate of what they're attempting. You refer to "weight loss programs," but I do not. I never benefitted from one, and I endorse none.

And yet, I'm maintaining a 155-pound loss for more than a quarter century. I did it without dieting, although what went on my plate has changed substantially. It's not just word gymnastics; there is a clear difference between "going on a diet" and "changing what I ate," and I can explore that more deeply if that would be useful.

My view is that I'm not that special, and if I could do this, after decades of inability to do it, then others can too. The loss I've sustained began in an even more draconian food environment, when organic was far less available, when "builds strong bodies 12 ways" was credible, when the processed-food backlash had nowhere near begun.

Instead of bemoaning all that is wrong — and yes, a lot is — please consider that humans have always been subject to hostile environments, and that with sufficient understanding of the challenge and a commitment to overcome it, we have thrived.

We should especially be able to do so under this challenge, since the hostile environment is of our own making.

Blog categories:

dieting

personal responsibility

environment

What really counts in weight loss

Michael — Wed, 15 Mar 2017 23:19:07 +0000

I spent a while with Sean Anderson, the velvet-voiced proprietor of Transformation Planet, last week, and this is what resulted:

IMO, you should listen just to hear Sean speak. He's got pipes! (Yes, he also has substance, tact, and sensibility.) Good guy, good talk.

Blog categories:

Being obese sucks

Michael — Wed, 15 Mar 2017 15:45:09 +0000

... and I just don't know why anyone would defend a person's right to be live obesely.

This *isn't* me saying that obese people are bad. This is me saying I was obese, and there was nothing good about it. N-o-t-h-i-n-g-!

Even a quarter century later, I'm glad I'm not obese, and I'm willing to work against a return to it. It is easily(!) worth doing, and pays rewards every single day.

I am certain that the vast majority of obese people can escape it — without surgery — as I have, and that the vast majority of those people would like being not obese more than they like being obese. It is unfathomable to me to defend a condition that has so little to recommend it.

Does someone have the right to be obese? Sure. They also have the rights to do drugs, avoid community, and even commit suicide. But I don't recommend them, and feel sad when someone choses those routes.

That is all for today.

Blog categories:

obesity

health

overweight

Superior explanation of a complicated subject

Michael — Tue, 14 Mar 2017 13:20:13 +0000

This may seem pretty random, but I point you toward this post for a couple of reasons.

First, it is, to me, a superior example of explaining esoteric math in a fashion that nonscientists can understand. It is very hard — I never really know how incomplete my knowledge is until I have to explain it to readers making no claim on that knowledge. IMO, George Dallas shows how well he knows his subject.

And then, of course, there is Dallas's chosen subject, fractal geometry. One wouldn't read deeply on a subject she or he wasn't interested in, but I've been hunting for a couple of days to understand the significance of fractals in general, and especially what's known as the Mandelbrot set, a classic fractal shape. I've been fascinated by Benoit Mandelbrot, and fractals, for at least a decade, but have never known their practical value.

So here's where I try to explain what I may or may not grasp. The geometry most of us learned in high school described squares, triangles, and other regular shapes created by simple rules: Four 90-degree angles connecting four lines of equal length creates a square, for example. The rules in fractal geometry are similarly simple: Take a value. Run it through a simple formula. Take the resulting value and run it through the same formula. Repeat. Graph those values and you get complex shapes known as fractals.

What distinguishes these forms of geometry — classic and fractal — is that the former describes shapes rarely appearing in nature. But the self-similarity (pieces of the whole have the same characteristics as the whole) found in most fractals is useful for mathematically describing nature. For example, a tree that grows from trunk to bough to branch to twig in the same way — say, in two divisions at each transition — can be said to be self-similar.

That's the value of fractal geometry — it is vastly more suited to describe and model the natural world. Read more about it at George Dallas's blog. He taught me a lot of what I think I know.

Blog categories:

science

Mandelbrot

"10 Words or Less" with Shawna Pelton

Michael — Mon, 20 Feb 2017 21:05:33 +0000

Shawna Pelton is a metaphysical healer and transformational coach who came to her work, as many in the helping professions do, out of the crucible of hardship. She’s a widowed single mom, whose partner died from addiction. Her training is incredibly diverse, ranging from the Global College of Natural Medicine to the Divine Living Academy. I found her to be a lovely, ambitious person eager to help others.

Blog categories:

It's not morality; it's a response to a public-health emergency

Michael — Mon, 20 Feb 2017 19:49:06 +0000

Australian political leader Barnaby Joyce (above) came across my screen today, and I couldn’t let him go.

An institute study argues that a national anti-obesity effort should be funded by a tax on sugary beverages, and Joyce decried it as “another moralistic tax.” [Link includes video of interview.]

Joyce calls the idea “bonkers mad” because it would create “massive problems” for the sugar industry. He says the Australian Tax Office isn’t going to make people lose weight, going for a run and cutting portion sizes will. You may be saying, “Yeah, so what? This is how conservatives react to this proposed public-health response to an evident public-health problem.” I would respond that you’re correct.

The reason for writing is to poke at this idea of a “moralistic tax.” There’s nothing moral about it. The ubiquity of refined sugar, most notoriously in sugary beverages, threatens public health. Substantial societal costs result from this threat, and it is the job of government to meet public-health threats.

To say that we should leave public-health threats to personal responsibility — now that's “bonkers mad.”

Meanwhile, consider cigarette taxes. Quite a few people, myself included, quit smoking at least in part because of their rising cost. For me, it was when Ronald Reagan doubled the cigarette tax in his first term. It wasn’t the 8-cent rise, it was the idea of doubling it. That’s it, I said, I’m not going to be Uncle Sam’s monkey anymore.

We have excellent primary information that says that taxes on a noxious substance are an effective method of reducing their market attractiveness, and the money raised can be used to raise other efforts that help people to stop using.

Yes, people can and should make healthy choices. But when they’re not, and public health suffers, and the public must bear the cost, governments that don’t act are malfeasant.

Mr. Joyce wails that the sugar industry will suffer if policy is changed. But there’s already lots of suffering, for individuals drowning in the flood of sugar syrup, and the taxpayers and ratepayers who must bear the increased costs.

But Mr. Joyce apparently just feels the industry’s pain. We can see who he’s presenting.

Blog categories:

refined sugar

Politics

public health

Michael Prager

This website is misleading!

I don't have a nutrition credential. Doesn't seem like that's very valuable, anyway.

Out of relapse, for today

I am in relapse

And yet, I remain committed to what *I* can change

What really counts in weight loss

Being obese sucks

Superior explanation of a complicated subject

"10 Words or Less" with Shawna Pelton

It's not morality; it's a response to a public-health emergency

And yet, I remain committed to what I can change