Samuel Beckett is my Diet Guru. I’m failing better.

When it comes to dieting and other seemingly impossible ventures, I’ve tried to adopt Samuel Beckett’s view of failure: “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail better.” (It works really well as I try to learn how to draw, as well.)

You know, that Samuel Beckett. The Nobel Prize-winning Irish playwright who by the looks of him never did one day of battle with his sugar, protein, and carb ratios. Other life problems he may have had but being overweight was not one of them.

But, his knowledge of failure is universal and I’ve been failing better for seven years in the weight management department. (I’m also a failed playwright but that one ended years ago with “No matter.”)

The comment sections of recent articles in the NYTimes about how diets don’t work suggest more folks need to read Samuel Beckett for diet advice and stop listening to their TV personal trainer or latest diet guru wizard.

Folks respond with resignation or outrage/anger to these articles as if their own success were in the hands of these journalists and scientists and their “facts”.

The journalist, the academics, the obesity researchers are just the messengers. But, I understand why there is such an emotional response.

But. Before you raise the white flag of surrender, it is good to keep in mind that they are reporting only from the mighty planet of failures because there are no, as in zero, research studies on those of us who succeed. They refer only to “anecdotal” stories of folks who have successfully kept the weight off as if they were faint signals from unknown galaxies picked up on a billion-dollar radar system atop high Chilean mountains.

It must be depressing to read these articles if you are in the “Try again” phase.

I can’t argue metabolism, neuroscience, hormones. But, I am reading these articles with seven years of maintaining a sixty-pound weight-loss, so I must know something at least about myself.

And, here it is. If I can do it without super-galactic powers of discipline then, chances are you can fail better, too.

I have no special metabolism, in fact, I think mine is the one handicapped like the Kentucky Derby horse deemed likely to be dead last if not wagered to collapse en-route to the finish line.

I am one who has to eat less than someone who weighs the same but without a lifelong weight problem. Just to maintain my weight, I’ll have to move more, juggle portion size, food choices, and # of steps in a day ad infinitum. My future is my present: I need to deal with it every day. How I got this way is no longer my concern because no explanation actually helped me do something about it.

It’s simply a fact of my life I now accept. I disregard it at my own peril and have done exactly that several times in my life until the past seven years. Like any chronic disease, it has challenges I wish I didn’t have to deal with but in order to manage the disease (that’s what it feels like even if it isn’t technically that) I have to put on my reality glasses.

If the scientists have an endless stream of studies that say most will regain lost weight, some react as if these authors were snatching hope away from the innocent.

Yet, look around. This is, in effect, what many of our own personal experiences have been like, more often than not, as well as the experience of many we know. There’s not a week goes by that I don’t meet someone who is trying once again to lose the weight they have previously lost, often using the same food program.

I am trying to interview folks on my podcast, Podsnacks, the weekly edition of my daily blog, Art of the Diet, who have maintained a significant weight loss for over a year as a way to counterbalance all of the doom and gloom stories. We know all of these stories. We have written some of them.

I want to introduce into the ‘ether’ of conversation and possibilities the voices and stories of folks who are actually maintaining their weight for years, not just months. Day after day. Week after week. Year after year.

None of them wear superman or superwoman suits. Just a variety of ordinary Clark or Claire Kents’ who make no stops at a phone booth even if they could find one in 2016.

I have learned from each and every one of them: their food program may be different, attitudes toward exercise may be different, many aspects of their day in and day out may vary, but what they all seem to have in common is a diligence to watch the scale, the portions, the food choices before that slippery slope becomes an avalanche. Habits control their faulty brain switch day after day.

I don’t think it’s a specific food plan that saves the day, either, it seems to be the person doing the food plan. Some plans may have more health benefits or be more compatible with personality, lifestyle and health needs, but in the end, any food program requires folks to keep following it, living it after the weight-loss period.

And, over time, this is where they all seem to break down according to all these academic studies. Time/duration in any program becomes its own Kryptonite. Adaptations that seem easy or at least doable in the weight-loss phase over time in the maintenance phase become challenged. Why? Apparently, it’s not willpower (although that is part of it) as much as some sort of lost-pounds brain magnet. I call it the Jackson Five “I Want You Back” of brain signals.

Ooh ooh baby
(I want you back)
Yeah yeah yeah yeah
(I want you back)
Na na na na

Those of us who have managed to successfully maintain a weight loss are used only as “anecdotes” in these articles and interviews and often described as if we are some rare peacocks who live in the wild. We are beneath the radar of interest that is for sure. It simply isn’t very interesting, I guess, to study why some folks one day can manage their weight after years of being unsuccessful. The focus of these articles were the contestants who regained not the one who maintained and her story reflected almost heroic levels of discipline and dedication.

I’m certainly not capable of heroic dedication but nor do I think I am such a rare bird as the media would have you believe. I am not maintaining a schedule of exercise and limited calories as severe as those summarized in these articles. But, yes, it’s a daily problem to solve.

I have to be vigilant. My body wants those lost pounds back no matter what food program I’m on. That is exactly how it feels: my body is secretly playing for the opposition.

But, once you really know that listening to your body’s signals may not be in your best interest, you can develop strategies to deal with this faulty switch. Ever trusted someone who lied, who though charming, was a bit of cheat for inexplicable reasons? Same thing. Except now we have some explanations for our lose and regain selves that isn’t just the mirror as we gaze into it. This knowledge really does feel like a relief to know, more than a burden, at least to me.

My brain is the repository of many other wonderful abilities but on this score it is well, frankly? In PG language, it’s just all screw’d up. Let the neuroscientists and obesity researchers explain it, I’ll just tell you what it feels like, ok?

These articles help me understand some of the technical reasons. But, they do not make me feel there’s no hope. Just more reasons to keep on being vigilant.

I make my own hope cocktail with a dash of honesty and humility (weighing in every week whether I want to or not is the reality ballpark) and humor, trying to develop very late in my life a sense of discipline and creativity about my food choices.

Every day, it’s a struggle. Every damn day. But, it's doable and I’m not living a heroic life full of perspiration. I’ve worn fitness trackers intermittently during this seven-year period that would send me messages periodically suggesting that they’d seen dead people take more steps than I did the previous week. I’m exaggerating, of course, but not by much.

Losing and maintaining 10% of body weight seems to be a reachable goal to some obesity researchers and they suggest that is all one has to lose in order to begin achieving health benefits.

I lost 29% of my body weight (I just calculated it for the first time in seven years) and while it has done absolutely nothing to improve my personality but my knees are brand new.

PS. Here’s a video about the radar system in the Chilean mountains. Click here. It’s good to watch if for no other reason it’ll get your mind off neuroscience, hormones, and the TV show “The Biggest Loser”.

Pat Coakley-Archive: www.artofthediet.com