I set out to solve the puzzle of my overeating with this podcast.  This led me on a journey to unravel everything I thought I knew, and everything I thought I was.  Here I am now, 49 episodes later, 49 pounds lost.  That unraveling has shown me the reasons why I overeat.  I hold those reasons like precious gems - and decide if I want to be a person who continues to overeat in response to those reasons.

What is the role of exercise for weight loss?  If you are like me, it's counter productive to weight loss.  My history with exercise was sporadic and intense, and totally ineffective for weight loss, for reasons that surprised me.  Join me today for my personal exercise history and what I am doing now.

Some days, I flirt with 145 on the scale, and I can say I've lost 50 pounds.  In this last phase of active weight loss, I rigorously examine the causes of my overeating.  This allows me to anticipate events that have led to overeating in the past.  Lucky me, I learned this skill just in time for election season.  Elections are many things, but never a reason to overeat.

Lately, I've been trying to tell myself that I've been dealt a bad hand of cards.  I want to tell myself that if I were dealt a different hand, my outcomes would be different.  And I don't stop there.  I want to tell everyone about the bad hand I've been dealt.  But have you ever noticed that getting sympathy is like eating Halloween candy?  There is momentary comfort, followed by an emptiness and an immediate desire for more?  Listen in today to hear about playing the hand you are holding.

Making progress on my health and wellness goals will never be done on autopilot.  Losing 45 pounds has required consistent attention and focus.  Sometimes, life gets in the way.  Today I’m sharing the story of what I learned from a lost month.

What is a blamestorm and how do we tame it?  Tune in today for a dispatch from the middle of a blamestorm in sunny Portugal.

Last week, I was walking down the High Street in Edinburgh, and I saw an El Camino idling at the light with California plates.  I watched, stunned, as the car in the front, truck in the back drove off down George Street, and I had so many unanswered questions.  For listeners joining in the middle of my story, today’s episode is a lookback at lessons learned so far in my life as a glucose monitor evangelist.

When it comes to managing the thought playlist in my brain, both thoughts served up to me by other people and those I create myself, I like to imagine myself walking through life with a badminton racket casually in one hand and a Whac-a-mole mallet in my back pocket.  Thriving in my life requires mental agility.  Errant and pernicious thoughts impede that mental agility.  What thoughts require a racket and what thoughts require a mallet?

Failing to navigate the double binds in our lives keeps us stuck in the stories that other people tell about us for us.  But failing to navigate the cognitive dissonance in our own brains keeps us stuck in the stories we tell ourselves.  In these last fifteen months, I’ve learned that keeping my glucose low and steady does lead to weight loss.  But, more important – low and steady glucose gives me the mental agility I need to navigate the double binds and cognitive dissonance of every day modern life.

A double bind is an emotionally distressing dilemma in communication in which an individual receives two or more contradicting messages.  This creates a situation in a successful response to one message results in a failed response to the other.  In my life as an overeater, I was trapped in double binds that were invisible to me, but certainly distressing.  Things I accepted as truth, like “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day”, were actively working against ever changing my eating habits. Join me today as I share the way we author a way out of these double binds that is unique to who we are.