If you’ve been reading along, you know I’ve now had several posts interacting with Dr. Christopher Ochner, a prominent obesity researcher at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. This is another one, responding specifically to his guest post; I just want to say, to keep saying, that Ochner is being generous with his time, and I’m grateful for the interaction. My goal is not to flame or anything like it; I believe we have interests in common, and have the ability to inform and enlighten each other.

The statistics say that 95 percent of people can’t follow a restrictive diet, the doctor says, and surely there is some real truth in that. But also, even if the logic is somewhat circular, it’s obvious to me that one factor leading to that statistic is that people seeking nutritional guidance — 95 percent of them, I bet — are being told that restrictive diets don’t work!

And yet, I’m someone who was obese into my 30s, who reached 365 in 1991, and who now is maintaining a 155-pound loss for more than two decades. Yes, this is just one person’s experience, and does not equate to science.

Ochner accounts for my experience by saying I’m exceptional, to which first I should say, “Thanks!” But even as I concede that my story is an exception to common experience, and that’s what “exceptional” means, I do not believe it. I’m fortunate, but ordinary. If anything, I experienced the disappointments of obesity to the degree that I was motivated to try tactics that many wouldn’t.

This is the key, in my opinion. People who are sufficiently motivated will try almost anything — the recent true-life cine-dramatic illustration is “127 Hours”  — and there’s also the parable about a guy who has a cough, so he takes a lozenge or some syrup. But it persists, and a doctor tells him he has lung cancer. Instantly, the guy is willing to sit for bombardments of radiation and submit to regular injections of noxious chemicals. What changed wasn’t his condition; it was his understanding of his condition.

People will do anything if they think they have to. 

The other quarrel I have with the doctor’s reply is his descriptions of what I have done. I would not describe what I have done as reducing calories and increasing physical activity. What I have done is act on a deeper understanding of what created my extreme obesity, and respond in kind.

Yes, I had to change how I eat, and for some periods, I’ve increased my exercise. (In my opinion, anyone who doesn’t is missing out of huge benefit, regardless of body size.) But until those two threads were part of a larger fabric, I could lose weight — more than 350 pounds before I was 30 — but I couldn’t keep it off.

Even having changed the way I eat — substantially — I do not feel deprived, and bridle when I hear nutritional leaders say that “deprivation diets don’t work.” (Ochner used the word “restrictive” instead, but the sense applies.)

I do not feel deprived. Repeat: I. Do. Not. Feel. Deprived.

My strong opinion — and of course, you’re to evaluate for yourself — is that this isn’t the result of self-deception. I follow a richly varied food plan in which I eat 6 times a day, in which I can get my nutritional and gustatorial needs met in almost any restaurant. When I was still working in an office, my colleagues would comment enviously on the weighed-and-measured fare I would bring from home, both for quantity and for selection.

Instead of feeling deprived, I’ve simply made choices. I think that ice cream and pizza and onion rings taste great, and do occasionally feel a twinge about not eating them. But briefly put, I have experienced my life with those dishes in it, and experienced life without them, and on balance, without is better.

I fear I’m losing readers already for having gone one too long, but I’ve got to add one more piece: I acknowledge that science-backgrounded nutritional advisers are in business, and they would fare far better if their entreaties to give up foods were backed by research. People — especially those sufficiently disordered around food that they seek out professional nutritional advice — are the ones most likely to balk at giving up faves.

But on the whole, standard nutritional advice is producing the pale results one would expect from tinkering around the edges.

I have often opined that 30 percent of people who studiously gave up flour and refined sugar for, say, 30 or 60 days — long enough to experience what life is like without those inputs — would choose not to return, not out of rectitude but out of strict self-interest. I base this on no science whatsoever, but live in no fear of being proven wrong. Because suggest that sort of thing to most people and their response is, “Are you kidding me? I’d rather die!”

My experience from having taken those measures — churlishly, slowly —in the context of greater change has been a flowering of my life in ways I couldn’t conceive until I acknowledged my struggles sufficiently to go deep enough to find what worked.

A belt-and-suspenders postscript: Surrending sugar and flour are two tactics that worked for me, but this post is not about them. Those are two examples of continuing to try tactics until I achieved what I was seeking. Not everyone will need the same. But everyone seeking a solution needs to be willing to keep trying solutions until they get the results they want.