Here's a great rundown of food addiction as it interacts with, and sometimes substitutes for, addictions that most everyone acknowledges more easily. The writer is Dr. Vera Tarman, medical director of a Toronto treatment center.

So is weight loss an important measure of whether eating-disorder treatment is working? Even getting past the eating-disorder corners that don’t address overweight, the answer is apparently not.

During her opening remarks at the Binge Eating Disorder Association national conference last Friday, founder Chevese Turner argued for a definition of recovery that doesn’t include it. Later, during a researchers’ panel, Denise Wilfley of the Washington University School of Medicine, chimed in, saying that “if someone is having a stable weight, that’s a very important outcome.”

Though I've been invited, I haven't experienced the COR Retreat in suburban Minneapolis, but I'm very interested in what they're doing. Cofounder Burt Nordstrand, whom I met when our similar-themed books were released about the same time, sent me this video to share:

Hello friends and readers, and welcome to this leap and election year.

I find myself limping into the new year, dogged by "should haves" and "haven't dones," which don't usually fit into my outlook, but here I am. My experience tells me I need to accept where I am before I can change, so at least I'm that far on the path, but not as far as I'd like to be. That qualifies, at best, as semi-acceptance.

Dr. Marty Lerner, chief at Milestones in Recovery, a South Florida treatment center for eating disorders, will be the radio tonight beginning at 9 p.m. Eastern. You can hear a live stream of the show here.

So what does God have to do with obesity? Obviously, what God has to do with anything is a huge, confusing, inflammatory topic — and above all hopelessly inconclusive — and yet I proceed:

A lot, I say. 

As many readers know (and perhaps are tired of hearing), I was overweight for 30 years-plus, topping out at 365 in 1991. I've now been in a normal-size body for almost 20 years, and one of the most significant changes underlying that transformation is that I let go of my arrogance around the question of God's existence.

Steady readers will know that I'm a big proponent of treatment for food addiction. In 1991, I got it — nine weeks in the eating disorders unit of an accredited psychiatric hospital, and it was one of the most important interludes of my life.

I don't want to go into the reasons why, but that sort of treatment is far less available today, and making a case for the diagnosis of food addiction, so that insurance will support its treatment, is the primary reason I wrote my book.