This is the seventh in a series of eight posts detailing concepts and attitudes for sustainable personal change. As one would expect of someone maintaining a 155-pound loss for more than 20 years, my examples have to do with food and weight, but their point is to illustrate how anyone can achieve and maintain healthy change. Today’s concept: “If you’ve had enough, have you done enough?”

This is the sixth in a series of eight posts detailing concepts and attitudes for sustainable personal change. As one would expect of someone maintaining a 155-pound loss for more than 20 years, my examples have to do with food and weight, but their point is to illustrate how anyone can achieve and maintain healthy change. Today’s concept:  “Not everything has to make sense.”

This is the fifth in a series of eight posts detailing concepts and attitudes for sustainable personal change. As one would expect of someone maintaining a 155-pound loss for more than 20 years, my examples have to do with food and weight, but their point is to illustrate how anyone can achieve and maintain healthy change. Today’s concept:  “Working together isn’t enough.”

This is the fourth in a series of eight posts detailing concepts and attitudes for sustainable personal change. As one would expect of someone maintaining a 155-pound loss for more than 20 years, my examples have to do with food and weight, but their point is to illustrate how anyone can achieve and maintain healthy change. Today’s concept:  “Working together is a selfish act.”

This is the third in a series of eight posts detailing concepts and attitudes for sustainable personal change. As one would expect of someone maintaining a 155-pound loss for more than 20 years, my examples have to do with food and weight, but their point is to illustrate how anyone can achieve and maintain healthy change. Today’s concept: “It matters.”

This is the second in a series of eight posts detailing concepts and attitudes for sustainable personal change. As one would expect of someone maintaining a 155-pound loss for more than 20 years, my examples have to do with food and weight, but their point is to provide both concepts and practical steps anyone can take to achieve and maintain healthy change. Today’s concept: “It’s never one thing.”

This is the first in a series of eight posts detailing concepts and attitudes for sustainable personal change. As one would expect of someone maintaining a 155-pound loss for more than 20 years, my examples have to do with food and weight, but their point is to provide concepts and their practical outgrowths to help anyone achieve and maintain healthy change. Today’s concept: “It’s all one thing.”

Over the past 10 years or so, I have involved myself in two discussions professionally: causes and remedies of obesity, and saving the planet from global climate change.

I have begun a very busy speaking schedule that I hope I can sustain:
* Yesterday, I spoke to an undergrad class in the Lynch School of Education at Boston College.
* Sunday, I'm speaking to two services (9 and 11) of the West Hartford (Conn.) Unitarian-Universalist Church.
* Monday and Tuesday, I'm participating in several activities at Phillips Exeter in Exeter, N.H. The highlight for me will be addressing the 900-student body Tuesday morning, by far my largest audience.
* A week from Sunday, I'll be visiting the Brookfield (Mass.) Unitarian-Universalist Church.

I sent out yesterday the first edition of "Sustainable You," a newsletter I hope to post about once a month. In addition to keeping readers abreast of my speaking gigs, I'll be using it to lay out the principles of sustainable personal change, as I've defined them via the experience of keeping 155 pounds off my body for more than 20 years. I'm sure I'll find other interesting things to talk about as well.

Early in my days as a reporter, I remember reaching a frustration point in my writing a few times and just typing some trash (not unfactual, just unartful), thinking, "no one will see it." As if, very soon after I filed, they weren't going to print 18,000 copies of it.

I felt a vestige of that a couple of times in the past week — you mean, anyone sees this thing after I hit "save"?— when readers of this blog asked me if there was something wrong with its RSS feed, or me, since I'd sent nothing out in a while. (Until yesterday morning, it had been since Dec. 10.)