Pragerblog

One of the uncomfortable yet useful facets of the weekend was meeting and hearing from people who believe in approaches to overcoming obesity other than the one that works for me.

I heard about one of them from Jean Kristeller, a psychology professor at Indiana State University and president of the Center for Mindful Eating. As you can tell by the name (its, not hers), her efforts are pointed toward getting problem eaters simply to slow down and pay attention to what they’re eating.

My reaction was that I wasn’t going to write about it, because, well, it’s not the solution I use. Yes, that’s childish. So here we are.

Kristeller described the case of one guy in one of her groups, who’s practice was to eat a whole Snickers bar every afternoon. So she had him bring one in and they sliced it up. She said he had one piece, eaten slowly, and his ritual was gone. Once he’d paid attention to what he was eating, he found he didn’t like the chocolate, thought the caramel was too sweet, and found the peanuts stale. She described a similar case in which someone brought a Ho-Ho into the circle, and it was sliced into rounds and eaten slowly, allowing the group to recognize how gross Ho-Hos really are.

Hearing her led me to wonder if, when I was at the same point of weakness that allowed me to get so much out of rehab and support groups, etc., I had come under her guidance, if that could have become the cornerstone of my recovery instead. It’s an interesting thought, but after mulling it for a couple of days, I’ve concluded that for me, it was more than desperation that helped me start to get better. I needed that, but I also needed something more structured.

Nevertheless, I do admire the emphasis on mindfulness. I have learned — oddly, it was only via rehab and support groups, etc. —  how important being in the moment is. And I have observed not only how hard it is to practice it consistently, but how few people do. I would say it is not an American value, though my loving father-in-law (currently pasting me in Scrabble) does not agree.

Applied to poor eating habits, I think it could help many, many people, potentially tens of millions of the 145 million Americans who are overweight or obese. I think it could help just as many people, or more, if it could be brought into their consciousnesses (?) on any grounds. But for those of us who are addicts, I think we would still need more.

What did you do last night?

Well, OK. I didn’t really. It wasn’t last night.

And it wasn’t sleeping with him in, you know, that way. I shared a room with two researchers.

And, he hasn’t actually won the prize yet.

So what am I saying? That several times during the weekend food-addiction conference, I was struck that a future winner was among all the scientists who attended and presented.

You probably know that two of three American adults are either overweight or obese, and that the problem is not at all confined to America. (One of the presenters this weekend said that a Chinese government minister stated recently that overnutrition is a greater problem in his country now the undernutrition. That is one big-ass statement, no?) So someone who comes up with a game-changer, if there is one to be found, would have done something pretty significant.

‘Course, I just want them to prove that food addiction exists. Which it does.

I am, of course, in no position to know which one of the researchers would win it, if indeed any of them would. And I’m not identifying which two I shared the room with, so as not to single them out. I did actually ask one of them directly about Nobel thoughts, not because he raised it — or even close — but because I wondered if scientists ever dare think it. Even though I returned to the subject several times, I couldn’t get him to comment at all. In fact, I’m fairly sure I noted aversion and slight loathing when I made my Nobel point aloud at a (possibly) appropriate time in the program.

Yvonne Sanders-Butler (dressed in blue, right) leads the conference through the Electric Slide before starting the verbal part of her  presentation. The tall, white-haired man is Bart Hoebel of Princeton.

At a conference studded with one top-notch researcher after another, one of the unquestioned hits was Yvonne Sanders-Butler, the Georgian who is principal of Browns Mill Elementary, the nation’s first sugar-free school.

Sanders-Butler began by telling part of her personal story, which included a stroke 13 years ago. “Perhaps the symptoms were there, but I was too high” on food. She said she made a sickbed promise to God that if she survived, she would work for the welfare of children.

Her mission, she said, took the form of removing all refined sugar from her school and taking control of the cafeteria menu so that only healthy foods are served. She said she meets with the cafeteria manager twice a day, and approves every dish that is served to children.

She told of the day the soft-drink company that had contracted with the school district came to deliver its soft-drink machines, and how she physically blocked the door, much the same way that white officials blocked blacks from attending schools in the South.

She said her actions, which she laid the ground for by enlisting the PTO, led to higher test scores and reduced the need for discipline (28 percent) and counseling.

Sanders-Butler came to prominence when ABC news anchor Peter Jennings led his newscast one night telling about the woman from Georgia who had made a dent in the child obesity epidemic. “Angels are placed in your life,” she said. “I have survived because of the media. They have kept me alive for the last 10 years.”

She offered several asides during her talk, including one suggesting that Tom Daschle, who was nominated to be health and human services secretary in the Obama cabinet but had to withdraw because of tax problems, was instead torpedoed by the food industry “They are vicious,” she said. Several conference speakers have talked about the power and tremendous profit motivations of the processed-food industry.

She cited statistics that 5 percent of children ages 6-19 were overweight in 1980, and that the number had risen to about 18 percent in 2007, a rise that mirrors the increase among adults.

She received an extended ovation when she was done speaking, and later, during a brainstorming session of researchers, Eric Stice of the Oregon Research Institute urged a formal study of her methods and results to facilitate widespread implementation. She has a foundation that aids other school districts to explore her methods.

Her website is healthykidssmartkids.com.

[I’m going to bed tonight not knowing if the AP was going to move any version of this story on their wires, so I figured I may as well post it here, to ensure it wasn’t wasted effort. It’s true that I would have written more otherwise, but maybe I’ll revise and extend later.]

Fitness icon Jack LaLanne, 94, flanked by his wife, Elaine, and author Connie Bennett, who interviewed him.

BAINBRIDGE ISLAND, Washington — Fitness and nutrition icon Jack LaLanne, 94, recounted his conversion from rageful “sugarholic” to fitness icon Saturday night for about 100 of the world’s leading researchers, clinicians, and educators on food addiction and obesity Saturday night during a private conference.

“I was an irritable cranky kid, and my mother would appease me [with candy]. I had to have it. It was my whole life,” said LaLanne, who was presented with a plaque and a check for $10,000 for his contributions to fitness by conference host Debbi Brainerd.

But then he went to a lecture on the evils of processed sugar and other foods when he was 15 and he resolved to change his ways. He went on to become TV’s original fitness guru; his show ran from 1951 to 1985.

“Millions of Americans are hooked on sugar. it blows your brain,” LaLanne told the health professionals, who have gathered for three days of meetings. They gave him a sustained ovation after a YouTube clip from 1961 was shown in which he railed against processed sugar and asked viewers to take high-sugar foods out of their diet just for five days.

Presenters Friday and Saturday have included Bart Hoebel of Princeton, whose team has documented the three criteria for sugar addiction in lab experiments, and Ernest Noble of UCLA, who led the team that identified the “addiction gene” in a 1990 study. Yvonne Sanders-Butler, the Georgia school principal of the first sugar-free school in the country, also spoke to the conference.

One last post before I quit for the night: Ashley Gearhardt is a researcher at Yale, a colleague of Brownell’s and a very impressive voice here this weekend. I was lucky to be with her in the afternoon discussion group (in which we’re split into three groups, not only for the chance to get to know each other better than we can with just one speaker at the front of the room), and she raised what I thought was a very good, very critical point: Are we doing ourselves a disservice to call it food addiction?

We’re not talking about all foods, after all — it’s refined foods, or volume, principally. But as Marty Lerner of Milestones in Recovery treatment center in Florida said to me when I met him in Houston in January, “a lot of people think, ‘what next, air addiction?’” (a line I have stolen from him).

I think Gearhardt may have been about to expand on her point, and perhaps suggest what we ought to call it instead, but she was cut off by another speaker and I didn’t get to circle back with her later.

Later, at dinner, my seatmate wondered independently if we aren’t doing ourselves a disservice by calling it an addiction: Wouldn’t we get a lot less flak and a lot more attention and respect if we just said “allergy” instead of “addiction”? I’m not sure she’s wrong. But if both ends of the term aren’t working for us, how do we refer to it?

Three different times today, someone referenced Michael Pollan. I’m no longer surprised, but I continue to be impressed with how deeply Pollan has touched American nerves with his work, particularly “Omnivore’s Dilemma.”

He came into my awareness at a Nieman Narrative Journalism Conference a couple of years ago, though actually, I think I probably already had awareness of him, and that’s why I went to listen to him speak. Regardless, I soon read “Omnivore’s,” and followed that up with “Botany of Desire.”

The first time he showed up in my writing was in my story about Phil Burgess’s home in Westport, which is powered by a wind turbine and conditioned by groundsource heat pumps. I asked Burgess why he went to the trouble and he said, “It’s the whole Michael Pollan thing.” Since then, I’ve been aware not just of Pollan, but of “the whole Michael Pollan thing.” Phil’s not nearly the only one who sees it like that.

It’s only a matter of time before Pollan wins a Pulitzer.

I don’t want to say what I expected from Kelly Brownell, director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale, who was the keynote speaker this morning. But it sure wasn’t what I got.

My first surprise was when one his first points was about how distant we are from our food, not only psychologically — it’s just something that shows up on grocery shelves — but physically. He said that Wal Mart is the nation’s largest seller of organic food, and that a lot of it comes from China, and wondered what all those food-miles do to people’s decision to buy organic food because it’s better for the environment.

I sure didn’t expect to find any of that green talk here at “Food Addiction, the Obesity Epidemic Connection,” the official name for this event. I’d like to find greater confluence, ‘cause then I could stop keeping separate blogs, but for now, I’ll have to be happy with just one more tie.

Brownell is far more of a flamethrower on these topics than I understood. He started his presentation with an ingredients list of a common food-like product (chocolate Pop Tarts) that had 56 chemicals, and wondered if it wouldn’t be better regulated by the EPA than the FDA.

He talked about how our environment — manufactured, not natural — conspires to push some foods more than others. The nation’s agro-nomic policy, for example, heavily subsidizes corn, which he described as Uncle Sam standing at the McDonald’s cash register, helping each customer pay for his meal. It’s not only a nice framing, it’s entirely true: Corn feeds the cow from which the beef and cheese originated, and via HFCS sweetens the soda, and via oil deep-fries the potatoes.

How much do they subsidize the salads, you think?

He shared data from Adam Drewnowski looking at cost per calorie of foods, and the most nutritionally vacant stuff costs the least, and fruits and vegetables cost the most — is that any way to feed a nation? It would be one thing if the free market had brought this about; it would be just as bad for us, but at least the damage wouldn’t be underwritten by you and me.

Brownell made several points about the sophistication and tsunami nature of food marketing, particularly to children. Though I’d heard these marketing terms before, I’d never combined them in thought the way Brownell did: viral, guerilla, and stealth. They’re not only attacking, they’re not trying to hide it. Malevolent, but in a good way.

He also talked about how the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has committed to spending $100 million a year to combat child obesity, and praised it, but then compared that with what food marketers spend to spread it. It’s the same amount — every four days. (One way to look at it is that’s how much they have to spend to accomplish their goals. If they weren’t communicating such foul, dishonest messages, they could spend a lot less.)

Brownell’s prescription for waging the fight back included focusing on the food, rather than the individual. He said we have a tendency to do the latter, for reasons including that it’s easier, it requires no systemic changes, and that no powerful enemies will gather their awesome might to fight you. But it has drawbacks, he said: It further stigmatizes fat people by putting the focus on them rather than on what’s happening all around them, it holds the food industries blameless, and it helps people only one at a time, while thousands of others are falling victim.

Brownell gave another way to look at the same question: upstream vs. downstream. If the water has been fouled, you can deal with it upstream, and prevent the harm that will eventually come from drinking the water downstream, or you can wait until the symptoms arise. The former is public health, and the latter is medicine. And, of course, the food industry is upstream, and fat people are downstream.

One of Brownell’s latest bombs is an article appearing next week (already online) in the New England Journal of Medicine making the case for taxing sugared beverages. He said the taxes would lower consumption, which would serve a public health benefit, and the revenue could be used to fight obesity. He said the proposal put the food industry in “an absolute rage.”

It was one of Brownell’s last comments that struck me most, however: “Is food addictive? We’re getting close, I think. Almost by the day, we get a little more certain.”

You can find Brownell’s address at foodaddictionsummit.org.

Intravenous cocaine or sweets, what’s more addictive?

Like, what kind of stupid question is that, right? Why even ask it?

But Serge H. Ahmed, a Ph.D. researcher  at the University of Bordeaux in France, did indeed ask it, and the answer was pretty conclusive. In a study of rats that he reported this afternoon here in Bainbridge Island, Washington, at a mondo summit of researchers, clinicians, acadamicians, and at least one writer, saccharine water won hands down. Repeatedly, in practically every instance:

* Even when rats were already habituated to cocaine, they switched to the saccharine water fairly quickly once given the option.

* Even when they upped the coke dosage to the maximum tolerable level, beyond which the rats would go into convulsions, it had no effect on choice. Saccharine water.

* When they made rats work a lot harder to get the sweet, they were willing to tolerate a full magnitude greater effort before settling for the coke.

Hard to believe? It is for Ahmed, too: “I come from the field of food drug addiction, so I’m still perplexed by the results,” he said. [the change in this quote helps it make sense. sorry, Dr. Ahmed.]

An audience member, on the way to asking his question, drew a big laugh when he said, “Congratulations. It seems you’ve found a cure for cocaine addiction.”

The research reported today was about saccharine water, but Ahmed said research was also conducted with sucrose and maltodextrin, two other sugar forms, with similar results.

In my discussion group this afternoon, and in informal discussions around the picnic tables at this amazing site, Islandwood, the consensus was that Ahmed’s presentation was among the most startling and meaningful  in a day of both.

I was surprised to hear it, but when I reflected on it, it reflected my experience, at least roughly. There was a time when I was abusing cocaine enough that I got pulled aside by my boss and advised to fix whatever was going on with me. The guys I was hanging out with were doing it even worse — they weren’t even working, except for the coke dealing they were doing to support their habits.

I used the fact that they were so much worse than me to rationalize my behavior — I wasn’t as bad off as they were — but a big reason we were acting differently was that I wasn’t willing to forego food, which is a common side effect of coke abuse. These guys were eating once a day or so, a sundae from Emack and Bolio’s, and that was it. (High-end sugar, wrapped in fat!) I was unwilling to go there, even if I was also unhappy that I had to be the one cokehead who wasn’t bony.

In the end, I gave up cocaine, after having the calm realization that I was never, ever, ever going to get enough cocaine, that there was no satisfaction there. I could have a mountain of it, and I’d just keep doing it, until it was all gone and I was on my hands and knees trying to find one more rock. So I quit. Just like that. More than 20 years ago.

To “quit” my food abuse, I had to go to rehab. And then go back for tune-ups years later. And do a whole lot of other stuff that’s continuing. I was also thought it was just one more thing that made me odd, but now the research shows I’m just another bozo on the bus.

If you want to see Ahmed’s presentation, or any other of the conference’s presentations, go to foodaddictionsummit.org.

So I was sitting outside a little while ago, just after dinner on the first day of an obesity conference I’m attending near Seattle, and I overheard the fragment of conversation that let me know that I was among my people. Here’s what I heard…

“Yeah, high fructose corn syrup. It’s only been around since 1954, far as I know.”

Believe me, the dreaded, and dreadful, HFCS is has been invoked at least a dozen times today, from researchers at the podium, questioners from the floor, and in informal conversations. In fact, more than a dozen — that’s only what I’ve heard.

But the kicker is that the guy I overheard isn’t a participant in the conference. He’s one of the AV guys, talking to one of his peers. It is definitely in the air.

I’ve been getting closer to the idea that I need to blog on food-addiction issues, as well as the green issues I follow on Sustainably, my other blog. It feels imposing to try to keep two going at the same time, in addition to the other pursuits I have, but it does feel necessary.

This, however, isn’t one of those posts, exactly. It’s about the depression that’s been creeping into my awareness for several days, and, according to my wife, longer. Yesterday, I did some productive things — which is decidedly non-depressed behavior — but I blew off others, and got into bed for the day at 5:15. I had showered just prior, to go out for three evening events, but then just surrendered to the dark side.

So why, then, do I open with talk of food addiction? I can name this tune in just a couple of notes.

As background, I know that my moods are severely affected when I eat compulsively. Unbridled, I eat in volume, foremostly. The substances tend more toward salty/fatty/starchy than to sweet/creamy, but I can go either way, and usually get into ruts with one or two substances/products until those thrills are gone and I switch to one or two others. And once I have the high levels of refined foods in my system, it’s almost as if their substances take over control of me, not so that I’m entirely zombified, but clearly diminished.

But the other way depression and food addiction relate is illustrated by the first thing I skipped yesterday: a support group meeting I’d normally attend and participate in. I also skipped on Tuesday, after not having gone at all last weekend because we were in Atlanta. I did pick up an extra session in Marblehead on Monday, but it wasn’t very helpful, in part because of what was there, in part because of where I was. One of the reasons I allowed myself to bail on Tuesday was that I knew I’d be going on Thursday. And then I blew that off by getting in bed at 5:15.

Depression is pernicious, in part, because it’s the disease that says you don’t have a disease, or that you’ll be happier not taking the treatment, and I get part of my treatment at my support groups, not only for depression (though they’re not made for that specifically) but for my food addiction. I know from experience that once I get away from regular contact with the world, I’m more likely to eat, and depression definitely wants less contact with the world.

So far, I’m not eating compulsively. I have a lot of time and experience behind me, which are self-sustaining in the short term. I need not one more bit of evidence that if I put the bad-for-me substances into my bloodstream, my problem becomes infinitely more grave, by adding biochemistry to whatever else is ailing me. But I also know time and experience will protect me only in the short term, and that’s why I need the other stuff.

http://www.boston.com/travel/blog/2009/04/united_gets_tou.html

To someone like me, this is a complicated subject, for like most people, I have seen that very fat person walking down the aisle of the plane and hoped that he or she was not assigned to sit next to me.

But unlike most people, I have also been that person. I have also attended sporting events where I was a burden on my friend because of the extra space I needed. And there was the time I went to a game in Hartford and had a pleasant discussion with the insurance agent next to me through three quarters, but near the end of the game, he told me that I should have paid for half his ticket. “What do you mean,” I asked. “Well, you’ve been using half my seat.”

While noting that no one wants people who use less space to pay less, I can’t ignore that it’s not merely, or even chiefly, a fairness issue. Or if it is, it’s also a fairness issue for those of us whose purchased space is being encroached upon. Paying higher rates for more space is unquestioned in commerce — it’s one of the prime features in first class, extends to other transport, and is a bedrock of real estate.

Myself, I have purchased two seats to go overseas, and my employer once paid for me to fly first class on a business trip so that I would have enough room.

Let me tell you, neither was a proud experience. Just like all the times I had to request a seat extension, vocally proclaiming my freakishness, it was an embarrassment.

All of this is prelude, though, to what prompts me to write. When I checked in this morning, this post had 96 comments — a sure clue of the issue’s emotional content. And more than a few went beyond decency in their expressions, which isn’t uncommon for chat-room civility but is still worth noting:

A few years ago I did have the nightmare experience of being seated on the plane only to be startled by what seemed like an earthquake. When I looked up I saw what appeared to be a fatter and uglier version of Jabba the Hut squeezing down the aisle of the plane. I said a silent prayer asking God if she would not be so cruel as to have this rolling pile of crap be aiming at the vacant seat next to me. Alas my God, who also allowed somehow to have golden studboy Nohmar traded away, did have this enormous mound of blubber squeeze himself next to me. His disgusting rolls of fat spilled over into my seat for the entire 5 hour flight from Las Vegas. And of course being that fat, he snored like a suffocating hippopotamus the whole time! It was a nightmare for me and I wished America West had reimbursed ME for half the fare since he took up half my space. But all I could do was console myself with the fact that he was going to have to be dead in a few years, hopefully exiting this world the same way as that pig Mama Cass, choking to death in bed while eating a 3rd dinner sandwich.

Does anyone really think this is only about real estate? Here’s another one:

Fat people need to pay more - plain and simple. They’re fat - who are they visiting they they really need to see - plus they are usually lazy so it’s not work travel

Wow, huh? Fat people have no loved ones, or have less right to see them? And they don’t work? And another one:

fat people shouldn’t fly on airplanes anyway. they are a danger to society.

Yes, I’m cherry-picking a bit, but these three comments were among four consecutive. Here’s one that appeared a screen further down:

A lot of the comments above are so nasty. What is wrong with you all? I’m tall and thin and have been crowded into some fraction of my seat by overweight passengers, too, but I don’t feel the need to rail at and belittle overweight or obese people and call them vicious names or “a danger to society.” It’s bad enough they are objects of my pity–who wants that?

Thank you, graycliffer, thank you. Fat people aren’t intrinsically bad, and they’re certainly not livin’ so large to ruin your day. Even though personal responsibility is a big part of the story, for many fat people there’s more to it, and whether someone grasps that fact doesn’t change it.

The underlying sentiment in the vitriol is that no right-minded person would let themselves get so out of hand, and to that I say, “bingo!” Maybe they’re not right-minded — and for that they deserve scorn?

Just to underscore: I was fat, grossly fat, and I didn’t want to be. I lost hundreds of pounds — literally, more than 100 pounds four different times — but didn’t keep it off until I got standard addiction treatment and cleaned up just the way a drunk or drug addict does. From childhood, I tried to escape the scorn of the schoolyard, and the sting never went away. I so wanted to be free of it, and for three decades I couldn’t do it, until I got help.

This is just so wrong.

The Massachusetts treasurer, Tim Cahill, yesterday awarded a Keno license to a Cohasset restaurant, even though the town has been fighting the license for 7 years because it just doesn’t want Keno in its town.

“It’s obvious that the town doesn’t want Keno, but it’s unfair,” Cahill said.

Unfair it is, but to whom? Presumably, he’s speaking of the restaurant owner, and perhaps he’s thinking about all those poor, disenfranchised Keno gamblers who have to drive a little farther to circle their numbers and pray for fortune. But what about fairness to all the people who live in Cohasset? Except when it doesn’t suit the politics of the Supreme Court (see Bush v. Gore), local standards carry a lot of weight. My town, Arlington, doesn’t allow liquor stores, for example. Can you imagine a state official awarding a license anyway?

“It’s obvious that the town doesn’t want to allow liquor sales, but it’s unfair,” Joe Bureaucrat said.

Granted, I’m opposed to state-sponsored gambling of any kind, and I think that Keno is a fairly low type of a fairly low pursuit (no skill involved), and both color my reaction.

But why is it “fair” for a state official to order a town to host any sort of business, but especially a lowlife-attracting, soul-crushing, regressive-tax-imitating business like Keno?

We got the excited call from our facilitator on Tuesday, telling us she had a birth mom who wanted to talk with us. After 27 months without a single nibble, which had crushed our certainty that we’d be chosen quickly by an enthusiastic birth mom who’d decided we were the ones for her child to grow up with.

The facilitator had tried all the numbers she had for Georgie, so I got the details first: El Centro, Calif., 30 years old, former medical assistant who had descended far enough in crystal meth that she’d recently gotten out of jail for identity theft, a form of fraud. But we didn’t have to worry about health because she’d been on parole, and subject to drug testing, for the duration of the pregnancy. Caucasian kid, a girl, due July 11. She would be this woman’s fourth child; she gave the first one to adoption 12 years ago, and lost two others to their father when she went to jail.

As it happened, Georgie had left work and was in the subway homeward when the facilitator called, but she’d emerged from the tunnel when I tried to reach her. Our conversation was excited but brief, because the BM, Dorotha Jolena, would be leaving the hotel she’d been staying in within the hour. So Georgie caught the facilitator in the car and quickly called California.

An hourlong call ensued with Georgie behind the closed door of the baby’s room (pretty symbolic, huh?), in which I could here more tone of voice than words, but it sounded pretty promising. I had writing deadlines to meet, but found it unthinkable to sit at the keyboard and concentrate, so I folded laundry and tried reflexively to expel the tension via frequent deep sighs.

When Georgie emerged, it was a little like seeing white smoke from the Vatican chimney: We had a match!

When we called the facilitator to report the news, she said she didn’t have a picture of the mom, but said we could go to her Myspace page to check her out. And that’s when it started to fall apart.

I couldn’t find her page right away, so I Googled her. What came up wasn’t her Myspace page but some adoptive-parent chat rooms that warned that she was a scammer, trying to coax money out of would-be adopters — for hotel space or medical coverage.

We didn’t decide immediately that she wasn’t for real, because some of her story was still possibly true — if she’d been arrested for ID theft, then some people would know that she’d been involved in that. Georgie and I decided not to share the news until it shook out a bit.

But I did start viewing our future. A girl, huh? We kinda wanted a boy, but I guess we’re just destined to be part of the girl-power movement in our family: My brother has two daughters, and Georgie’s brother has two more. One of my sister’s three kids is a girl, too. But, OK, that’s cool. And July 11 — that means summer birthdays, just like I had, when schoolmates are away on vacation. It’ll give us birthdays three months in a row, too — Anna (or Grace), then me, then G.

The shakeout took less than 24 hours. Turns out she doesn’t have a baby to offer us, certainly not under the set of circumstances she described to Georgie on the phone, and we’re not going forward. That much is certain; I’ll leave it to you to decide whether she had illicit intent.

We’re pretty sanguine about it, certain that Dorotha Jolena is a soul in trouble, deserving of our forgiveness no matter what she did. Yes, it’s a lot easier to be sanguine when you don’t get sucked in, financially or emotionally.

Perversely, we’re kind of happy — Georgie more than me, I think — that at least we’ve broken the schneid, that we’re no longer birth-plan virgins, or worse, pariahs, unchosen after more than two years when we’d been told when we were certified as adoptive parents that the average wait was six months. I still laugh, ruefully if not painfully, when I recall that I told people, “hey, those are just averages; our baby could come even sooner!” Or later.

I don’t know if this will remain a source of happiness, and if so for how long.

A friend recently told a story about how he had “put it out to the universe” that he and his family were looking for their adoptive child, and ready to welcome him or her, and how the child had appeared, via friends of friends, within days. So I close this tale with our own declaration, that we’re looking for our child, and we’re ready to receive her. Or him.

Like, who cares, really, but I do:

Yesterday, I ran a mile without stopping, on a track at the gym we’ve been using lately. I have never done that before. Not even close. It was an 11-minute mile. Later, in the same 30-minute aerobic portion of my workout, I ran another half mile without stopping. I’d estimate that I did maybe 20 laps, and ran for 14 or 15 of them. Unheard of, in my experience.

At the end, Joan Benoit Samuelson congratulated me for setting a personal best in the mile, and I appreciate her interest. (We both have the iPod/Nike hookup, but only mine — newer generation of software, maybe? — includes comments from Joan and Lance Armstrong at the end.)

I’ve recently renewed my efforts to find an agent for my book, buoyed in part by my op-ed in the Globe, and partly by a friend and fellow author who reached out to me with suggestions of agents potentially interested in what I’ve written.

This should be a consistent effort on my part, to find a representative, but I’ve approached it in spurts, for some reason.

Actually, that reason is what prompted me to post this morning, after another good agent turned me down: When I put myself out into the world and ask to be accepted, large parts of the world will say no. And I don’t like how that feels. I know that no one likes rejection, whatever form it takes, which is why this post is headlined, “nothing profound here.”

This agent’s reason — most don’t offer one, so I’m grateful that she did — was that my story isn’t all that unusual. She didn’t say this, but I could paraphrase her to say, “You lost weight, so what? Lots of people have written about that.” I don’t deny that others have written on the topic, but I think my story is unusual enough, if not unique, because few of the books have been written by a man, and because no one has written a memoir that describes food addiction as the cause of obesity, or addiction treatment as a solution for obesity. A large part of my motivation for writing comes from this point, for its obvious public policy implications. It has to be told. Or so I think.

Which is why hearing an agent who I absolutely respect say, “no big deal,” it’s pretty discouraging.

As the opening paragraph hints, I wrote this on Thursday, but because I had trouble getting internet access, this wasn’t posted until Saturday afternoon.

I’m sitting in the second session on the first morning of the first International Conference on Food Addiction Professionals, and — scoff if you will — it does feel historic.

The clarity of hindsight may reveal that this was only an atom in an ocean, but today, it does feel that with these other people — 35 or so — I’m passing a significant milestone in an important movement: changing how people regard the obesity problem in America.

No one here says that all obese people are addicts, or even that most of them are. I say (from personal experience) and they say (from professional training and experience) that some of them are.

Epidemiology tells us that between 6 and 12 percent of people are alcoholics, and if the same level of addiction exists around food substances and food habits, that means upwards of 36 million Americans have this affliction.

The number of obese people in America is vastly higher, well over 100 million, so that lends some perspective. Yes, the first number is substantially imprecise, but it has more validity than any other number, since no research has been conducted.

Why? Because most people — most clinicians — don’t believe it exists. During the first panel this morning, Lori Herold, a registered dietician who works with clients at Turning Point of Tampa, related that she recently broached the possibility of food addiction in a professional gathering of 500 colleagues, and she was met with stone silence from the floor, and a slight shooing effect from the moderator, as if she had just suggested that mice could fly.

This week, the Boston Globe published an opinion piece I wrote on some of these topics, and I was impressed — though not surprised — by the vitriol that dozens of commenters loosed at these ideas. I found some of it outstandingly ignorant, and much of it influenced by conservative ideology, which I paraphrase as, “Great, another weakling who won’t take responsibility for his actions. Just don’t eat! End of problem!”

I have several responses, beginning with, “Nanny nanny poo poo. So there.” A second one is, “Why is this a political issue? Here’s someone saying that his life was saved, and the quality of his life was vastly raised, and your only reaction is to sneer? Do you even know what compassion is?” And a third one, which I cited in my article, “That’s just about what people used to say about drunks, and now alcoholism is such a mainstream notion that courts sentence people to AA.”

I’m not a clinician and I’m not a researcher, but I’ll tell you that that is change is going to come to food addiction. Why makes me so sure?

I was horribly obese, topping out at 365 pounds. I did not like being obese. The worst parts for me were the shame and the separation from normal life, which I felt far more severely than the physical limitations, though of course there were many: My first car, a subcompact, developed a list to the driver’s side, as a result of having such a constant heavy weight. I needed two seats on airplanes. And on and on.

I lost more than 130 pounds four times, but I never kept it off until I started accepting treatment, both in support groups and from professionals, as an addict. Is there food addiction? I don’t frickin’ care! Whether it exists or not, I got better — my life has rocketed into a dimension I could only gaze at from beyond — when I acted as if it did.

For me, that’s enough, and unless you think my story is singular (i.e., not applicable to others), it should be enough for you. I may have a miraculous story, but I ain’t that special, so if it happened for me, it can happen for anyone else willing to give it a shot.

I did mention him early in the series of inauguration posts, but I wanted to say thanks, explicitly, to Leland Stein of the Regent Theatre. Par of my memory of the day will be that I spent the event with fellow Americans, and sharing that community helped make it a special event for me.

Inaugural poet? Wow, the poetry comes afterward? I gotta think that she is the most current definition of anti-climax. … Most of the crowd is staying, which surprises me. Seems like a great opportunity to beat the traffic. But that’s just me.

Cheers for “all are free, all are equal …

Nods to those who fought, at Concord, Gettysburg, Normandy, and Que Sahn.

(Starting today, we … must begin again the work of remaking America.” Cheers.

“Electric grids” in a presidential speech! We’ll restore respect of science. (big cheer here).

“There are some who question the scale of our ambitions. … They’re memories are short. [crowd likes that]. … What the critics fail to understand is that the ground is shifted. ”

Applause for public officials being held accountable.

For a largely white crowd, this is not unlikely a gospel atmosphere. “Yes!” a woman cries out. “Thank you!” another one murmurs.

“We will not give up our ideals for expediency’s sake.”

“We are ready to lead once more” draws the biggest applause yet. Sustained. I get chills!

(12:18) “Our power doesn’t gives us the right to do as we please.” … “the tempering quality of restraint.”

“We will defeat you” draws applause, but it sounds, to me, more pro forma. Here in Arlington, there’s not much lust for war.

Someone just spat out “Yes!” for Obama’s recognition of those who don’t profess a faith.

“We will extend out hand, if you are willing to unclench your fist.” Nice one for the speechwriter.

Another mention of resources — for the environmentalist, this is an extraordinary speech.

“The price and promise of citizenship.” I’m delighted to hear the president cite its price.

(12:26) Though a hearty applause, only a few people stand. I found myself thinking, near the end, of the pressure of high expectation.

Fanfare for an uncommon man…

Perhaps half the crowd is standing and cheering. Some people are taking pictures of the screen, and of the crowd. It lasts a couple of minutes, at least. … It’s not filled here, but I would guess 400 people have turned out.

Dianne Feinstein speaking, because of her position as inauguration committee cochairwoman. She seems out of place, not central to the day’s events or how they came to be. Just happened to have the seniority and/or to have put up her hand. … She’s not pausing for applause, but people here and in the crowd outside are eager to add their voices.

It’s 11:48 and getting late — Bush is done at noon, no matter what, or that’s what RD says…

Rick Warren begins his invocation, and immediately, he makes clear he doesn’t speak for me. I love and believe in God, but apparently, not his. … “We know that Dr. King and a great crowd of witnesses are cheering in heaven.” … Feinstein, at least, was brief. … Titters from the crowd for Warren’s pronunciation of Sasha and Melia.

(11:53) Well, thank God that’s over.

Cheers for Aretha. … Man, it’s hard not to note her size! … A woman in the crowd sees herself on the Jumbotron, drawing chuckles here … A spontaneous rendition full of soul and beauty. I find myself wondering if she would she have rehearsed, or if she’s just freakin’ Aretha.

(11:57) I’m pretty sure that Bennett announced Justice Roberts to swear in Biden, but that John Paul Stevens is giving the oath. … A long and sustained cheer here for Vice President Biden.

(11:59) Wow, is this crowd ready to party! They announce Itzhak Perlman, Yo Yo Ma, and the others, and they draw a cheer.

(12:00) Does this mean we have no president? Or that Biden is the only sworn national officer for the moment? Yeah, few people would spend their time at this moment thinking about such thing, and yeah, it is a burden to be one of them. … I had no idea they would be playing, so I certainly had no thought about what would be good for this moment, but the music feels so right, and the playing is keeping the people here in rapt attention, except for one woman to my left.

RD says that Obama has been president for 4 minutes plus, according to the Constitution, sworn in or not.

(12:06) The response was electric (after a few chuckles over the flubs in the oath). Most of clapping is with hands raised about their heads. A few people jump. Women embrace.

(12:07) “humbled … grateful … mindful.” … a smattering of applause in his thanking f-o-r-m-e-r president Bush. It was the most he could have hoped for.

(12:09) “That we are in the midst of crisis is now well understood. … Our collective failure to make hard choices … A sapping of confidence across the land … But know this, America, they will be met …