One Little Cookie

My name is Sandy Daigler and I’m a radical weight maintainer. What do I mean by that? I mean that I’ve lost 100 pounds and kept it off for four years. The National Weight Control Registry defines weight maintenance success as losing at least thirty pounds and keeping it off for at least a year, so I guess I qualify! According to the research, less than 3% of people who lose a large amount of weight are able to do what I’ve done – if you’re wondering why this percentage is so tiny, let me say that my experiences in the last four years make me wonder how anyone, including me, is able to do this at all. It’s a commonly held belief that long-term weight loss is nearly impossible and the statistics seem to support that idea. We’ve all heard how our biology and psychology conspire to keep us heavy. I can say from personal experience that the body and mind can be formidable foes when it comes to weight, but there’s an even more difficult terrain that I’ve had to travel, namely the social culture of food. In our