My mom read a piece about this guy in her local paper and clipped it to show me when we gathered at my folks’ for Christmas.

He’s discovered, lo and behold, that if he doesn’t beat himself up about what he eats, he doesn’t gain weight.

If you don’t believe that I was the first one to have that idea, just ask Mom, she’ll tell you. It was in the 80s btw, predating this book by Evelyn Tribole: “Intuitive Eating”” by a decade, at least.

I’ve got it documented in any case. I wrote an essay about it that was published in this Chicken Soup for the Soul book about weight loss.

Only my version has a dog angle too, heh heh heh. I had a lively mixed breed at the time, named Brett, and I’d been coming to the realization that, with dogs, it’s better to reinforce what they’re doing right than play Obedience Commandante, chasing after them yelling no no no no no all the time.

It’s less stressful and, wonder of wonders, also makes for a better-behaved dog.

Next it occurred to me that if focusing on the positive worked for my dog, why not try it on myself? So I stopped punishing myself for eating “junk” and started noticing how nice it was to eat nutritious food that tastes good.

I’d “dieted” myself up to about 25 pounds over my ideal weight but it came off, slowly but surely, as soon as I committed to my new attitude.

I’m not necessarily in favor of the label “intuitive eating,” however. I know the concept of intuition is very trendy, but if you’re emotionally sensitive and even worse kinesthetically oriented, you end up with a lot of inner data to sort through, and I’ve never been able to isolate “intuition” from everything else.

In any case, you don’t need it. If you are worried about your weight, you need to de-charge the whole issue. Do that, and the rest will fall into place. Don’t do it, and you’ll keep proving your self-identity as “person with a weight problem.”

Or put another way, behavior follows intent — just like a dog’s behavior follows its trainer’s.