Harvey Rapp (right), posing with former Baltimore Oriole Boog Powell (left) at Camden Yards ______________________________ In Harvey Rapp's world, no hand goes unshaken. --The Webmaster To be social is to be forgiving. --Robert Frost For all of us who struggle with weight and eating issues, here's the burning question: How do slim people remain slim all their lives? In a series of interviews with both naturally slim and "thin-by-design" people (who have remained slim for two or more years after shedding their excess weight), I hope to unlock the secrets to a successful weight maintenance protocol. My first interviewee: Harvey Rapp, of Columbia, Maryland. Dr. Rapp, 65+, a psychologist in private practice, has been slim his entire life and has never had to diet. Before setting up his private practice in 1980, he taught for 10 years at Loyola University as an adjunct associate professor. The decision to give up tenure for self-employment was difficult

Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet, 1694–1778) Portrait by Nicolas de Largillière (1656-1746) _______________________________ Nothing would be more tiresome than eating and drinking if God had not made them a pleasure as well as a necessity. --Voltaire That Voltaire! Who knew he could offer quips so a propos for 2011? In the above portrait, the humorist looks fit (and cute) enough, but as we all know, portrait painters were (and are) commissioned to emphasize the positive and gloss over the flaws. Ah, vanity is thy middle name! Now on topic: On this very site, I have said that we can learn from naturally slim people by studying their normal eating habits, but now I'm going to turn this notion on its head by advising when we shouldn't follow their advice blindly. Clueless slim people often toss around simplistic dictums, such as Losing weight is simple: stop eating so much! In a literal sense, this is true, but if it were realistically so simple, we would all be slim and no on

Fools are my theme, let satire be my song. --Lord Byron Today, I am going to show you how to build a fatter body. 1. Eat whatever you want and in any quantity. Eat until your gut bulges and that you eat enough so that you from suffer, in the middle of the night, acid indigestion and acid reflux. What fun! 2. Skip meals. Better yet, starve all day, and eat only one large meal a day, and that should be at night, the later the better. Be sure to snack all evening. 3. Never exercise. Walk only when you have to visit the fridge or go from your car to your favorite fast food place. (Better yet, use the drive through). 4. Make sure that you're sleep deprived. Four hours a night is quite enough, but I'm sure that you could function with a lot less. 5. Eat nothing but junk food, the higher the fat content, the better. Don't even go near a carrot. 6. Work, work, work, and never play. Stay connected to all your technology. 7. Panic and then go on a starvation diet, the more extreme,

It's true that some slim people don't "get" our lives and our complicated relationship with food and our bodies. But we can still learn from them. Instead of lamenting the unfairness of how slim people seem to maintain their weight without effort, we can imitate some of their food behaviors. For us, taming the hungry beast is probably one of the most effective ways to fend off bingeing but also one of the most difficult to do. So how do naturally slim people tame the beast? My general observations: 1. Slim people always seem to eat when they're hungry. It may not be a lot, but it's enough to stave off the beast. 2. Slim people tend to graze, rather than eating three large meals a day. 3. Slim people never deprive themselves of treats. Instead, they will eat small portions of their favorite foods and put the rest away (and actually forget about them). You rarely see a slim person polishing off an entire cake or a bag of potato chips. 4. Usually, slim people are