[Incorporate meal replacement products into your daily or weekly menu. Meal replacements -- whether they're packaged foods such as Lean Cuisine, or shakes such as Slim Fast -- are very helpful for maintaining long-term weight loss.] Using just two meal replacements a week would be enough to keep off ten pounds in a year, ... That's a lot of weight for a minimal change in eating patterns.

Our study shows that people do better if they bite the bullet and get down to a weight they desire and then try to maintain it, ... It's a myth that if you lose weight slowly you do better in the long run.

Maybe it was being orphaned and alone all my life, but I always steeled for the worst outcome I could envision. That way I could shrug and be almost happy with anything that fell short of the worst. It was a peculiar life skill and one I had gotten damn good at.

In all those stories about people who sold their souls to the devil, I never quite understood why the devil was the bad guy, or why it was okay to screw him out of his soul. They got what they wanted: fame, money, love, whatever—though usually it turned out not to be what they really wanted or expected. Was that the devil's fault? I never thought so. Like John Wayne said, "Life's tough. It's even tougher when you're stupid.

Rob Green needed to get the long barrier out, didn't he?

This was the desert, everything all at once, whether it was needed or not. What survived had learned to save, live carefully, and keep a low profile, even appear to be dead for long periods. Perseverance and patience.