I was delighted to be contacted by Manuel Moreale for his long-running People and Blogs interview series, which went live today. If you didn’t come here from there, here’s our conversation. The archives are full of interesting people and worth poking through. Thanks, Manuel!
Month: June 2025
Noah Smith wrote about his weight loss journey, and came to an interesting conclusion: that for him, the issue was noticing whether or not he was full:
I started paying attention to how much I ate. If it was “time to eat”, but I wasn’t hungry, I wouldn’t eat anything. And when I did eat, as soon as I felt like I wasn’t hungry anymore, I would stop eating. …
I realized, as I was doing it, that the difference between losing weight and not losing weight was just attention.
When I didn’t pay attention, I didn’t lose weight, because I kept eating after the point where I was no longer hungry. When I paid attention, I was able to control when I stopped eating.
He goes on to say that willpower is a conceit (my word, not his), and that the typical approach—”you have to be tough enough to fight through constant hunger, and motivated enough to want weight loss even more than food”—is wrong.
I fundamentally agree with the first part of Smith’s argument: attention is important. My weight loss this year has been predicated entirely on knowing how much I’m eating (along multiple vectors) and stopping myself from eating too much. My daily food spreadsheet was a key part of my success.
But I disagree with the hand-waving about willpower. People who are overweight have been told for their entire lives to stop eating when they’re full, slow down between courses, wait twenty minutes before taking seconds, and so forth. Knowing that generally doesn’t do much, because a person needs the willpower to acknowledge and recognize those guardrails.
When it comes to weight loss, as with any aspect of personal well-being, motivation is attention’s partner. Last winter, I was scared and desperate; that gave me the motivation to create the spreadsheet, and the willpower to pay attention to everything I ate every day for five months to reach David-minus-forty. I don’t know that I succeed with just one of those factors. And I’d guess that’s true for most people trying to lose weight.
I’m happy for Noah Smith and his successful and relatively low-key strategy. Whatever works for you! Achieving a healthy weight goal is a win, regardless of the path one takes to get there.
I haven’t really been a paying member of anything since my college fraternity. (The gym does not count.) My wife and I find it mildly amusing that we live in Manhattan with children who play golf and tennis; if we were in the suburbs, it’s likely that we’d have joined a country club a long time ago. But that did not come to pass, and nothing clubby really came up.
Nothing, that is, until earlier this month, when friends of ours suggested we join their beach club for the season. With said children now in their teens and home for the summer, we furrowed our brows at the open dates in their schedules. Why not? Amy and I took a ride out on a rainy Sunday, picked a cabana, and joined the club.
Beach clubs still exist, plentifully, on the Long Beach barrier island, just east of the Rockaways on the south shore of Long Island. (I counted 21 of them on a quick flip through Google Maps.) We have visited a few of them over the years. They’re not quite The Flamingo Kid, but the spirit and general intention is still there.
Each one sticks to the formula: an expanse of beach with chairs and umbrellas; a restaurant; some games; a pool; scheduled events; no shortage of clichés (in our club’s case, there are cabana boys, a sports-desk attendee who doesn’t know what a ping pong ball is, and two charismatic blonde women who run the show). And, of course, cabanas.
The cabanas are the big selling point. Spacious and reasonably equipped with shelving, changing rooms, a shower and electrical power, they become home base for the summer. Ours is in a courtyard, like most cabanas at this club, but there are beachfront cabanas and smaller pool lockers, too. Regulars kit out their cabanas with signage and decor, like the one down the row from ours with string lights and a patio lounge chair, and the one around the corner from there with “Copa” permanently affixed above the door (Get it?).
We went for the first time Thursday—late for beach cabana season; it opens on Memorial Day—and again Saturday. The trip to the island takes us on the Van Wyck and its unique misery, but once there, having a cabana at a club is a delight. Our stuff is waiting for us! A cabana boy dropped off some ice! The restaurant is good! We spent time with friends both days and our new neighbors are friendly and welcoming. And, of course, there’s the beach, fully 300 feet deep even in this erosional era, with soft sand and the vast Atlantic Ocean beyond. Dolphins even surfaced in front of us at one point.
I took some time Saturday to run to Target and stock up the cabana. “You should sit and enjoy yourself,” Amy said to me. “But if I’m getting the cabana kitted out, I am enjoying myself,” I replied. So we now have sealed storage for our snacks and a new outdoor speaker, with a folding table and chairs on the way. The club is open seven days a week, and an oceanside twist on remote work is not far behind.
We’re still getting our seashore legs, but so far, this seems like a great way to while away the summer.