No one goes to bed skinny and wakes up fat. Most people gain (or lose) weight so gradually they cannot really figure out how it happened.  They do not remember changing their eating or exercise patterns.  All they remember is once being able to fit into their favorite pants without having to hold their breathe and hope they can get the zipper to budge. 

       Sure, there are exceptions.  If we gorge ourselves at the all-you-can-eat pizza buffet, then clean out the chip bowl at the Superbowl party, then stop by the Baskin-Robbins drive-through for a “Belly Buster” Sundae on the way home, we realize we have gone too far over the top.  But on most days we have very little idea whether we have eaten 50 calories too much or 50 calories too little.  In fact, most of us would not know if we ate 200 or 300 calories more or less than the day before.

          This is the Mindless Margin.  It is the margin or the zone in which we can either slightly overeat or slightly undereat without being aware of it.  Suppose you can eat 2000 calories a day without either gaining or losing weight.  If one day, however, you only ate 1000 calories, you would know it.  You would feel weak, light-headed, cranky, and you would snap at the dog.  On the other hand you would also know it if you ate 3000 calories.  You would feel a little heavier, slower, and more like flopping on the couch and petting the cat.

          If we eat way too little, we know it.  If we eat way too much, we know it.  But there is a calorie range – a Mindless Margin– where we feel fine and are unaware of small differences.  That is, the difference between 1900 calories and 2000 calories is one we cannot detect, nor can we detect the difference between 2000 and 2100 calories.  But over the course of a year, this mindless margin would either cause us to lose ten pounds or to gain ten pounds.  It takes 3500 extra calories to equal one pound. It does not matter if we eat these extra 3500 calories in one week or gradually over the entire year.  They will all add up to one pound.  

            This is the danger of creeping calories.  Just 10 extra calories a day – 1 stick of Double-mint gum or 3 small Jelly Belly jelly beans – will make you a pound more portly one year from today.  Only three Jelly Bellies a day.

            Fortunately, the same thing happens in the opposite direction.  

            One colleague of mine, Stacy, had lost around 25 pounds during her first two years at a new job.  When I asked how she lost the weight, she could not really answer.  After some persistent questioning, it seemed that the only deliberate change she had made two years earlier was to give up caffeine.  She switched from coffee to herbal tea.  That did not seem to explain anything.

            “Oh, yeah,” she said, “And because I gave up caffeine, I also stopped drinking Coke.”  She had been drinking about six cans a week – far from a serious habit – but the 139 calories in each Coke translated into 14 pounds a year.  When she quit, she was not even aware of why she had lost weight.  In her mind all she had done was cut out caffeine.

           Herein lies the secret of the Mindless Margin.  This Mindless Margin is that small range where we make slight changes to our routine that we hardly notice.  Nevertheless, these changes can have a gradual – but eventually big – impact on our weight. They can make the difference between being 10 pounds heavier next New Years Day or 10 pounds lighter. 

     Cutting out our favorite foods is a bad idea. Cutting down on how much we eat is mindlessly doable.  Many fad diets focus more on the typesof foods we can eat rather than how much  we should eat.  The problem is not that we order beef instead of a low-fat chicken breast. The problem is that the beef is often twice the size. A low-fat chicken breast that we resent having to eat is no better for our long-term diet than a tastier but slightly smaller piece of beef.
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         If we are looking at only a 100 or 200 calories difference a day, these are not calories we will miss.  We can trim them out of our day relatively easy – and unknowingly.   The key is to do it unknowingly – mindlessly.  It is so much easier to rearrange your kitchen and change a few eating habits so you do not have to think about eating less or differently.  This is the silver lining to this dark, cloudy sky.  The same things that lead us to mindlessly gain weight can also help us mindlessly lose weight. 

“Never meet your hero” is a microphone-dropping expression.  
 
Whatever happens, you risk being disappointed, they say.  Like seeing a peacock up close, heroes just don’t look so magical in the bright light.  Sometimes that’s the fault of them being human; sometimes it’s the fault of the stratospheric expectations we have for every dimension of their life.  

This is what people say, but you don't have to believe it.
 
“Hero” here is being used liberally, and not in the “saving a flaming busload of school children” sense.  Bruce Springsteen or Sandra Day O'Connor might be your hero.  Your distant uncle or your 12th grade English teacher might be your hero.  And you might be a hero to someone because of what you’ve done, given, or who you are.
 
There are only two books by living authors that I read so many times that their authors became heroes to me.   The first book I read 35 times when I was in college.  When I graduated, I wrote the American author to thank him, but never heard back.
 
The second book I read more recently, and have reread my notes of it at least 20 times since.  I wrote the French author to thank him, but never heard back.  After a couple more tries with a couple other email addresses, I got a short thank you.
 
Years passed. 

​My family and I were going to France for a conference over Thanksgiving.  In spite of the “Never meet your hero” advice, I emailed this man a couple weeks before we left.  I asked if he would like to meet for coffee, lunch, dinner, or whatever.   He chose the “whatever” option in a very big way.

Day 1. He and his family took us to dinner
Day 2. Took us on his favorite "hidden surprises of Paris" tour
Day 10. Came over to our apartment for dinner and silly laughs
Day 12. Bid us farewell with a "good luck" college present for my oldest daughter
 
Here’s what stuck me.  What I most wanted to talk about when I met him was his book (and others he wrote).  I had 40 hours of questions and praise. Yet that wasn’t what he wanted to talk about for more than just a few minutes.  He wanted to talk about marriage, delivering pizza (which we both did as teenagers), kids, ups and downs, faith, food, the 1754 French-Indian War, morning routines, board games, bike riding,  . . . almost everything but his books, and that's why Alexis Beuve is a hero to me.
 
He made me meet him not as a hero, but as a person who had a lot of other meaningful dimensions to connect with.  He also did so in a very humble and giving way.  This had a much bigger impact on me than if we would have talked 40 hours about his books like I had originally wanted.  It made the impact of his books on me even greater.
 
“All actual heroes are essential people. And all people are possible heroes,” said E.B. Browning. This is easy to forget.  We forget to cut our heroes slack – hey, they’re just human. 

We might also forget that we could be a hero to someone and we might need to be sure we act humble and human. 
 
We might not be a flaming bus-saving headline hero, but we might be a hero to someone we don’t know.  Being that humble, connecting, interested person will be your antidote to the “Never meet your hero” warning.

No one has a cousin named Tarzan.  No one has a best friend named Goat Boy.  That’s because we’re not raised by apes or goats, but we're all raised, socialized, and helped by other people.  
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Some of these people are obvious:  parents, close relatives, coaches, and some teachers.  But a lot of others aren’t nearly so obvious.  They might be that person who recommended we go to one school versus another, helped get us a job, helped lend a hand during a difficult time, or saved us from a desert island that one time by paddling through shark infested waters using only his right arm.

With Thanksgiving coming up, it can be a nice chance to hit pause and think of 2-3 nonobvious people who might have done a small thing that made a big difference in our life.  Doing something as simple as this can do your soul good.  On one extreme, it reminds us that we aren’t the self-centered Master of our Universe as we might think when things are going great.  On the other extreme, it reminds us that there are a lot of people silently cheering for us when we might think things aren’t going so great. 

What do you suppose would happen if you tracked these people down and game them a call?  It’s four steps:  
            1. Find their phone number and dial.
            2. “Hey, I’m ___; remember me? How are you?”
            3. “It’s Thanksgiving. I was thinking of you.”
            4.  “Thanks”
For about the past 30 years, I’ve tried to do this each Thanksgiving.  It used to be the same 3-4 people (advisors and a post-college mentor), then a couple more, and this year I’m adding a new one.    For some reason, I always look for an excuse why I shouldn’t make these calls. I always find myself pacing around before I make the first call.  Part of me thinks I might be bore them, or they already know it, or it’s interrupting them, or that it’s too corny. 

Yet even if I have to leave voice messages, I’m always end up smiling when I get off the phone.  I feel more thankful and centered.  Maybe they feel differently too. 
Still, there’s some years I never made any calls, because I had good excuses.  Maybe it was too late in the day, or they were probably with their family, or I called them last year, or I didn’t really have enough time to talk.   I’m sure they had some good excuses – way back when – as to why they didn’t have time for me.  I’m thankful they didn’t use them. 

If you can think of 2-3 people you’re thankful for who might not know it, you don’t have to wait until Thanksgiving next year to tell them.  They won’t care that you’re a little bit late or a whole lot early.   It’s only 4 steps.