My sojourn as a leader of weight loss meetings, which I did after losing 60 pounds myself, depended on these roller coaster people. Sadder still, was how our meeting scripts each week, did not allow for discussions such as this one. Because it would be too personal.

Too real.

But whenever we did — strayed from the program and got personal, that’s when people came back. That’s when people made progress in the ways that they defined it.