It is easy to be frustrated by your weight, and even easier to be frustrated by weight loss attempts — most are unsuccessful. Losing a few pounds is one of the most challenging things for a person to do because weight loss goes against your nature. In order to lose weight, a person must be in calorie deprivation — eating fewer calories each day, week or month than are used by the body. Voluntary weight loss requires a degree of self-starvation. Your survival instinct, which serves you well in many ways, makes weight loss very hard.Healthy weight loss is slow and steady. To lose one or two pounds a week requires a calorie deprivation of 600 to 1,200 calories each day. Burning 600 calories is a lot of work. For a 150-pound person to burn 600 calories, he or she would have to jog for 75 minutes, hike for 90 minutes or bicycle leisurely for more than two hours. Obviously, it would require a lot of time and exercise to depend on exercise alone for weight loss. Many people don’t have enough free time to exercise that much, anyway, and those who do have a larger appetite that can easily undermine weight loss goals.Believe it or not, avoiding 600 calories is much easier. Five tablespoons (a little more than 1/4 cup) of oil; five ounces (six slices) of cheese; three ounces of mayonnaise; a small fast-food hamburger with medium french fries; or one cup of rich ice cream all have about 600 calories. If you consistently replace these calorie-dense foods with healthier choices, you will be well on your way to losing weight.Healthy options include fruit like apples, pears, bananas or frozen berries; vegetables like carrots, broccoli, tomatoes or cucumbers; and lean meats like fat-free skinless chicken or turkey breast, or 96 percent lean ground round.Medical research indicates it is easier for most Americans to achieve healthy weight loss through dietary changes than through exercise alone. It takes planning, forethought, determination and time, but with diligent and consistent dietary change, weight loss is possible.So, this is what I consider to be the first and most important step in weight loss: eating healthy foods with low calorie density. Replacing high calorie density foods that have lots of refined sugars, simple carbohydrates, or fats with low calorie density foods like vegetables, fruits, berries and lean sources of protein is key for making sure you get the most out of your weight loss efforts. Without this first step, most people end up spinning their wheels.However, for many of us, weight loss is not that simple and it requires a multi-faceted approach. Exercise may be the second most important factor in weight loss. I prefer to recommend sustained moderate cardiovascular exercise like walking or hiking for 45 to 90 minutes on most days of the week. This approach increases the calories burned in a day without causing a dramatic drop in blood sugar which can stimulate your appetite. Our bodies are made for this type of activity and it is sustainable for most people, and you’re less likely to be just too sore to exercise the next day or hurt yourself and have to take a week or two off.Sleep is important, too. Our bodies produce more hormones that increase hunger when we are sleep deprived. You know you are getting enough sleep for your body when you are able to wake up without an alarm. Unfortunately, our culture does not make this easy. Just do the best that you can.I acknowledge that hunger, food and weight are very emotional matters for most people. Even the thought of changing the diet can be emotionally distressing. I have a couple of small hints that can be helpful here. First, it is important to enjoy food. Finding low calorie density meals, snacks and beverages that please the palate and satiate the appetite is important. It may take some time, trial and error, and ingenuity, but with persistence you will find foods you truly enjoy eating and weight loss won’t be tortuous. Second, it helps to become friends with hunger — not best friends, but good friends. Hunger is a sign from your body telling you that you are eating fewer calories than you have burned. You are losing weight. Your hunger lets you know you are on the right track, but if you let yourself get too hungry you may feel ravenous, and, in that moment, it may be difficult to stick with your diet plan.Good luck. With a good plan and self-compassion for mistakes you make along the way you are likely to get great results. Richard Malik is a naturopathic doctor with a practice in Lakeville offering comprehensive health care for the entire family.
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Meg Sher, executive director of the David M. Hunt Library in Falls Village.
“I was a library kid. I walked to the library after school,” she said.
For Sher, the library is as much about the people as it about the books.
“Part of the job I love so much is that running the library is such a community,” she said.
She treasures the relationships she has built, whether recommending books, celebrating accomplishments or helping patrons through difficult times.
“I am thankful that our community is so supportive of the library, unlike what is happening in some other places where librarians are villainized,” Sher said.
Sher takes pride in the Hunt Library’s reputation for being “open and welcoming to everyone. People come in and see things and get pulled into things they weren’t expecting. Our library is seen as a positive force.”
Sher came to Falls Village after being awarded a fellowship at Adamah Farm, then a program of the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center. She worked at pickling, in the greenhouse and later in the development office. She also worked as a nanny.
At the same time, “I was in the library all the time,” she recalled. “I’m a voracious reader. The library is where I met a lot of my first friends in Falls Village.”
She became assistant librarian at Hunt and worked in that position for almost a decade before becoming the executive director four years ago.
Meg Sher, executive director of the David M. Hunt Library in Falls Village.L. Tomaino
Sher met her husband, Adam, while working at Adamah. They had their wedding there in 2012. He now emcees many events which she co-organizes with the Falls Village Recreation Commission.
Sher and her family live near the library.
“It’s an easy commute,” she said with a smile. “My kids run back and forth. I can go home to walk the dog if I need to.”
“My kids have grown up here.” Her oldest son, Eli, “loves volunteering. He helps with Augustfest and often helps set up chairs for ArtWall gatherings.” Her younger son, Noah, is often at events and was eager to taste cookies at last year’s holiday cookie swap.
When she is not at the library, Sher likes to hike with her family. Bella, their Portuguese water dog, often accompanies them.
Sher enjoys seeking out people to offer events at the library.
“I do a lot of different community programming. It is one of my favorite parts of the job.”
Augustfest, featuring food, music and an auction, is the library’s biggest fundraiser.
“This summer we had a record 152 attendees, which was pretty incredible.”
Yonah Sadeh, a filmmaker from Falls Village, inaugurated the VideoWall this year, Sher explained.
“I’ve known Yonah since he was two. It’s wonderful to work with him as an adult.”
The VideoWall complements the library’s ArtWall, which showcases a new artist each month. Sher praised the ArtWall committee for its work and highlighted December’s popular “12x12 Show,” featuring works by local artists, each measuring 12 by 12 inches and priced at $150.
Sher added that some of the artists who exhibit at the ArtWall offer workshops to students at Kellogg School, next door to the library. In September, artist Danielle Mailer worked with the children. Vincent Inconiglios taught a class last November.
Being next to the school, said Sher, is a great advantage.
“Kids are coming after school, to see friends, work on projects, find a great book. Kids that love the library end up using the library as grownups.”
This past year, in partnership with Adamah, the library and school created a garden, with excess produce made available at The Center on Main.
This year is Sher’s second year participating in the Troutbeck Symposium in Amenia with James King, director of the library at Salisbury School. The Troutbeck Symposium is “a gathering of a year of student historical inquiry across the region” in which students “uncover stories that have been overlooked, forgotten, or never recorded.”
Last year, Sher and King began a project with a group of students researching Irish immigrants in Falls Village, exploring ancestry and creating small magazines about their findings.
They continued this year, visiting St. Patrick’s Catholic Cemetery on Dublin Road, cleaning seven gravestones and even righting one with the help of stonemason and gravestone restoration expert Karl Munson. Paul Kozeazny, a representative of the Catholic archdiocese, helped secure access to the site.
A film documenting their activities will be shown at the symposium in spring 2027.
A full schedule of programs and events, ranging from tech help to ceramic mug-making, can be found on the library’s website.
Despite spending her days surrounded by books, and a busy schedule of programming, Sher still loves to settle in with a book at home.
For more information on library programs and events, visit huntlibrary.org
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Touré was born in northern Mali in 1981. His father, the renowned guitarist Ali Farka Touré, came from a family of soldiers and wanted his son to join the army. The younger Touré studied drums and the calabash and practiced guitar in secret. He earned his father’s blessing to pursue music shortly before Ali died in 2006, and they played two tracks together on Vieux’s debut album.
Touré is known for his deft, polyrhythmic playing, and his songs grow out of riffs that repeat and layer to hypnotic effect. He draws on rock, blues, Latin music and various African traditions. This distinctive blend builds on his father’s work adapting the sonic traditions of Mali’s arid north to the guitar.
Vieux’s album “Mon Pays” (“My Country,” 2013) honored Mali’s culture after Tuareg separatists and extremist groups seized the north in 2012. “Samba” (2017) was recorded before about 50 listeners in Woodstock, New York. In 2022 came “Les Racines” (“The Roots”), a return to his father’s desert blues, and “Ali,” on which he and the trio Khruangbin reworked eight of the elder Touré’s songs.
Touré leads the Ali Farka Touré Foundation, which focuses on cultural and educational work in Mali. Around the anniversary of Ali’s death, it holds a festival in Bamako, Mali’s capital. Bamako has been under blockade for much of the past year, besieged by JNIM, an al-Qaeda affiliate. Against this backdrop, Touré continues to carry the music of Mali to audiences abroad.
At the Nov. 5 concert, Touré’s desert blues will share the bill with Gnawa, the music LanGus plays, which developed in Morocco among West Africans who were brought north across the desert as enslaved people. Gnawa is religious music traditionally performed at all-night healing ceremonies called lila, intended to carry participants into trance.
Samir LanGusProvided
LanGus was born and raised outside Agadir, Morocco, and began learning Gnawa from its masters at age 8. He plays the sintir, a three-stringed bass lute made of wood and camel skin. The player strikes a low string with the thumb to create a deep, resonant pulse. Iron castanets clatter over the sintir’s bass line, and vocalists trade call-and-response refrains.
LanGus infuses the tradition with jazz and improvisation. In New York, he founded the ensemble Innov Gnawa. His first solo album, “Gnawa Love,” came out in February.
Touré and LanGus’s Nov. 5 concert is one of the last public events at Race Brook Lodge, which is for sale and ended full-service operations at the end of 2025. The lodge’s final scheduled event, on Nov. 6, is an evening of Rumi’s poetry with translator and vocalist Haleh Liza Gafori, cellist Isabel Castellvi and ceremonial bard James Bird.
For tickets, visit rblodge.com.
James FitzGerald is a student at Yale Law School, where he focuses on ecological restoration and international environmental cooperation. He splits his time between Lakeville and New Haven.
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