Reason 3 Power! by Michael Prager

Michael's passion is helping people improve their health and lives by working with them to refocus on their true self-interests. Doing so gives them more power and influence, not only in their intimate world but in the world at large.

Michael says he became a speaker and coach via his belief in the power to change, born not of faith but experience. He was a fat kid who became an obese adolescent, surpassing 300 pounds for the first time at age 15 and twice more until topping out at 365 pounds at age 33. During that time, he lost more than 130 pounds twice but couldn't keep it off, all the while certain that he had all the information and other resources he needed to live happily and productively.

Now he concedes, if he had everything he needed, why did he keep ending up in circumstances he didn't want? And if you have everything you need, why change at all?

Today, he's maintaining a 155-pound loss for almost 25 years - and considers the second number far more significant than the first. His first book, Fat Boy Thin Man, used memoir techniques to make the case for food addiction as a powerful influence on many lives and on all of society. But he wrote nothing about dieting and little about food, because he eventually came to understand that although weight was a problem, it was by no means the problem.

Professionally, Michael was a newspaper journalist for 30 years, most recently editing at the Boston Globe for 14 years. Additionally, his news and feature stories, reviews, op-eds and more, on a range of topics, have appeared in dozens of newspapers and magazines.

He believes deeply that his combination of decades of storytelling practice and decades' experiencing a unique, personal, and inspirational tale situates him to share his journey's implications with all who want to achieve and maintain healthy, personal change of their own.

Michael is blessed with a wife, Georgina, who believes both in him and his mission to communicate this message. He thinks of his son, Joseph, as nothing less than a gift of fate. The family lives together in Arlington, Massachusetts, in the United States.