Over the last few months, I’ve developed a habit of catching Hardball and Countdown on MSNBC. On Thursday’s Hardball, Chris Matthews talked with Michael Berman, author of the new book, Living Large: A Big Man’s Ideas on Weight, Success, and Acceptance.

Transcripts and more after the break.

Here’s part of their discussion (from the MSNBC transcript):

MATTHEWS: Welcome back to HARDBALL. There‘s a new political hot topic out there lately, weight loss, which is funny because you won‘t find any politician encouraging people to be unhealthy, but big stars like former President Clinton, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Governor Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, a 2008 wannabe, by the way, are out there promoting healthy living.

Washington political veteran Mike Berman has a new book out called “Living Large.” It‘s a very personal story about what it‘s like to be overweight. And now he‘s learned to manage it in his real life, both physically and spiritually. Mike Berman, buddy, thank you. So what is your big message? “Living Large” sounds like you‘re happy to be doll king of thing.

MIKE BERMAN, AUTHOR: Well but the big message is if you‘re an adult and you‘re fat, you‘re going to be fat for the rest of your life. It‘s a chronic disease, learn how to manage it because the day is not going to come when you look like the average athlete.

MATTHEWS: But what about problems like diabetes? Don‘t you have to deal with them?

BERMAN: Of course, you have to try and get your weight down, but the fact is most people can‘t do it.

MATTHEWS: What happens? Everybody says, “OK, I just joined a health club or I just stopped eating white meat, or red meat.” Everybody comes up to you and they‘re losing weight, great, for two or three months. They say, “Oh, I‘ve got a new workout guy who‘s working with me or I just quit red meat,” and then you see them three months later and they‘re back to where they were.

BERMAN: Because whatever they‘ve done to lose the weight is not something they can sustain. They‘ve changed their lifestyle too much and they go back to the regular lifestyle, you just put the weight back on.

MATTHEWS: What makes you reach for that first donut after three months? You‘ve been giving then up for three months.

BERMAN: It‘s there.

MATTHEWS: That‘s it?

BERMAN: That‘s it.

MATTHEWS: Or that apple fritter at Starbucks.

BERMAN: You‘re feeling good about yourself. The apple fritter at Starbucks, 820 calories, one of my favorite things.

MATTHEWS: The best thing on earth, changes your life for 10 minutes.

BERMAN: Exactly right. Doesn‘t even take me 10 minutes to finish it.

MATTHEWS: But the feeling, you say it‘s just human nature to go back to what you are.

BERMAN: It‘s not human nature. It‘s the fact that if you‘re a really fat person, there‘s something else going on in your life, something psychological is going on in your life that causes you to turn to food and eventually it causes the food and your size to become part of your personality. As you get thinner, you think you‘re a different person, you‘re not, but you think you are.

MATTHEWS: Don‘t you feel like you‘ve left a load somewhere, you‘ve dropped your saddle bags when you‘re walking around, for a while, you have that wonderful light-footed feeling.

BERMAN: And that feeling becomes part of your every day and then gee, one donut, what difference does it make?

MATTHEWS: It doesn‘t make any difference the first day or two. The scales are the same and you say, “That donut didn‘t kill me.”

BERMAN: And if it was only one donut, you‘d be fine. But it‘s the multiples and the many times. And instead of eating a chicken leg, it‘s eating half the chicken. It‘s all part of it.

Berman also made an appearance on Good Morning American, and said:

Even fat people don’t get it. I’ve come to learn it’s a chronic disease and there’s no magic pill. All of the diets worked. I lost weight, but I couldn’t keep it off. That’s part of the disease. You may lose the weight, but you haven’t lost the problem that caused you to gain weight in the first place and so you gain it back.

I tend to agree with Berman that diets don’t work, and in fact, can make it worse. But I don’t agree that it’s always about “something psychological is going on in your life that causes you to turn to food.” Or at least that the implication that overeating is solely psychological in nature.

What I think is that overeating, for me at least, has both a psychological (emotional eating) and physiological (cravings) aspect to it. I may start to overeat because I’m angry or depressed, but I believe I keep overeating because of the biochemical response to sugar, refined white stuff, and so on.

Later this weekend, I’m going to post about a new book coming out, Ultrametabolism, which, in a moment of serendipity, I caught on PBS late last night. The approach pushed in this book seems very similar to my current approach, which is one of eating for health (an approach that is valid regardless of your weight).

Alas, it it does not have an answer to the “how to have cake and eat it too” question that many of us have. But more about that later.