The Fashion Statement Diet

Lose Weight WITHOUT Changing What You Eat!

Emerging research suggests that the High Fashion Diet could be effective for weight loss (combined with a low calorie menu and exercise). Yes, you can lose weight simply by dressing with the appropriate amazing gadgets.  Or, How to Dress Like a Walking Emotional Guidance System… that is…as if you’ve said….I just give up…I’m never even going to try to think….ever.

Diet Plan:  There are a few purchases required here, but they’re each $19.99!… plus shipping and handling.  Oh, and lots of batteries.   Lots.

First, step into a pair of those Skechers Shape-up roller shoes (See previous Skechers post.).  These babies will take care of whipping your lower half into shape.

Second, strap one of those zapper belts that sends jolts into your abs so to make sure your amazing thigh and butt toning doesn’t get ahead of your tummy.

Certainly, you’ve bought two of those shaker tubes you hold in your hands…the ones that jiggle like crazy up and down and all you have to do is hang on baby… (I know, looks prit-tee pornographic to me….) Okay…put those down for now, you still need your hands.

Now, place the chin squasher torture instrument you bought off television that one time at three in the morning. You know, the one with a coil from a mattress that you place under your jaw.  Then you mash the spring down against your upper chest.  Ten minutes pushing that puppy down and you have a long slender neck and a few hard to explain bruises. 

Now, pick up those shaker tubes again.  You’re set…looking gadget fabulous. Roller shoes, zapper belt, chin squasher, and a tube wiggler in each hand.  Drive to Walmart, step out of your car, hit the on buttons on all your new-found miracle gadgets,  and walk around the perimeter in your new outfit.  This is the perfect weight loss program…unless you get arrested or run into someone from the office.

But Wait!  Just pay separate shipping and handling and you’ll receive the perfect accessory….one of those ball caps with a beer can and a flexible straw on either side.

Let’s say there’s a continuum of Emotional Maturity….a continuum where ‘0’ represents a person who employs her Emotional Guidance System at all times, in all situations….without any interference from her Thinking Guidance System whats-so-ever…

In other words, ‘0’ represents a person whose momentary feelings determine all decisions in her life….Let’s say…the Octamom.

And ‘100’ represents the person who confers with the Thinking Guidance System, a human who considers the long term results, when making decisions….Let’s say….Gandi.

Remember, feelings are not bad….feelings make life rich and deep.  But if you use transient feelings to decide long term issues for you….Your life will not turn out so well.  Which brings us back to our continuum. 

Where the ‘0’ end is headed up by the Octamom.  And the ‘100’ end, is represented by Gandi.

Notice, particularly, to what degree each person takes the welfare of others into account.  One person draws attention to herself by sacrificing eight (14 children in all)… The other person sacrifices himself to call attention to the plight of his people.

Now, if you’re still thinking, uh, FEELING, there’s a new miracle diet out there….You should know that the Octamom is coming out with a book on….Yep….on the special weight-loss secrets she employed to take off that extra baby (X8) weight.

Personally, I can do without her advice.  Just hand me a couple more of those Hollywood Cookie Diet goodies, would you please?

HOW WE THINK about a PROBLEM directs our TIME, ENERGY, MONEY, and WORRY

Okay…Dangerous water here, I know.  Weight loss is definitely the preoccupation of the nation and, while before we only drove ourselves nuts…the facts are childhood obesity has jumped into ugly focus.  Before a word reaches your eyes…keep in mind… Pledge One:  “I, Barbara DeShong, am as nutty and emotionally driven as anyone on the planet.”  No preaching or “expert” psycho-babbling here.  One of my irresistible Texas favorites is Mexican food which I just enjoyed in Denver, so my “failings” are interstate.

How we think about a symptom directs how we spend our time, energy, money, and heartfelt worry, attempting to make a difference.

Option A:  Childhood obesity is on the rise because of EVENTS and the ENVIRONMENT.

If we believe this, we launch programs to change the events and the environment.  We take soft drink machines out of schools, we force the convenience stores across from schools out of business, we applaud fast food franchises for offering apple slices instead of french fries.  We serve angel food cake at birthday parties. We buy exercise equipment. We IGNORE the fact that soft drink machines and convenience stores across from schools were in place long before the current dilemma. 

Option B:  Childhood obesity is on the rise because of a LACK OF INFORMATION.

If we believe lack of information to be the problem…that is, we believe we are overweight because we just can’t figure out how it happens– we will teach the food pyramid and how calories are used in the body.  We will petition school boards to buy more bulletin board materials on healthy eating. We will buy books on dieting and weight loss.  Since obesity is a highly complicated and cutting edge science, we will buy every new book that promises to have discovered “the secret.”  We will buy magazines with a new diet on the cover and filled with pages models in clothes no one we know could wear.  We IGNORE the fact that, logically, if more information on diet and exercise made a difference…all of us would be thinner and in better shape…since we have way more information (If you count saying the same thing a thousand different ways as information) now that we did in the 1950’s.

Option C:  Childhood obesity, like other “symptoms,” is on the rise due to ANXIETY and DIFFICULTIES in managing ANXIETY …difficulty making choices based on long-term benefit over getting rid of anxiety NOW. 

No blame here.  We got into this shape honestly responding to the emotional systems of which we are a part.  If we believe individual difficulties in managing anxiety…in the parents and the children…is resulting in an increasing pattern of over-eating and under-exercising—we realize we could invest time, energy, and sometimes money into strenthening the child’s, and our own, ability to think and manage anxiety. Remember the migration of the wildebeest (found by searching wildebeest on this site)…We’re just trying to get a little more toward the center of the herd.  Since we as parents know the problem…

Don’t worry, I ducked when you threw that plate at me.  I don’t like it either…focusing on events and information…is so comforting.  Plus, I must go to the vending machines and find some Tums.

First, DIETBABBLE ALERT: New Scientific Breakthrough! The reason you’ve had a hard time losing weight is because you haven’t been eating according to your DNA!  That’s right, folks.  Now you can send in a saliva swab, the “lab” reads your “sample” and POOF… the exciting secret foods you need to avoid will be revealed and the weight just falls off.  Of course, you have to coordinate this amazing scientific breakthrough with dieting according to your blood type and the phases of the moon.

Also, a thermos maker cashing in on “going green” by showing piles of plastic bottles (gallons) lists both ’saving the planet’ and ‘weight loss’ as results you can expect by using the thermos.

Still the favorite in my heart:  the man walking along the beach with a split piece of metal, ending his spiel saying, “And my wife can’t stop talking about the weight I’ve lost since I’ve had my new metal detector.”

Anxiety. How far will you go to push down your anxiety?

It’s interesting to notice that recent celebrity drug deaths are overdoses … not of a drug that would make a person ‘high’… their deaths have not been the result of going too far with a substance known to make a person ‘happy’.  Their deaths have been the result of taking drugs which make a person numb, even unconcious.

Anxiety. 

Anxiety is the fuel and the product of the Emotional Guidance System.  Anxiety is powerful, powerful enough to make a mess of a person’s life.  We are all anxious.  Dogs and cats and cows are anxious, too.  Some dogs chew through doors when left alone, some cats hide even when hungry, cows stampede sometimes.  People chew (overeat), hide (avoid), and stampede (run away), too.

The goal of this mysteryshrink journey we are on is to get a little better hold on anxiety. (See Wildebeest entry)..2 percent…a shift of only 2 percent can improve life experience.

What would happen if you could manage a 2 percent improvement in your ability to manage your anxiety when someone else is saying something that makes you anxious?  Aha!  Of course, no one can “make you anxious”… No one else can even reach your EMOTIONAL GUIDANCE SYSTEM button… I was just giving you a little test…

Situation: The spouse and I are having breakfast in Kansas City during the Big Twelve Basketball tournament.  As it happens, several team members are enjoying the same hotel buffet.  My special other, being much better than I at realizing his importance or lack of importance in the world, is nudging me in the shin and teasingly suggesting I make up some story about a young nephew and collect a bunch of Texas Longhorn autographs.  Since my Emotional Guidance System is always ready to exaggerate things, always ready with the caution, ”Don’t call attention to yourself!  People will think you’re crazy! Your complete hick-dom background is going to show and you’ll never recover!  What complete strangers think of you is incredibly important!  A frown from a stranger will ruin your whole day!”  “When your special person does something that he thinks is cute and you think is embarrassing after you’ve TOLD him how he’s supposed to behave to keep you calmed down…his continuing to be himself means he doesn’t love you!” 

Okay, there I am, exposed for the sucker FUSION (See Fusion, think ropes twisted together.)  And how do I FEEL?  To what degree do the actions of another change (signal you to change) what’s going on inside you?

Anxiety 101.  Tune in tomorrow for miraculous 2 percent victory in the terrifying autographing incident!

 

 

In our consumer culture products are produced–not to be kept as useful–but as fads that really change nothing.  Thus, the latest exercise gadget, diet pill, or “secret food” revealed work on repeating inane simplistic promises.  The producer knows no real change will occur (something lasting less than six months is not a change), but for a while, a critical period, people will buy the product.

I spent and hour and a half on-line and found 473 Diets.   Ladies and gentlemen the problem IS NOT  lack of information.  The problems have to do with our functioning.

  First: This is not a new diet.  No secret is included.  All I’m doing is reporting what one woman decided to do and did based on her work to get a big more in charge her EMOTIONAL GUIDANCE SYSTEM.  Remember, no frowns or self-beatings.  This is where your unconditional friend presides. And you are okay, so smile.

This woman, I’ll call her M, lived alone and had a limited social life.  She was forty-six and had been divorced almost twenty-years.  M worked at a good state job and enjoyed quiet evenings with her own company reading and watching favorite shows. She also enjoyed travelling. Limitation travelling was the reason she wanted to think through the weight issue.

To strengthen her access to her THINKING GUIDANCE SYSTEM, she constructed methods to break the rhythm of reflexive,non-thoughtful, eating.  Then she came up with her own program.  For breakfast and lunch (meals she didn’t really enjoy) she ate an apple and two rice cakes.  At nine in the evening she went through the Whataburger Drive Thru and picked up a double meat cheese Whataburger with double onions. She went home and enjoyed her meal in front of her favorite show.  She did this for months.  She lost the weight.

I know, I can practically feel “Yes, but…” missiles about nutrition, what time of day a person ought to eat, the importance of your astrological sign, and your body frame, someone pointing to a pyramid and, of course, plastic food.  Somewhere out there is even a joy-killer somewhere saying,  “But, Doc,      don’t you think it’s WRONG to enjoy such bad foods.  Don’t you think we should ‘eat to live’ instead of ‘live to eat’?”

Grrrrrrrrrrr.  M lost the weight.  Did all those nutritionist talks ever change anyone’s behavior? I mean anyone except that rude guy in the back chanting, “eat to live instead of eat to live.”

And Dr. L, of course.

  Lack of information is not the reason we persist in self destructive behaviors.  Yet, more information (even if it’s absurdly dishonest) is what we throw at people and problems.  What we throw at ourselves.

Change in our lives comes with MANAGING ANXIETY BETTER.  More information doesn’t do it.   And before I rant along here all serious, keep in mind the motto of this site:  IF DO NOT TAKE LIFE SERIOUSLY, IT ISN’T WORTH LIVING.  IF YOU ONLY TAKE LIFE SERIOUSLY, IT ISN’T WORTH LIVING.

So, let’s not get a stranglehold, life or death on ourselves.  We’re going to MUDDLE through.

Let’s take weight management.  (Remember, humor.  Smile, it keeps them guessing.)  The facts: all diets work (short term).  If you take in fewer calories than you expend you will lose weight.  It’s not about your blood type, your personality type, what time you eat, or what order you eat foods in, secret fat-burning herbs or foods, or machines. and plastic balls. Neither is weight-loss about “shopping at Walmart” or all the pounds you’ll lose after you order a metal dectector–two of the more recent ridiculous claims. Grasping onto more information, buying a “new” diet is back to thinking 10 MINUTES AT A TIME.

Now I’m not into the double-message culture that has way too many women living lives constantly racked by self-hate, anxiety, and guilt.   But as I worked on an eating disorders unit for a while, I sometimes consult with women whose EMOTIONAL GUIDANCE SYSTEMS have steered them toward eating to relieve anxiety and carrying the accompanying extra pounds.  These women interested in working on managing their anxiety better as a way of thinking about eating patterns do not need me or anyone else to hand over another diet or a weight chart. I want to tell you about one woman who lost over a hundred pounds eating hamburgers.

But, first I digress to share with you the PLASTIC FOOD Incident. 

After a early and complete hysterectomy I was (gratefully) put on hormones which required some adjusting.  “Some adjusting” being a clinical term for IMMEDIATE CHANGE BECAUSE I AM NOW CRAZY and I don’t want to end up in prison.”  Thus, I ended up with an appointment with a Gynocologic Endocrinologist Assistant.  The GEA asked me to describe the symptoms I was experiencing.  After saying “I’m not the lovely, gentle person I once could convince myself I was,” and  ”I now consider climbing a staircase right up there with swimming the English Channel,”  . . . I mentioned a bit of new flesh showing up around my middle without any changes in my behavior.

And this is what she did. No kidding.  Now, keep in mind this helpful lass is about twenty and I’m not.  This is what she did . .  without even a stutter-step of questioning whether her approach might  be a bit shop-worn. . . even bizarre?    

She smiled as if, “Oh, I know just what you need,”   and reached into a drawer. She then brought out a little plastic steak, a plastic clump of broccoli, and a rather appetizing slice of plastic chocolate cake.  She set these items in front of me on the table.   The innocent GEA then began to explain how calories function in the human body, adding that she finds demonstrating with the plastic food helpful in her explanation because so many people do not realize that PORTION size matters.

Oh.  So, I guess that same stunning NEW IDEA would apply to making bank deposits, too?  I never thought of that.  Surely, this lass had not been listening when I mentioned, I WAS CRAZY and MAYBE, JUST MAYBE not as PATIENT with wasting time as I was before the surgery?

Okay, next I’ll fill you in on how the woman lost a hundred pounds eating hamburgers.

    I just heard a woman promising:  “Get happier!  Get slimmer!  Get a NEW LIFE!”

“Just press ‘PLAY’.” 

    I’m serious.  We’ve been working at the this becoming a Self Defined Person way too hard.  All we need to do is order this “press-pocket” or “ab-detonator” or some such miraculous item that “scientists” have just discovered that . . .   well . . . you know.

  Plus shipping and handling.  

Later:  Can love MAKE YOU HAPPY?

I haven’t forgotten the Frenchman sitting in the Paris cafe just waiting to share how he learned to be happy man.

     Yesterday, I was flipping through the channels during a Court TV (Tru TV) break and there was Tyra interviewing guests.  Each woman in the audience had a large square of paper taped to the front of her shirt.  The square read, “My True Weght” (or something close).  The idea was that at the end of the show all papers would come off, including Tyra’s, and we’d have a chance to see just how worthwhile each woman was.

   Tyra chants, “One, two, three,” and off they come.  Under the paper?  “SCREW THE SCALES.”

   How great is that?  Just taking women’s number one reason to feel bad and stupid and laughing right in its face.  I’ve never had scales and suggest to the women I see to dump those ridiculous torture machines!

   But, “Oh, oh,” come the frightened cries.      “If a woman doesn’t weigh herself, won’t she lose all control and get fatter and fatter until she’s not worth anything at all anymore?  How will she possibly know what to do?”

      Well . . . NO.  Women are not stupid just because we’ve been brain-washed to believe it’s just real important not to just know what we weigh, it’s flipping critical to know our PERCENTAGE OF BODY FAT.  Now who came up with that one?  Women were actually PAYING to have a DOCTOR      tell us a set of numbers we were supposed to so seriously battle against.

     Hey, we have MIRRORS.  We have CLOTHES.  We can SEE our bodies and, more importantly, we are not such CHILDREN that we DON’T KNOW WHAT IT MEANS when we CAN’T FIT INTO clothes we wore before.

The Emperor Has No Clothes!  We have fallen for our own obsession.  And what hurts, what really, really hurts, is seeing so many wonderful, intelligent, funny, beatiful women convinced they would be better people if they lost weight.  When did butt-size become the measure of a woman?    When did we bow our heads and accept the “INTERNAL TORTURER?”

 The rant shall continue.  Having spent my first years out of graduate school working with eating disorders and the years since working with depression and marriages in trouble –I’m not getting off of this for a while.