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.

No where is this truer than in psychobabble-land.  How easy the words…”It’s just your FEELINGS making you crazy….Not the real world… Not the FACTS.”  …roll off the tongue.

Oh, how glibly this truth can be spoken… If  you are not the person who is whacked out at the time.  If you are the Whacked Out One (the WOO), glib is a bit harder to muster.  In fact, the non-WOO could be in danger since their kind pointing out that we are not managing ourselves well … could just be enough for us to turn our WOO-ness toward the pointer-outer.

There was a time when I wasn’t quite sure anyone could really get a handle on strong emotions.   Several incidents convinced me that each of us has within us the power to manage anxiety better.  The first was the ”hot tea incident.”

Remember, just how well you are able to manage your anxiety around anxious people (the degree of FUSION, see recent posts for definition) depends partly on the nature of your relationship to the other.  In this case, the “other” was one of the first couples I saw for marriage counseling.  (Word to the wise… don’t be any psychologist’s third case.)  The nature of my relationship with the couple was… they were important because, like I said, they were my third case and messing up would register as “tragic.”

I seated the couple in a small room in the university health center which had next to it a snack room.  Only a pair of louvered doors separated the snack room from the consultation room, so that clients could clearly hear anything that occurred in the snack room.  Once the couple was comfortable, I went into the snack room to complete making myself a cup of hot tea.  I’d left the teapot boiling on the stove earlier.  I placed a teabag in a mug, brought the teapot over to the sink, and proceded to pour the boiling water into my cup.  Except I’d misjudged how much water was in the teapot, plus my hands were a bit shaky.  The result was that the boiling water raged out of the pot, roiling over my hand holding the cup.  We are talking really, really hot water.     And here’s the thing.  I did not so much as make a peep.  (Okay, if you’d been in the same room and could read lips, you could have picked out a couple of unfriendly pharases.)  In an ordinary situation in which it was not incredibly important for me to make a good impression, I would have screamed.  I would have let loose a few barn-learned epithets.  But I was quiet.  Something flipped in me then.  A knowledge I hadn’t had before.  I’d proved to myself that if a person wanted to badly enough, he or she could change an “automatic” reaction.  During the session, I quietly watched welts grow on my hand.

I re-mention the hot tea incident now, because understanding and dealing with FUSION, is tough sledding.  So tough that most people don’t even give it much of a go.  It’s easier to give other people responsibility for our feelings.  It’s easier to try to get other people to change.  (Not that this works, it’s just easier to focus on changing others than it is to focus on changing self.)  It’s easier to reach for short term anxiety binders-substances, shopping, relationship dependence, worry…

The “hot tea” incident proved there is hope.  Even those of us regular WOOs can manage our emotions better.  Even two percent is a huge gain.