WEIGHT-LOSS PRODUCTS: PROMISES, PROMISES
Every once in a while a new diet plan surfaces, promising that you will lose all the weight you desire if you simply make a promise to yourself that sounds something like this: “Self, if you don’t lose X pounds in Y days, you’ll have to do Z.” The thing you have to do (Z) is very unpleasant. In the Blackmail Diet,13 author John Bear promised himself that if he didn’t lose 75 pounds in one year, he would donate $5,000 to the Nazis. The authors of the Blackmail Diet and similar plans assert that with powerful motivation you can’t help but toe the line and drop the
pounds.
Eating healthfully shouldn’t be something that we do only when the threat of something horrible hangs over our heads. It should be something we do naturally and enjoy. But even if negative motivation works fine for you, it still must be coupled with a safe, effective, lifelong program of proper eating and exercise. And that must involve goals you can live with easily. Perhaps you can manage, by placing yourself under a sufficient threat, to stick to a super-aggressive diet for a while—even a year. But once the threat is lifted, you’ll assuredly start eating again, and probably more than ever. Cutting back by eating somewhat less and using Chitosan works; trying to cut back massively just won’t work.
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