| I’m sure that you have watched all the geniuses who have TV programs that deal with weight. They run contests, they issue challenges, they tell people how to run their lives and they try to cajole people into “losing weight”. It seems like everyone on those programs “loses” weights, as least as long as they are on the air. Never forget that all those people are entertainers. They want you to watch their programs. If they don’t keep you interested you’re going to change to another channel and their ratings will go down and they will lose advertisers, etc. Actually, if you pay very close attention to what they are saying you will find that they are somewhere between an embarrassment and a joke. Why do I say this? I say this because they aren’t doing anything intelligent. They are just trying to make your symptoms go away instead of dealing with your real, underlying problem. They tell you what to eat, how much to eat, how often to eat and how much to exercise. If you think about it, they aren’t telling you anything that you didn’t already know. They are just doing it on TV and entertaining you. That’s all it is. They know it. You know it. Everyone knows it. So why do you listen? You listen because they offer some hope for what you think is a hopeless situation. You have never been able to weigh less on a permanent basis and this TV person says that he or she has the key. So you watch and you try to do what they are saying you should do. Well, how have you done in the long run? You may well have “lost weight” for a while. Lots of people do. Remember what everyone says. The hardest part is “keeping it off”. What they are really saying is that sooner or later you will go back to putting food in your mouth for emotional reasons. Once you do that you will, of course, “gain it back”. So what have you accomplished? Well, you’ve had fun watching someone on TV entertain you and you may have “lost” some weight for some period of time. If that’s all you want to accomplish, you’ve accomplished it. You had a good time. Did you do anything to get to your goal or permanently weighing less? Not a chance. Unless and until you eliminate the underlying problem the symptoms will always reappear. You have to be ready to deal with your real problem and you aren’t going to solve it just by watching TV. |
