Sensa continued: Anecdotal evidence

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The problem with early success with any weight-loss gizmo is that it’s hard to know where to give credit when things are going right. For example, I’ve lost a few pounds recently, what really caused it?

1. Working out more frequently and for a longer duration
2. Giving up sugar.
3. Having two bouts of the flu within the past four weeks.
4. Sprinkling my magic fairy dust on my food.

The point is that I have no expectation that the Sensa is a be-all and end-all. It’s just one more thing that helps.

Here are some psychological things that I’ve noticed:

1. I feel really stupid sprinkling my dust on hyper-fattening and greasy food. I do it, but it’s like ordering a diet soda with your super-size meal, you blush. Consequently I think twice about what I’m eating and I try to do better. This does NOT make me feel deprived.
2. When you sprinkle, you think about the food, the portion and what you’re aiming for, which is satiety.
3. You start with smaller portions and you are willing to give it a minute to see if that satisfies.

Am I concerned about the ingredients? No so much. Honestly, how worried are you about the crap in fast food, snacks and other trash-food? It always cracks me up about any diet program when they advise “consult a doctor before beginning any diet or exercise program.” It’s SO much healthier to lie around getting no exercise and eating stuff out of cellophane and paper, do you get a doctor to sign off on that?

At any rate, there’s only so much I’m willing to do anymore. I’m not willing to make a dramatic change in my diet. I’m not willing to increase my level of exercise. I’m not willing to buy into the whole ‘thinner is better’ mentality.

It’s impossible to miss The Biggest Loser and Dr. Phil folks, who do make enormous lifestyle changes and reap giant rewards. First of all, that is HARD to do. I wonder how tenuous their weight-loss is. Is it an ingrained change, or is it as hard for them to maintain as it is for me to stay away from sugar?

In our culture, maintaining weight-loss is a Sisyphysian task. Gain ground, lose it again. Having big success and then having big failure not only tears up your emotions, but it’s hard on your body as well.

In the 70’s there was a movement called EST. The crux of the program was that you’d sit in a room staring into a strawberry until you got “it.” Sometimes I feel like weight-loss is like that. One day a fat person just gets “it” and magically the weight melts off.

I notice that as the contestants on Biggest Loser and the Dr. Phil Weight Loss Challenge near their goals, they proclaim that they are changed and that once they got “it” that it was easy to stick to their various plans. They also claim that they’ll never go back to their old ways.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that these televised shows require the participants to drop out of their lives to participate in the intensive diet, exercise and behavior modification programs. Food and overeating is so culturally ingrained that you have to be removed from your normal environment just to make these vast changes.

I guess the big questions are: Can you lose weight without making enormous life changes? Can you maintain these changes outside of the intensive weight-loss environment?

Let’s look at the facts. Some people who undergo bariatric surgery manage to eat around it and gain their weight back. Some people who suffer an injury can alter their workout programs but are an accident away from gaining it all back.

Having the knowledge isn’t enough. There are so many ways that we are sabotaged in weight loss and weight maintenance, culturally, physiologically, psychologically, environmentally, that there has to be a magical component, otherwise it is so difficult that it is statistically impossible to achieve.