Fat Is A Self-Inflicted Disease

Written by Virginia Bola, PsyD


Continued from page 1

So what happens? Did they never approachrepparttar social ideal or did they battle for years and then one day just give up?

If you control your weight for an external reason - catching a mate, making friends, becoming popular - once these goals are accomplished,repparttar 141177 effort no longer seems worthwhile. If you fight to stay slim for intrinsic reasons - you like to look slim, you like fitted clothes, you respect yourself when you know you look good - then you are more likely to keep plugging away at it.

What is so pathetic aboutrepparttar 141178 obese is not just how awful they look, it'srepparttar 141179 deadness in their eyes: no pride, no self-respect, no self-affection. What a depressing way to exist, made only more tragic because it is self-inflicted.

Virginia Bola is a licensed psychologist and an admitted diet fanatic. She specializes in therapeutic reframing and the effects of attitudes and motivation on individual goals. The author of The Wolf at the Door: An Unemployment Survival Manual, and a free ezine, The Worker's Edge, she is currently working on a psychologically-based weight control book: Diet with an Attitude. She can be reached at http://dietwithanattitude.blogspot.com


Diet Fads: Supermarket Sheep

Written by Virginia Bola, PsyD


Continued from page 1

Once more, I wonder: what is left in those boxes, cans, and jars? Why am I paying $1.19 per ounce for something that really isn't anything?

Then I started to figure it out (sometimes I'm a little slow). The food hadn't really changed at all, justrepparttar packaging. Food labels are like those ubiquitous Internet sales letters. They trumpet headlines that catch our interest because they are in synch with our desires and goals. Is that accidental? Of course not. Highly paid copywriters choose their headlines with great care, buying intorepparttar 141176 national "obsession o'repparttar 141177 day", floating onrepparttar 141178 coattails ofrepparttar 141179 latest fad.

Many of us are so desperate to control our weight that we buy intorepparttar 141180 promises likerepparttar 141181 unaware followers we are: bleating sheep heading for a precipice with no thought of questioning our leaders or striking out in a different direction.

The unspoken secret is thatrepparttar 141182 label doesn't matter. If we want to lose weight, we don't eat pasta sauce, potato chips, candy bars, or ice cream. Period. No matter whatrepparttar 141183 package says. Deep in our psyche, we know what we can eat (very little) and what we can't (a whole bunch). Allowing ourselves to be misled is only a fashionably acceptable way to fool ourselves, and we know it. We buy intorepparttar 141184 hype because we want, so badly, to believe. We want to think that we are doingrepparttar 141185 right thing, that we're really trying, that our motivation is pure.

Our weaknesses are being exploited byrepparttar 141186 packagers andrepparttar 141187 super store con men. Our ambivalence, andrepparttar 141188 overwhelming need to avoidrepparttar 141189 very real discomfort of effective dieting, investsrepparttar 141190 misguidance of food labels with an illusion of truth.

Like our dimwitted ovine cousins, we, too, are eventually fleeced.

Virginia Bola is a licensed psychologist and an admitted diet fanatic. She specializes in therapeutic reframing and the effects of attitudes and motivation on individual goals. The author of The Wolf at the Door: An Unemployment Survival Manual, and a free ezine, The Worker's Edge, she is currently working on a psychologically-based weight control book: Diet with an Attitude. She can be reached at http://dietwithanattitude.blogspot.com


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