weigh-2-go.org

Kellogg’s is advertising its Special K cereal with a new campaign that appeals to the popular urge to start the New Year with a resolution to diet. Here’s a link to an article about the ad campaign, in Advertising Age magazine:

http://adage.com/article?article_id=133434

A feature of the campaign is your opportunity to share your personal “Special K wake-up call” in the form of completing the sentence: “I knew I had to lose weight when…”  You can also join a Special K Yahoo! Group  and design your own Special K diet plant at www.specialk.com.

Now I am cynical of campaigns like this for a few reasons.  First of all, lo and behold, look at all the Special K products in my customized diet plan!  Second of all, the cereal itself is basically a vitamin-fortified version of Rice Krispies, only 10 calories and 5g carbs less.

Third, the sluggish economy is bringing out the creativity in big-brand food companies.  (I see this first-hand because my day job is related to this industry.)  Consumers (like you and me) are buying the grocery-store brands to save money, and the name brands are losing market share.  When consumers discover that the store brand “Krispy Rice” is almost identical to Special K, they probably won’t go back to the Kellogg’s brand even when the economy picks up.

So you will see name brand food companies come up with clever campaigns, especially ones like this that they can execute relatively inexpensively on the web, to preserve brand loyalty.

Maybe avoiding that extra 10 calories and 5g carbs every morning will help a few women lose weight, but I remain cynical.

I’m enjoying Facebook, where one of my Friends posted this on December 10:

cbs5.com – Talk Show Host Oprah Winfrey Says She Weighs 200 Pounds, Concerned About Rapid Gain 4:48pm

“I guess the Acai berry diet* and the being filthy rich thing didn’t work out.”

Here is a resource to add to my collection: a web page and book from the Mayo Clinic on the subject of Weight loss Maintenance, which is relatively rare in a sea of web contant about regular weight loss:

Weight maintenance: Keep the weight off permanently
MayoClinic.com

There is a book ($30 from the Mayo Clinic Online Bookstore) that goes into the details.  I haven’t read the book, but the Mayo Clinic is a pretty reputable resource.

Judging from this web page, I don’t have high expectations that the advice in the book is anything earth-shattering.  The kind of advice that I find the most helpful is along these two topics, both taken from this Mayo Clinic article:

Assess your goals and motivation. How you approached weight loss — both your commitment and your plan — goes a long way toward keeping you on the road to success. First, take a look at your motivation. What prompted you to lose weight? If you make a long-term commitment to your health and well-being, rather than losing pounds for a special event, you’re already ahead of the game.
…
Create a support network. Getting support for your efforts, whether through a friend, family member, trained professional or group of fellow travelers on the same path, can ultimately mean the difference between success and failure.

I like these particular tidbits because they go beyond the usual advice, which can be summed up: “move more, eat less.”  Other than that, I’m afraid that all the Mayo Clinic can offer is the same old thing.

My weight loss began with an epiphany that boiled down to this: my personality changed in a positive way that no longer fit my body, so I was driven to change my body.  And since the change in my personality was permanent, my drive was constant, and I was able to see the process through.  Now my body fits me, and I will never go back to the old body.

Those three sentences have taken almost three years to write.  I wasn’t conscious of this process while it was happening, and I am still figuring out how and why it happened the way it did–because if I can figure that out, I would unravel the mystery of the ages…the mystery behind Oprah’s Acai Berry Diet, the Abdominizer, Kirstie Alley’s/Valerie Bertinelli’s/Princess Fergie’s Weight Loss Miracles, and the key to a gazillion dollar media industry.

I was listening to a podcast interview with a philosopher named Eckhart Tolle who has written some popular books.  He talked about an epiphany he had that started with the thought: “I can no longer live with myself.”  I think we all feel this way sometimes–it was a statement that I think his readers relate to.  But by examining that statement he realized that he was thinking of himself as two people: (1) myself, and (2) the one I (myself) can’t live with.

I’m reading a book called The Happiness Hypothesis (buy it on my Amazon page–thanks!) that also talks about this duality of the human psyche.  The author, Jonathan Haidt, uses the metaphor of a human riding an elephant to describe the ways our minds work: like a rational, logical human, trying to give direction to an untrained elephant on which we ride.  The “rider” part of our brain is perfectly attuned to reason, but the “elephant” might or might not obey the rider’s guidance.

So in other words, my rider knows that the brownie is completely inconsistent with my personal goals for health and fitness.  My elephant really, really, really likes brownies.  Will I eat the brownie?

My studies continue.

Last night, a Sunday, I went to a musical jam night where I was surrounded by singer/songwriters and their guitars.  I am a wannabe in this crowd, there is no doubt.  Despite a fury of practicing, I am not ready yet to play guitar in front of the cats, let alone other people.  But I sat there and sang along and held my guitar as a prop.  It was okay, but I did poorly.

Tonight I went back to yoga class for the first time in a few months.  Oh geez, did I ever suck.  I know yoga isn’t a competition, blah blah blah, but everything in my body was stiff and crampy and wobbly.  It felt good, but again, I was no superstar.

But it was then that I realized* that I actually, perversely, missed that feeling of doing things poorly.

When I was losing weight, I felt like this all the time.  It is a humble but satisfying feeling to know that even though I am doing something poorly, I can be proud enough of myself for showing up and doing it, and every time I do show up, I get better.  So whether it is weight lifting or balancing like a tree or playing the guitar, I can feel good even though I am performing the task badly.  At least I am showing up.  I am still doing the work.

I have been procrastinating coming back to a yoga class because I knew I would do it poorly.  But at some point I had to either get over that, or give up yoga forever.  It is the same with the guitar.  And maybe it was the same for losing weight–either get it done or give up on the idea.

So I challenge anyone who is reading this blog to consider something that you want to do well, but you doo poorly now.  Is fear of underperforming preventing you from doing the work at all?  Maybe you can take pride in your act of simply showing up and “reporting for duty.”  Do the work, and be grateful that you are doing that much.  The accomplishment of the task will come.

*Carrie Bradshaw in Sex and the City says this in every episode, I think.  Has anyone else noticed that?