As I said in my opening post, I've tried most everything. One was NutriSystem. In NutriSystem, they sell you a bag or two of food every week and that's all you're supposed to eat, except for fresh skim milk and maybe salad greens you add as needed. Some people do fine on NutriSystem.My first two weeks went well, but on the third visit I had a bad weigh-in. "Now what?" I asked the counselor. This was in Maine, and she was one of the Helpful People. In the course of trying to lose weight, I have met many Helpful People. God bless them, they mean well. "Have you tried setting goals for yourself?" she asked. Helpfully.
"Honey," I thought to myself but did not say aloud, "by the time a 38-year-old fat man asks a 24-year-old skinny girl 'Now what?,' he has set thousands of goals for himself. He has a clear and bitter memory of every one of them, and he now questions the value of goal-setting itself."
I wish I had said it aloud, because maybe, against all the odds, she might have known an answer that might have gotten through. She might have said something like this: "Let's set a mini-goal, something so small and so close that you can't possibly miss it. It's a confidence-building measure, as they say in Middle East peace negotiations, a baby step that obviously doesn't come within a million miles of settling the core problem, but which begins to begin to create a positive mood despite years of very discouraging history. So, suppose you lose one pound, just one little pound, by next week." I would have listened to that.
What the Helpful People often don't understand is that the problem has been on my mind for years. I've thought about it, however unsuccessfully, from every obvious and several obscure angles. Attention, Helpful People! I know I eat too much. I may be fat, but I'm not clueless. (Nor am I "in denial," but that belongs in another post.)
So watch me now as I get in touch with my own Inner Helpful Person. I will set one of those teensy-weensy, can't-miss goals described above, something that even Hamas and Hezbollah could agree on, and I try to build my confidence with it. No, I won't tell you what it is, not until I've done it.
