Weight Loss, the Urge to Proseletyze, and Angst

[vdansk]

This topic is boring for many and triggery for some, hence the cut.

Back in January I started seeing a hypnotist.

She does group sessions of about 30 people, lasting 3 1/2 to 5 hours each.  The three sessions are pricey, the diet she prescribes is restrictive, and she does not advertise at all.  I think part of the reason it is pricey is to try to keep numbers down...and she is still booking out months and months for her evening appointments.

Because it works.

She claims 90% success rates at one year.  Every single person in the room personally knew someone who had lost a tremendous amount of weight doing this.  No advertising.  She says she wouldn't even have a sign on the building if it weren't required by her lease.

I am two days shy of 6 weeks into this.  I am never hungry, the cravings are purely intellectual, and it is actually pretty easy.  I have no idea how much weight I've lost, and I never will; I'm not allowed to weigh myself.  I am allowed to notice the clothing that doesn't fit, and to use a tape measure.  My waist is down about 7 inches, three of them in the last two weeks.

Now, since I was a muffin top size 18 (where the excess rides above the waist band in a charming roll of fat) I am by no means skinny.  I am only six weeks into this.  And already I am feeling guilty about not telling people about it.  Because it is EASY.  Because I feel good.  Because at 46, finding something that really works is truly amazing.

On the other hand, most of the people I know would have a hard time swinging the cost,  Many of my friends live far too far away to make use of this, and I would not recommend a hypnotist that I didn't have this kind of knowledge of.  "Take 3 weeks off and visit me while spending $600 going to sessions" is not a reasonable suggestion.

Then there is the whole--should we be skinny just because society says so?  Meta analysis shows that people with a BMI of 25-30 (overweight) live longer than people of "normal" 18.5-25.  People with a BMI of 30-35 live just as long as the "normals".   I have osteoarthritis of the knees, GERD, sleep apnea, and weight related asthma; for me this is definitely about health and function...but.  I still have this urge to be slender, to conform to Society's expectations,  

I have one friend who I think might live a decade or more longer if she did this.  (She's not on LJ.)  I have no idea what the role of friendship is in this scenario.

Comments

[dcltdw]

Insofar as prosletyzing, I'm a big fan of pull not push mechanisms. If me blogging about running gets others to think about their fitness, awesome. Otherwise, I feel like, enh, not my place to push this onto others.

Now I'm curious how the control group just using the restrictive diet fares. Still, pretty interesting. :)

Alyse also read a book talking about exercise which differentiated between body looks and fitness. That was helpful to both of us: we want to be very active as we continue getting older, so "go on cruises because we can't walk around anymore" is not for us - doubly so, because we find cruises to be pretty boring. (It'd be totally different if we found them awesome in and of themselves.)

[vdansk]

Well, the control group is Atkins, which has about a ten percent rate of significant sustained weight loss after one year. :) Interestingly, she did do a controlled study with the cardiologists she worked with developing this regarding to weigh or not to weigh. The patients who weighed themselves lost half the weight of the ones who didn't. I attribute that to min-maxing--all the tricks that make weight loss LOOK better today on the scale, but actually slow it down, like fluid restriction.

I love cruises, but it would be inconvenient to be mobility limited unless you were in a wheelchair. We would generally get 3-5 miles in a day going back and forth to things not counting shore excursions. The mad dash alone from early dinner to comedy show should have been an athletic event.... ;) I love only unpacking once, so that is my plan for a whirlwind tour of Europe one of these days....

I like your pull rather than push approach.

[chris-warrior.livejournal.com]

i think that talking enthusiastically about what worked for you and made you feel better is 100% fine. i also think the inverse is valid: talking about what went wrong for you in an efort to encouarge others to avoid it (ie: Dave having a heart attack).

the thing is, nothing we do or say will make up another's mind for them. you and i both know that: *they* have to decide. so you don't bear the ultimate responsibility or credit, either way.

i think being able to share the new wonderfulness of life is part of why we journal openly. i think 7" lost is INCREDIBLE. congrats!!!

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

Good luck with it! Russ is a little concerned that I might have a malabsorption issue, which is a possibility with CVID, because my wedding ring is kinda loose. The simple fact is that the semester ended early December, and I'm only taking one class this semester, so I'm not eating fast food for lunch twice a week.

[vdansk]

LOL! Yes, well, that will do it! If you feel good and your exercise tolerance is just as good I would not worry. :)