Losing weight: Truly a balancing act

Abstract

I"ve emphasized often enough that losing weight is like learning to speak another language.

In addition, I have published articles lending support to my reasons for making this assertion (monografías.com).

Besides, I have published countless articles on the trials and tribulations of the overweight person, the futility of dieting and on the phenomenology of all eating disorders, obesity considered one of them.

Losing weight is difficult, because the body opposes it with dogged determination.

However thorny it is doesn"t seem to matter to science, as some scientists try to make the process look simple.

On this regard, everyday in the news, appears some article that distorts our view in favor of homespun and outrageously so-called "scientific research".

Research that never yields substantial or definite results.

It"s as if new and unproven theories take the place of established empiric work and common reason, in order to bolster pseudo-scientific research.

The purpose of this article is to set the record straight.

Key words

• Losing weight

• A balancing act

• Boring menus and weight loses

• Weight loss without psychotherapy: Useless, as it bodes no permanent results for the long term

Introduction

A patient calls me in the early hours of the evening to report her daily collations. She lives in Arecibo, and is on the maintenance, "holding", or "relapse prevention" phase of her dietary plan.

In the process of sharing her account, she stops abruptly, in order to give me, with excitement, the following news:

"Following my plan, I"ve discovered that by consuming an adequate but unexciting diet, I can lose weight!"

"That"s the idea" I promptly responded.

What"d to my act happen if I were fat?

Elisa, not her real name, often finds herself in the horns of a dilemma. She is determined — not only to lose weight (something she has accomplished with resolve and with a great measure of success) — to remain slender and attractive at her present weight.

Weight over which she has hovered (+/- 5 lb) for several months.

The reason for this lack of movement is what she calls her "mini-relapses".

Being a businesswoman she "needs" to break her established eating routine with some frequency to join clients at the, often epicurean, and opiparous table.

In this dilemma, she is not alone as we can well appreciate

We acknowledge that too many people struggling with overweight fall under this category. But we are prepared to deal with this issue as part of the structure of the "system" we have designed specifically to meet her personal needs.

Besides, the beauty of Elisa"s situation is that the weight she currently maintains puts her at a very nice and healthy level appreciably to all, in terms of the slender figure she projects and her feelings of wellbeing.

She says

"I know I"m thin… it"s that I"d like to get those 3-5 extra pounds out of my way…" She is prompt to add.

Elisa

Her history, before we started to work together, mirrored for many years the same story of so many men and women who have tried unsuccessfully to lose weight on a permanent and sustained basis.

She had attempted every available diet or dietary plan.

Often commuting from Punta Cana to Miami or Puerto Rico, submitting herself all along to every sacrifice from her required — doing it with stoic resignation.

An only great promise with meager results as it"s often the case.

Elisa: Why do YOU want to lose weight now, if you can stay as you are?

This gifted and exceptionally nice looking young woman came to us not exactly to lose weight, but to mend a broken heart.

Elisa had finished an amorous relation with a wealthy man who treated her with cold indifference.

Scion to a solvent family of unsophisticated noveaux riches, their aspirations for their dyslexic heir was — if not for a better — at least, for a more moneyed woman than her.

Thus the relationship ended with an anticlimax for Elisa (not exactly what Beethoven had in mind when composing the eponymous melody).

C"est la vie

During her intensive and successful therapy this worthy woman discovered that in the aftermath of the relationship se had lost much of her self-esteem falling in the trap of indulging with abandonment in frequent forays to local eateries where she"d consume enormous varieties of rich and appetizing foods to allay anxieties and feelings of depression. (See my articles on these issues).

Horror!

The result: she had gained forty two unwanted pounds

The "remedy"

Daily walks — with or without friends — dieting, and visits to the local gym had produced very little in terms of measurable effects on her weight.