Friday, March 02, 2007

And then there's this …

Seeing the cover of the current Newsweek on Lori's blog reminded me that I intended to say something about one of the stories in it when I wrote today.

As I walked home from the post office I started reading an article about The Secret, a book by Rhonda Byrne, the philosophy of which has been adopted by Ellen and Oprah and probably countless others, or it wouldn't be such a big best-seller.

I. Love. Oprah. And Ellen. And since we're all about fitness and losing weight here at the Shrinking Knitter, I invite you to read what Byrne writes about moving the pudge.

Discuss.

5 comments:

Jack Sprat said...

Debbi:

Its weird, I couldn't agree ... LESS... than with what that "blame yourself for thinking bad thoughts" approach advocates. I love Oprah and Ellen, but since I only see them on screen at the gym (where this is no sound or text), I have no idea what their expertise is on weight management.

I do agree that the mind is our most powerful ally in this whole thing. I'm just worried about someone who starts to tell me there are "good thoughts" and "bad thoughts." I usually leave that to my spiritual advisor, not my weight loss gurus.

-J

Jennette Fulda said...

That article sounded really kooky to me. I would agree that thinking positive and believing you can lose weight are important parts of the process. But food *does* make you fat. I can't eat a box of Twinkies everyday and not gain weight just because I start believing it won't make me fat. I read that article and think it's a good idea that has been taken way too far. If I've learned anything about weight loss it's that it's not caused by just one thing, be it thoughts or food or exercise. It's everything put together.

Anonymous said...

I agree with Jonathan and Pasta Queen. It is food that makes you fat. This whole "secret" stuff is a wad of hooey.

Debbi said...

How about this, though, just to keep the conversation going? What if the "ask" part of the "ask/believe/receive" mantra was to be satisfied with healthy food?

It's very funny, PQ, that you would choose Twinkies as an example of a food that would make you fat. Elsewhere in the issue they break down all the ingredients in a Twinkie.

I agree with you all, by the way, that it's a bunch of hooey. But it's good ... ahem ... food for thought.

Lori G. said...

There are some things that I agreed with, namely trying to be more positive. When I have been practicing my swimming, I'd get frustrated and call myself stupid. So I stopped doing that -- I switched to at least a neutral name like Chief or Peanut (dumb, I know).

So being positive towards yourself, being positive about the food we eat and visualizing yourself becoming thin are not bad things at all. For me, I don't think about the visualization of being thin and tonight I'm going to try and do that. For someone who has been fat all of her life, it should be interesting.

OTOH, as I privately told Debbi, the article teeters dangerously close to some of the things I heard when I worked with patients. Some patients were told by well meaning (I hope) people that if they thought positive thoughts, their cancer or chronic illness would go away or improve. I understood what these people were saying to our patients but it also could sound like it's your own fault you're sick, fat, etc.