Everyday Systems

We have a friend visiting the U.S. for the first time from France. You know what I am going to say. He can't believe how huge the food is here. In restaurants and stores. The popcorn and soda at the movie theater. Everywhere. The amount people snack and eat fast food. He is in shock. When we suggested taking him to a buffet, he thought we were joking with him. He had never heard of such a thing in his life. He said no wonder Americans are fighting a battle with obesity. Temptation is everywhere. Moral of the story that I have learned: people in France eat real food (including fattening food), but in much much smaller portions. 3 meals a day. they cook at home a lot more. no snacking. very little fast food/junk food. We all know this to be true, but we can't all move to France =). I think it is possible to adopt these habits here, just not as easily.

I agree! But you probably knew that.

I do think it's going to be equally as difficult to get Americans to eat real food and give up the junk, or at least minimize it's consumption, as it is will to get them to eat smaller portions, stop snacking and so on. It will be a battle.

It used to be that restaurants weren't even open in between meal times in France. It might still be true of some, or even most, but America has had its influence.

There's a commercial currently running for Weight Watchers. The girl is Russian and gained so much weight after coming to the U.S., that she had to go on WW.

She didn't actually HAVE to go on WW. She could have done No S.

Just for the heck of it, I did a quick search on maintenance success using WW. The first article abstract that came up said that of the group studied, who were comprised of the MOST successful of members, 16% were below their goal weight five years later. That means 84% of those who had actually gotten to goal were not able to maintain. Fifty percent were able to maintain FIVE PERCENT of their weight loss.

These kinds of numbers were what helped me regard weight loss very soberly when I started on No S. I'm very grateful I've been able to accomplish what I have.

Personally, I think WW and other programs should be able to use ONLY examples of people who have maintained the loss for 5 years and write in much bigger letters than that tiny print at the bottom: RESULTS NOT TYPICAL.

And of course, thse numbers don't count the myriads who start and never make it.

That Russian young lady on the WW ad is kind of cute.

But I diverge. I notice, watching sports, that the celebrity athletes that Nutri Systems had endorse their products have put weight back on. Mike Golic, formerly of the NFL, is now doing P90X.

So I am with Oo on this, I think commercial diets are sham. I used Slim Fast some years back to diet down for a cruise, but I couldn't sustain that. Some days I wanted to eat the glue in the art room.

oolala53 wrote:She didn't actually HAVE to go on WW. She could have done No S.

Assuming that she was a healthy weight and healthy, she could also have gone back to the way she ate prior to coming to the US -- which was probably close to No-S.

oolala53 wrote:She didn't actually HAVE to go on WW. She could have done No S.

I agree, I was just saying she "felt like" she had to go on WW, probably because she has not been evangelized to the benefits of No S.

There's a local radio guy here that does commercials for "Quick Weight Loss". He always talks about being overweight, going on the program, losing it, then gaining the weight back and now he's back on the program again. I'm like, how successful can this program be, if you're constantly gaining and losing?

In college my friend and I went into a local weight loss center to be evaluated. The person told us we had to follow a low-cal diet and eat one of their "bars" every day. That would surely make us lose weight. Well the bars were $150 a month. I told the woman "We're in college, we can't afford this." She said "Well you can always split a box." And I was like "How are we going to lose the weight if we split the box of bars? Isn't eating them supposed to make us lose weight?" I realized then, what a scam this industry is...