Hi,

I have done it myself. I shared with a couple of friends that I was struggling with weight loss and described my 1800 calorie diet fiasco and that brought out all the comments and suggestions and help that a person could handle. I have done it myself, but being on the receiving end was not easy. I felt a little like I had just been slightly trampled upon. I am too close to it, to know whether I was simply rebellious and they were right, or they were insensitive and did not understand me. I know them both to be sensitive and loving friends, so I must be at fault in this one, but I sure don't want to admit that.

The words "self control" came up and I did not want to hear them, but I did hear them. I know that when I was younger I could go on a diet and follow it and have some good results. I once lost 50 pounds. And once lost nearly 100 pounds. But I put them back on and more. The thin experiment that I wrote about day before yesterday has popped into my mind. To recap: a group of a dozen or so slender people in Britain volunteered to be guinea pigs in an experiment. They each were weighed and measured and calculated to determine how many calories they ate in a day and that was doubled for each one of them. They ate twice as many calories as they normally did for four weeks in a row and at the end of it, most put on a few pounds, some put on very little, and one man did not put on fat, but muscle. Then when the trial was over they were released. Later the ones doing the documentary checked in on every member and found that they had returned to their previous weights without dieting. They just went back to business as usual and their bodies got thin again. It did not check in again later to see if anyone weighed less than when they had started out.

How many times and how many people have tried to lose weight only to gain it all back again -- and often plus some. This is exactly the same mechanism at work in the thin and the fat to keep them precisely where they are -- or should I say -- were. I am really wondering if it is actually possible to change your body that drastically and maintain the change. The only difference I see is that the thin go back to where they were and the fat go back to and beyond where they were. What is up with that?

When I shared with my friends about the flexing exercises I could see they just did not believe me. They stopped short of "poo-pooing" me, but began to tell me I needed to go outside and walk or do some other kind of exercise. I pointed out that I do exercise. They then said I needed to do it every day. I said, I do, do it every day. We went around in circles and they put no credence whatsoever in my Move it! Move it! flexing. I am going to continue doing it, because I know different. It really does make a difference and it is less painful for me to do. I shall continue doing the 12-15 minutes of Aerofit, but add another 30 minutes of flex/relaxes. And I'll continue doing the crunches, too.

I have decided not to fear my doctor's appointment tomorrow. I shall just go in and tell the truth and hope she does not lambast me. I am going to go to the raw food seminar too, if I can find out when the next one is.

Be back soon

--Marcia