This week I had the pleasure of having lunch and a reunion with 5 friends from high school. To give you an idea of our age, we graduated in 1966. We were eating in a relatively new restaurant several of us wanted to try.
The owner is the son of a friend of one of the women, and he came to our table to greet us. The woman who knows this man commented on how much weight he has lost recently. He launched into an account of how he accomplished this massive feat, including use of a liquid meal replacement shake and other products from the company Isagenix. This man went on for 8 whole minutes, without interruption, during our lunch about how wonderful this new diet is, how these products are “miraculous”, and how “healthy” he feels. He was eating just one meal of “real food” each day, and using these highly processed products from Isagenix for the rest of the day. As he went on, he told us he had been doing this for two months, and recently he was eating whatever he wants on weekends. Remember that he owns and manages a restaurant, so is around food all day! He talked about all the “unhealthy” food he used to eat, and how out of control his eating was, but now he’s in control thanks to this wonderful product.
Listening to him, and watching him, it began to sound like a religious experience, rather than one of facts and science. Over his left shoulder was a TV mounted on the wall, with the food channel playing a show about making cookies. Ahhh, the beautiful butter, sugar, and chocolate being combined to make these wonderful treats. What a countpoint to this man’s story!
Some of these women know what I do for work, and that I know that diets don’t work. Statistically, this man is “doomed” to regain the weight he has lost, and probably gain even more than that. It’s the feeling he described that is so miraculous, that he has found the holy grail, that really gets to me.
After this man left, one of the women who knows how I feel about this subject, looked across the table to me and said, “I always use Weight Watchers, because I know that works, right Ellen?” No one but me got the irony in this question. If Weight Watchers worked, why would she need to “always use” it?? Wouldn’t she just lose weight and never need it again?
Here’s the Isagenix website. What do you think about this “program”? http://bit.ly/1BpgFxz
