If only life were so easy...

The new book and DVD, "The Secret" by Rhonda Byrne is the latest self-help craze. The "secret" that Byrne is referring to is the law of attraction, which states that we create our own reality through our thoughts. When I read that, my first reaction was "isn't this what cognitive psychologists have been telling us for years?" But as I read on, I saw that she doesn't mean that we figuratively create our own reality, she means it literally. On the DVD a woman admires a necklace in a store window and it is then around her neck. A child thinks about having a new bike and it shows up on his doorstep. According to the MSNBC article, "contrariwise, a worrywart who obsessively checks the locks on his bicycle returns to find it stolen; the law of attraction has called down on him just the predicament he hoped to avoid". If this were true, my mother's house would have burned down long ago (she checks the stove about a dozen times before going to bed at night).

The book holds that we can command the universe to give us what we want without any work. Simply "Ask, Believe, Receive". So you know all those kids in third world countries who we see on those depressing commercials? Well, apparently all they need to do is focus their energy and thoughts on food and they won't starve to death; food will just drop into their laps. I'm sure they don't normally spend much time thinking about eating. Hope someone lets them in on this "secret".

Byrne's recommendation for losing weight is to avoid looking at fat people. According to the "law of attraction", if we aren't focusing our thoughts and energy on being overweight, we won't be overweight. MSNBC has an excerpt from the book in which Byrne discusses her own past weight issues. She states, "The most common thought that people hold, and I held it too, is that food was responsible for my weight gain."

Whether people have been told they have a slow thyroid, a slow metabolism, or their body size is hereditary, these are all disguises for thinking “fat thoughts.” If you accept any of those conditions as applicable to you, and you believe it, it must become your experience, and you will continue to attract being overweight.

Guess I don't have to go to the gym anymore.

I could just go on and on about how ridiculous this book is. A woman on the DVD states that she cured her breast cancer in 3 months by visualizing herself well and watching funny movies. I can see this being possible; psychologists and doctors have long known that visual imagery can be helpful. I use that stuff with clients all of the time to help with anxiety and depression. And our mental health affects our physical health, that's no secret. But the scary part is the thought that people may fully believe in the "law of attraction" and avoid seeking medical help. Imagery may help some and even cure someone once in a while but it's certainly not going to cure cancer in every one who tries it. John Norcross a psychologist and professor from the University of Scranton calls it "pseudoscientific, psychospiritual babble". He states "We find about 10 percent of self-help books are rated by mental-health professionals as damaging. This is probably one of them. The problem is the propensity for self-blame when it doesn't work."

When you read about "The Secret" on Oprah.com, it sounds very spiritual and not materialistic. It talks about using the law of attraction to deal with tragedy, to improve your marriage, and to live up to your potential. However, the MSNBC article states

On an ethical level, "The Secret" appears deplorable. It concerns itself almost entirely with a narrow range of middle-class concerns—houses, cars and vacations, followed by health and relationships, with the rest of humanity a very distant sixth.

I have to note that I have not read the book, so maybe my judgments are premature, but it sounds like complete bunk to me. I hate being manipulated and it disgusts me when the american public buys into bullshit with no scientific background.

The Sound of Harry Potter in The Next Generation

Some fan fiction at Rum and Monkey. Leaves a bit to be desired but interesting nonetheless (and short). And I love the pun.

Cool idea to use world flags to make a statement about the world we live in

A team working for a magazine in Portugal researched relevant, global, and current facts and came up with the idea to put new meanings to the colors of flags of various countries. They used real data taken from the websites of Amnesty International and the UNO and made the colors represent segments of a country's population. It is called the Meet the World campaign.

The Earth is Not Moving

Or Let's Just Ignore Everything Science has Taught Us and choose instead to believe there is a man in the sky creating our world. The Big Bang, Evolution, the Earth orbiting the Sun...it's all just a ruse.

Another one for Shelley...

Don't nag. It doesn't work.

:)

The Magic Little Pill...

....or the armless girl. That is the question. Now I know that the discussion of the Magic Little Pill is going to get some feathers ruffled, but I am just satisfying a little perceived interest.

The Magic Little Pill is called: Adipex-P®, Fastin®, Phentamine®, Zantryl® - Generic Name: Phentermine. It is a lovely little prescriptiontion pill that, from my experience, really does work.

"Adipex-P is a name brand phentermine hydrochloride (Hcl) sold by GATE Pharmaceuticals. Oral phentermine hcl is an appetite suppressant used for short-term treatment of exogenous obesity, along with other lifestyle modifications. Phentermine works by stimulating a gland, called the hypothalamus, and affecting certain neurotransmitters to decrease appetite. Because it is similar chemically to amphetamines, it has the potential for psychological dependency; it should be used with caution. "

I used this as a diet-aid for a period of 90 days in the summer/fall of 2003 and lost 17 lbs over the 90 days. Then like a dumbass I stopped taking it and I tried to quit smoking that fall/winter/spring. (I was on a 'I am going to be sooooooo healthy' - kick). Needless to say with my half-assed attempt at quitting, I not only didn't quit then, but I gained all the weight back before I gave up and started smoking full time again.

Back to my experience: I am fat because I like food. Sure, it is probably lack of will power, but I really like food. Lots of different food. Not necessarily huge servings, but as you may have heard me say before "I am a smorgasbord-girl" I like a little bit of a lot of things. A lot of things equals a lot of calories. My other problem is lack of time to be active. I hate exercising, but I do like to be active doing fun things. Unfortunately at this point in my life, my family, job and school-work take up 18 hours of my day. Leaving only 6 hours to cram 10 hours worth of sleep into. Damn. No time for active! (Insert my hypothesis that if I had a pool in my backyard, I would be soooooo skinny; therefore I need a pool for health reasons....yeah, health reasons).

I digress...my experience. I took the magic pills for about 120 days and for the first 30 to 45 days the pills killed my appetite. Decimated it! In a weird way actually. It wasn't that I didn't think about food as much...I think I still did. But the pills made me not hungry in a way that I actually didn't LOVE the feel of food in my mouth. It felt not nice to have food in my mouth. It felt better to drink things (I was thirsty a lot). Weird. But good! I didn't want to lose weight too fast, and noticed that I really wasn't eating a whole bunch, so I stopped taking the pills on the weekends. So I would eat. And I still lost 17 lbs.

The other great thing about the pills (and for me this is damn near as good as The Skinny) is that they gave me ENERGY! Now, I truly think there is something genetically wrong with me in that no matter how long I sleep, it is never enough. I am never DONE sleeping. I have never been that person who eventually wakes up, jumps out of bed and wants to greet the day. That NEVER happens to me even if I get a normal amount of sleep (But this topic is for another entry). But those lovely magic pills. I WAS WIDE AWAKE! I HAD ENERGY!! ALL THE TIME!! I started noticing that I was running up steps. ME. RUNNING. UP. STEPS. Now I am sure, after a time it became easier to run up steps cuz I wasn't carrying around extra weight, but the real AWAKENESS that I felt was amazing. If you look at the chemical make-up of the magic pills, you will see that they are not amphetamines, but they resemble amphetamines. Whatever. Just give me some more! Seriously. For me, the energy was amazing.

Now to be fair, there were some drawbacks, the first being price. These magic puppies cost between $150 and $200 for a 90-day supply (depending on the strength of the dose). That's pretty salty. The second is that eventually your body gets used to the magic and at around 90 days or so you start liking food again (luckily the energy didn't wear off...or that would have sucked). I didn't like food as much as I had...but it didn't repulse me any more. The third and the fourth kinda go together. I took the pills first thing in the morning (6:30am) and even so, sometimes (not always) sometimes I had a hard time falling asleep at night. I would toss and turn until 1am or so. That lead to the crankiness. When I am tired, I am cranky. Sometimes (not often) sometimes I felt cranky. Mostly in the evenings and mostly when I was also stressed out by something else also. I don't think that I was cranky enough that it impacted anyone else's world (at least they didn't tell me) but I noticed my cranky-self. Lastly, they did make me a little jittery. This could have to do with the massive amounts of caffeine I ingest on a normal basis...then throw the magic pills on top of that. I noticed that I could significantly cut down on caffeine during the day, without falling asleep at my desk (that could never happen now..no caffeine tomorrow and I would be sleeping on my keyboard by 9:35am.).

Now my friends will say that the magic pill will give ya a heart attack....but don't you believe it.

"The much-touted combination of weight loss drugs called fen-phen -- phentermine
and another drug, fenfluramine -- was found to cause dangerous damage to the
heart valves in some people. As a result, both fenfluramine and Redux, another
similar weight loss drug, were pulled from the shelves in 1997. On its own,
phentermine is considered safe and still used. "

Do a little research yourself and be careful. And if you decide you want some, here ya go! I think I am getting my supply so I don't have to be the armless bridesmaid.

For Shelley...

Napping is good for your heart. It increases productivity too. In an MSNBC poll, 69% of people who voted said they would take naps at work. France's Health Minister is looking in to implementing worktime napping (France already has a 35 hour work week. Bastards.) Maybe we should consider moving to Europe.

New Year's Resolutions? (ménage à trois)

....Oh wait. That's a different story, for a different time.

Ditto to Beemaiden and Adeline: The only resolution I made this year was also to be "bathing suit ready" by summer and more mentally healthy. But mine was stated more like "Not-to-look-like-a-giant-cow-in-the-bridesmaid-dress-for-Tim-and-Melissa's-wedding" and "not-to-have-a-nervous-breakdown-on-June-30th-when-I-realized-I-can't-possibly-lose-30-lbs-in-6-days-without-amputating-limbs".

For the first three weeks I think I was doing pretty well, making some progress. But then my life exploded all over me, and now I am just holding my own. No more progress. I am going to try to get back on the wagon as soon as possible, but it will really help when the kiddoes don't have swim team every night and we can eat at a normal hour (instead of 7:30 p.m.).

I am still looking for the magic pill that makes me not want to eat that much anymore and gives me tons and tons of energy. Oh wait!! I had that pill once...and it worked...but people gave me a ton of crap about it. Hmmmm.....where oh where has that little pill gone, oh where oh where could it be. I think I am going to have to find that little pill again.....cuz I really don't want to be the armless girl in the strapless dress this summer.

New Year's Resolutions? (Part Deux )

I too would like to be more mentally healthy and "bathing suit ready" by summer. I feel that my mental health interferes with the other goal because I eat comfort food and drink and don't feel like exercising. I'm getting a little better with the exercising part as virgo beemaiden knows since we are exercise partners. Having a friend to work out with really seems to help. It makes the time pass quickly as we are talking the whole time we're at the gym.

Another resolution I have is to try to give people the benefit of the doubt. I've been working on this one for a few years and I think I'm doing better with it.

My other resolution is to try to be less of a judger..."judge not lest ye be judged" (the Bible does say a couple of good things). This is a tough one, seeing as how the world is full of jackasses. For some reason, Shelley doesn't like this goal :) Good thing she's just a retarded puppet monkey and not the leader. I've been working on this one for a few years as well but feel I've been slipping a bit so I'm trying to concentrate on it again. I have found in the past that I seem to be a happier person if I give people the benefit of the doubt and try not to judge people. Gets rid of some of the bitterness. Of course, not judging people means trying not to judge people who judge people and that can be hard.

As usual, I'm working on seeing the lighter side of things and I think that is what gets me through. It seems to be one of the many things that the three of us have in common: no matter how bad the circumstances we can still make a joke out of it. Bombs could be falling from the sky and we would still find something funny or sarcastic to say.

Hope I'm not making you feel like you're in church, but another good one is "do unto others..." One problem with this one though is that some people are so sensitive and since I am very difficult to offend sometimes "doing unto others" can get me into trouble as I may assume that others are as difficult to offend as I am. But I'm trying. I guess if anyone thinks I'm not doing a good enough job they can suck my dick. Oops. Slipped again. No one's perfect I guess.

New Year's Resolutions?

Has anyone else made any new year's resolutions?

Anyone still sticking to them?

I'm trying. Mine is to try to be Heathier- mentally and physically- my body really is showing my age and it's not going to get any better without intervention. Yikes!

My second one is to save up some money. It will be pretty hard with all that is on the agenda this year- he mexico trip that I get to pay for but not participate in, the beach (hopefully), some minor remodeling work on my house, and Disney. In fact, those are kinda the reasons I need to watch the ole bottom line. So far this one seems to be going better than the first.

I started out well over Christmas vacation with the exercising, cooking healthy and eating well but I'm slowly falling off the wagon.

I'm still eating more fruit, no calorie drinks (from what I understand that alone can make a big difference) but I have been exercising less (busy schedule) an various snacks such as chips and dips have been my downfall. On the continuum, though, I am still ahead. I think that I need another couple days of "detox diet".

Music and dancing around the house like a crazy lunatic have been my method of mental health maintanance. (Is it working????? I'm not an impartial judge.)

Does anybody else need inspiration or have any ideas???? I'd like to be "bathing suit" ready for the first time in a long time this summer.