madermouse's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Chunk to Hunk Review November 26th, 2003 Fred�s book. I got a copy in the mail from a friend and reader, Sarah a few weeks ago. It sat on my desk for 5 days and I looked at it every single day...pondering. Why pondering? Well to be perfectly blunt, Fred kinda pisses me off. (i love his wife btw) So running the risk of pissing her off, I�m going to be totally and completely honest and state how I really feel about him. The man just kind of pisses me off. Oh, he didn�t in the beginning. I was a reader from waaayyy back. In fact, I owe my initial inspiration to Fred and his journals and his �No fail/No way� attitude. He has a sense of humor and I can appreciate a good sense of humor. He had good advice and I can use good advice. Pretty much all was hunky dory until �The Turning Point�. (look, i don�t really have a name for it, but we�ll call it the turning point for added drama.) So anyway, I�ll set the scene for you. I had been losing weight and exercising like a freak and counting every calorie for a year. I�d lost like 115 pounds or so. I was feeling confident and good and happy. Then came January 1st, 2002 and a whole month went by without me losing... So I switched things up and exercised more and ate less and another month went by....and then another. By April I was exercising twice a day � DID YOU HEAR ME TWICE A DAY) and I�d upped my calories and lowered them and changed the type of food I was eating and given up white flour etc. etc. etc. I�d enlisted the help of a dietician and was basically becoming very discouraged, very hopeless. So, that�s the state I was in when I was chatting with Fred in his chat room and I brought up my problem with my plateau. In which he said, (not verbatim btw...what am I, a robot who can remember the conversation word for word?) �Plateaus are Bullshit�. He said more than that but the gist of it was that people who say they are on a plateau are people who aren�t trying hard enough or people who are doing something wrong or people who are sneaking Little Debbies and then declaring they �don�t know why they haven�t lost weight�. (I think he said something about medical reasons too as an afterthought but assured me that very few people actually have medical reasons, that medical reasons were more of an excuse than anything.) Anyway, I went ballistic!! Here I was - banging my head against the wall, giving it 110%, working harder for that .008th of a pound loss than I�d worked for anything in my life and Fred was saying I was basically full of shit!! It made me see red. I was so fucking angry and pissed off and for the first time this person that I�d admired and even been inspired by was showing his ignorance. And that was pretty much it. I stopped reading his journals and dismissed him. To me he became the Smug Bastard and I basically lost all faith. (turns out I had medical reasons...but ANYWAY) So I had mixed feelings about the book. I knew that I was originally inspired by this person, so I imagined that I�d find something in there that would help me be re-inspired. But I also didn�t want to hear more of that �plateaus are bullshit� crap either. Then, one day at work, while contemplating going to the candy machine I picked up his book instead. And I read it. In two days. (its an easy read) So � the review. I�m not going to go into detail about every little thing I thought was great or not so great about the book. I don�t have the energy today. But I did want to give some general impressions and a few specifics. I�ll start out by telling you what stuck in my craw the most out of the whole book � and that is the advice Fred gives to people who want to help their depressed friends break their �I�m so unhappy� program. In a nutshell he says that when the friend states they are so unhappy, to basically respond with, �Congratulations!� Then when the depressed person is confused and asks why he said that, Fred suggests responding with something like, �Good for you on working so hard to be an unhappy, depressed person. It takes a lot of work to mope around all day and be depressed.� (again, this isn�t verbatim, you�ll have to read the book if you want verbatim) Then Fred says to smile at them and walk away. (or something just as asinine) The point of this is supposedly to break the person�s �unhappy� tape they are running in their head. That the person is supposed to be so dazed an confused by Fred�s response that they suddenly, miraculously see that they don�t have to be unhappy anymore. (or some bullshit ) This advice is ludicrous and is obviously from a person who�s never suffered from true, clinical depression. And I�m telling you what � if someone did that to me � especially if that person was supposed to be a friend to me, I would probably think, What a cold-hearted snake and I�d probably say something sarcastic like, �Gee � thanks a hell of a lot you bastard. Your concern is touching.� Then I�d go slit my wrists or something. Anyway, that part just really really bothered me in the book. Sometimes he is soooo arrogant and so ignorant it makes for a bad combination. But then we only have our own experiences to draw from and if you�ve never been truly depressed (where you can�t bathe, dress, or basically function) or if you�ve never been on an actual PLATEAU � then I guess you have no frame of reference for that sort of thing. BUT STILL!!!! So � what did I like about the book? Hmmm.... I like the whole premise behind using your mind to change your actions instead of changing your actions and hoping the mind will follow. I�ve always been a �fake it til you make it� kind of gal and obviously that doesn�t work in the long-term. He repeats this same idea over and over and over about 100 times in the book, so you won�t miss what I�m talking about when you read it. I wonder if he knows he uses a lot of the same �self-talk� as you do in �self-hypnosis�? But that�s why hypnosis can really work for some people....they need to change the way they think about things before change can occur. Yes, I definitely liked that part of Fred�s book and since it�s reiterated a lot it sort of plants that seed somewhere in your head. I�m still hoping my seed with sprout. So that�s it � one good point, one bad point. I�ll stop there. If you need some inspiration I suggest reading Fred�s book. His techniques seem to have worked for him and I think they could work for you as long as you never hit a major plateau for any reason, get suicidally discouraged, and then find out you are clinically depressed. Happy Thanksgiving! 3:17 p.m. - November 26, 2003 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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