Stop Dieting Part 2
You Lost Weight, The Greatest Compliment?
“You lost weight!” was the sentence that everyone aspired to hear.
Oh please God, let me hear someone notice that I lost weight and my life is fulfilled on this planet I thought!
Anytime that I saw a person acknowledged that he or she had lost weight, it was accompanied with so many oohs and ahhs, “Oh My, you have lost weight!
How did you do it?
You look fabulous!”.
And of course we all know that that state of being a person who lost weight would quickly dissipate as the celebration started and the cantaloupe and cottage cheese was replaced by an overflowing bagel and lox smeared with a generous serving of cream cheese, topped with munster cheese for breakfast, or a nice thick pastrami on rye from Katz's Deli for lunch!
After several weeks of eating like an American citizen again, the weight would be back and we are back to square one.
When the weight was regained, people would pretend to not notice.
“Oh, you look em good” sort of nonchalantly with not even a smidgeon of the excitement registered when you had been seen a month ago and were ‘slim'.
Mahjong and Dieting
In fact, everyone that I knew was on a diet.
How ironic.
My mom played Mahjong every week with several of her friends.
They would click and clack the Mahjong tiles while speaking about how their weigh in at Weight Watchers went that week.
“Three bam, two dot, Oh, did I tell you?
I lost a quarter pound!”
“I lost 2!”
“I gained 3!”.
The irony was that the Weekly Diet Loss review at Mahjong night was accompanied by the biggest spread of Nosh (snacks) known to man.
If I had ever hoped for life at any time of the week, it was always for Mahjong night.
You name it, oreos, snickers, cheese doodle, pretzels, chips, chuckles, every candy ever invented in a food magicican's mind was there on Mahjong night, especially those Oh Henry bars!
You think I forgot about the Entemann's pound cake?
Nope, believe me, everything in the junk food aisle appeared on Majhong night, like Manna from heaven, total paradise!
So, while the Mahjong crew was ecstatic about their successful weigh in, they were putting the weight back on and more while noshing on all of the goodies.
Weight Watchers was the diet of choice in my home because the founder of weight watchers at some point also played Mahjong, or knew someone who played Mahjong (by now you are getting the feeling that Mahjong is pretty important, eh?)
Celebrities and Dieting
Did you ever notice how interested we are in the diets of celebrities, their eating habits and whether they are fat, thin or using a double in their more revealing scenes?
Just today, here are some of the headlines:
Matthew McConaughey Asked Tom Hanks for Weight Loss Advice
Chris Noth told to lose weight for Mr. Big ‘Sex' movie role
Kim Kardashian losing weight on 2,000-calories-a-day diet – latimes
McConaughey: Hanks helped me lose weight
Matthew McConaughey: ‘Tom Hanks helped me lose weight for film'
Christina Aguilera's Extreme 80 Pound Weight Loss Explained
Should Rebel Wilson Lose Weight for Money? – Celebuzz
That is just from a couple of days ago, October 17, 2013.
You get the idea, losing weight is so important, that we are mesmerized by the caloric lives of the celebrities.
They are not asking us if we want to read them, but the stories are popular, constantly, so the media knows that we will read them.
Perhaps we hope that we will get some good tips on weight loss from these celebrities, from reading their stories, maybe even look like them if we follow their diet plan.
How many diet plans have you tried?
Have you ever tried a Celebrity Diet Plan?
How many diet books have you read?
Ben Isaac is the author of