Wherever you go on the internet, whichever newspapers and magazines you open, there’s a familiar marketing message. Apparently, it’s easy to lose those unwanted pounds. Yes, of course. The marketers target our insecurities. They show us “before” and “after” pictures and suggest we too can become a person in the right. All we have to do is to buy their product. “Just spend your dollars with us,” they wheedle, “and we’ll heal your pain.” There are a mass of interesting assumptions in all these ads. It seems almost everyone is a target. We all want to shed pounds. That means we must all be unhappy with our current body shape. We must feel uncomfortable, perhaps even the victim of discrimination. Perhaps the health message is getting through and we begin to feel real fear of blocked-up arteries, high blood pressure and heart disease. Whatever the reason, the advertizers scent blood in the water and they are circling round our purses and wallets ready to sink their teeth into our dollars and disappear without delivering on all their promises.

Finally if we look at this all pragmatically, if it was easy to lose weight, no-one would be obese. Everyone would have their ideal weight. What makes losing weight so difficult? We just keep putting off action to another day. As the title to this article says, “Tomorrow is the busiest day of the week”. Delay makes an easy job harder. But, in the meantime, we buy those weight loss magazines and take a few pills. Hope burns eternal. We are all the victims of one of the not-so-great American myths – that we can get what we want without having to work hard for it. Just look at the tens of thousands who queue up for American Idol and the other shows to discover the next big talent. They all believe success is theirs for the asking. Read the rest of this entry »