Future Fast Forward

You know those Weight Loss Success stories that appear in women's magazines, on CNN, and sometimes in newspapers?  They follow a typical pattern,

• First, the introduction to the subject with special emphasis on the dire condition he or she was in prior to losing weight.  
• Then, a list of past sins (never liked to exercise, diet consisted of soda and ice cream, in denial)
• Next, there is a "life changing moment" -- the turning point when the subject decided. through dint of will, that things were going to change this time, for good.
• Now, the payoff -- the moment we crave  -- the moment we crave.  We see the before and after photos. We hear about all the great things the subject can now do.
• At the conclusion, we may be treated to some advice and motivation, mostly centering on "don't give up" (with the silent (or not so silent) corollary of continuing to buy whatever product or lifestyle is being promoted.   

I used to read those stories  -- I'm a firm believer in the power of words.  I'm a writer after all.  I have written myself into college and into graduate school, into job after job after job.  I take consolation from the written word.  I find my worldview (weltenschauung -- see I can't even help it -- learned that in Lit. Trad. IV) is interpenetrated by things I learned in books.  So, it's no wonder that I really believe that words can transform us.

Except, they kinda can't.

There was a fantastic lecture I once attended in an epistemology class in college given by one of the 20th century's preeminent Thomist philosophers -- Dr. Frederick Wilhelmsen.  In it, he discussed the differences between the scientific way of thinking and the magical way of thinking.  I remember being so shocked when he asserted that both science and magic spring from the same root -- both attempt to affect change in the material realm through the use of formulas.  He talked about alchemical roots of science and how the assumption in science is that, if you can understand nature through experimentation which you record and duplicate, then (ultimately) you can change nature, just as the alchemists were doing when they tried to turn lead to gold.  It completely blew my mind, and still does.

What I'm learning, though is that words are not enough to transform.  All the knowledge in the world is not going to affect change unless it is put into action.  And so, I start again, with the basics.  8 glasses of water.  Salads.  Movement.  Determination.

And I'm doing pretty well, so huzzah for me.

I thought again of joining Weight Watchers but, really, I don't want to go to meetings and I didn't want to pay for the online plan.  Luckily, I (re)discovered SparkPeople, which is very similar in a lot of ways to WeightWatchers, but which is free (they just subject you to a lot of advertising -- okay with me because I just ignore it).  So far, I believe I've been doing very well. Tomorrow is day 7, so I will do a weight at the beginning of the day and see whether my intuition is correct.

Oh -- also -- for my goal setting.  I did do something scary.  I signed up for the Color Run.  That is terrifying.  November 15.  AAGH!