Читать книгу Freedom from the Diet Trap: Slim for Life - Jason Vale, Jason Vale - Страница 12

Weight Watchers used to have a ‘points system’. You were awarded certain points per food and at the time they probably thought it was a revolutionary system. However, did you know that as far back as the late Thirties and early Forties there was a very similar points system used for restricting people’s intake of food? It was called the ‘Rationing’ club! Yes, when food was scarce in the war people were given ration books and were allocated what were literally called ‘Personal Points’ for each day. You were allocated a certain amount of points and each food had a ‘value’ – sound familiar? The big difference was, no one was in the rationing club voluntarily and no one was pleased to be losing weight either. The whole business of counting the ‘points’ value of certain foods and rationing yourself accordingly is nothing short of madness. I bet there was not one single person in the war who ever thought they would see the day when people would actually pay for the privilege of deliberately restricting the amount of food they were allowed by counting ‘points’ – especially in times when food is in abundance.

Most diet clubs give the impression that if you don’t do things like count points and attend weekly meetings you will binge and go back to your old ‘habits’. Overeaters Anonymous (yes there is such an organization) take the idea of the ‘constant battle’ even further by suggesting that the ‘problem’ is due to some kind of weakness inherent in you, rather than with the drug-like foods and drinks themselves. They suggest you are born with an ‘overeating gene’ and they have a twelve-step programme to help you ‘cope with’ your disease. Yes, that’s what they call your problem – a disease. The twelve-step programme is to help you cope with, not cure, your disease. For as far as they are concerned the disease is caused by something in your genes and there is no known cure. You were born with it and there is nothing you can do about it. How’s that for setting yourself up for failure? That to me is the same as seeing someone sinking in quicksand and saying that the reason they’re sinking is nothing to do with the quicksand but it’s because they were born with a quicksand sinking gene. Yes people will sink at different rates depending on many factors, but surely if you can get someone out of the quicksand, they are cured? (more on this later).