1. Dieting Sucks.

   This is a big one that no one really wants to admit. Everyone wants to hear that there’s an easy way to lose weight, which works out great for everyone who’s selling the latest “lose 30 pounds in 15 minutes” fad diet. There’s an entire industry built to sell the idea that there are easy ways to lose weight. Losing weight is hard, though. It’s hard work.

   You will feel deprived, because you are, by definition, depriving yourself when you are on a diet. You are denying yourself that 400 Calorie muffin. You’re skipping the extra helping of mashed potatoes. You are depriving yourself of food, either in quantity or variety, and it’s hard to do that, especially at first. Don’t expect it to be easy. You have to decide if dieting is worth it to you, and if so, commit to working through the difficulty, rather than looking for a nonexistent easy route.

2. You will be hungry.

   This is the primary reason that dieting sucks. I know, you read all about some new diet in Redbook that promises to allow you to lose weight without being hungry. News flash. You will not lose weight if you aren’t hungry. I know, it goes counter to everything the diet books have told you, but then, those diet books didn’t work, either.

   In order to lose weight, you will have to eat less. That’s the basic rule of dieting. You must consume fewer calories than you use. Guess what happens when you eat less than you burn: You get hungry. It’s basic physiology. Don’t try to fight it. Accept it, and prepare for it. The best any particular diet can hope to do is minimize hunger, not eliminate it.

3. Exercise is an inefficient way to lose weight.

   Don’t try to tell yourself otherwise. Certainly, exercise is a wonderful thing to add to your health regimen, but it’s not going to do much as far as weight loss. When you see that snickers bar in the vending machine, don’t give in. I know, you think you can just run a little further and make up the calories. However, you would have to run an extra 2.5 miles, almost 30 minutes, to burn off the 280 Calories found in one Snickers bar (assuming a 150 pound person, running 5.5 mph).

   If you want to have an occassional treat, your best bet isn’t to try to exercise it away, but to eat less for your meals. Instead of trying to run an extra 2.5 miles just so you can eat a Snickers, trim 100 Calories off each of your other meals for the day.

4. Situps will not slim your belly.

   It sometimes seems like this is common knowledge, but based on all the ab exercisers that still pop up on television commercials, it must not be. Targetted exercises will build muscle, but they will not burn fat in a targeted manner. Situps won’t slim your abdomen any better than bicep curls will slim your arms. Growing the muscle will actually cause an overall mass increase.

   If you want to lose fat on your stomach, you have to lose weight all over. 100 crunches a day won’t help as much as cutting 300 Calories per day.

5. “Diets” do not work.

   Fad diets all rely on denying yourself something. Fat, carbohydrates, food diversity, etc. This leads to a feeling of deprivation, and the associated high failure rate. The latest diet you read about doesn’t have a high success rate, no matter what they claim. Most diets do work in the lab, where the participants are prepared for the harsh reality of the diet. In the real world, very few people are successful long term with dieting. Many people give up on their diets because they have the silly notion that it will be easier this time, with this new diet, and then it isn’t.

   Diets further set people up for failure by making them give up so much. Low carb: no breads. Low fat: no bacon. Fad diet: give up everything except, e.g., grapefruit or soup. I know a guy who’s put himself on a tortilla diet. He’s going to eat nothing but tortillas. How long do you think that will last?

   Denying yourself the ability to eat from massive portions of the food universe is just setting yourself up for frustration and defeat. Don’t give up fat, or carbohydrates, or anything else. Just eat less food overall. Yes, you’re still denying yourself calories, but that’s a deprivation you’re going to have to live with if you want to lose weight. You don’t have to live with lots of other artificial deprivations.

   Most days for lunch, I eat a turkey wrap with bacon and cheese. It’s only 330 calories. I feel less deprived eating that 330 calories sandwich than I would eating a 600 calorie sandwich with just turkey, because I’m allowing myself cheese and bacon.

6. Packaged foods are not your enemy.

   Diet “gurus” have told us that to lose weight, we have stay away from packaged foods. We can’t eat frozen pizza and lasagna, for example. On the contrary, eating packaged foods makes it very easy to eat the correct number of calories. It’s printed right there on the package. There’s no estimating calorie content in that chicken breast, or wondering if a cup of chopped zucchini means big chops or little.

   The brand of frozen pizza I generally buy has 1200 calories in one pizza. “Oh my God,” you’re screaming. “You’ll never lose weight eating that kind of stuff!” Well, I don’t eat the whole damned pizza. Just because what you bought has too many calories doesn’t mean you have to consume them all. I generally eat 3 slices of frozen pizza, and save the rest for later. 3 slices (out of 8 total) works out to only 450 calories, a pretty small meal.

   Eating fresh foods, rather than packaged foods, might (or might not) be better for you, but that has little if anything to do with actual weight loss.

7. You are not “genetically predisposed” to being fat.

   Unless you have some funky mutation, you don’t have any genetic predisposition, so don’t try to blame it on that. Widespread obesity is a relatively recent phenomenon. Do you think you just suddenly developed the “fat” gene that your grandparents and great grandparents didn’t have? You just learned bad eating habits, and you’re more sedentary than your ancestors. Even if you were predisposed to wanting to eat more, you don’t have to eat more.

   You also don’t have a “low metabolism.” Unless you’ve actually been tested to determine your basal metabolic rate, you have no reason to say that your metabolism is any lower than normal. It’s well established that people who are overweight actually have higher metabolisms. They have higher metabolisms because supporting that extra weight requires fuel. Nonetheless, metabolism differences do exist, and it’s possible that some people might have a slightly higher metabolism than you. All that means is their food expenses are higher. A lower metabolism doesn’t mean you gain weight easier. It means you simply need fewer calories. If you need fewer calories than Joe, then eat fewer calories than Joe. If you are overweight, it has nothing to do with your metabolism, and everything to do with you overeating.

   If you eat fewer calories than you burn, you will lose weight. Your “predispositions” are irrelevant. Your metabolism isn’t to blame. Every excuse you give yourself for why you are currently overweight is just an excuse to stay overweight.

If you’ve really decided to lose weight, bravo. I wish you good luck. Keep the previous info in mind, and prepare yourself for the journey. It won’t be easy, but nothing worth having ever is. And a healthier body is definitely worth having.

This “secret” has been kept from you your entire life. World leaders have suppressed it since the dawn of civilization. They have used it, even abused it, while the ignorant masses grind their way through their lives. And if you spend $29.95 on the DVD, the secret will change your life.

So, what’s the secret that’s been suppressed for ages and ages? The Law of Attraction, the idea that you will draw toward you the things that you think about most. Basically, if you concentrate on positives, you’ll attract good fortune, while if you concentrate on your Visa bill, your Mastercard bill will show up, too.

Never mind that The Secret claims it’s been known, used, and taught by everyone from Plato to Einstein. Never mind that it’s been in every new age self-improvement book ever written. And never mind that some of the people in the video have been hawking it to gullible schlubs since well before I was born. It’s a secret, and you need to watch this movie to find out about it.

The Problem with The Secret and the Law of Attraction

I’m all for giving people good advice. Unfortunately, The Secret isn’t giving good advice. The law of attraction isn’t really advice at all. It’s a get-rich-quick scheme, a 30-pounds-in-30-days diet. The law of attraction sells the idea that good thoughts, instead of hard work, will bring good things.

Easy sells. It’s sexy. Losing thirty pounds without dieting sounds great. Earning six figures part time sounds great. The idea that just thinking good thoughts could change your life sounds absolutely wonderful. Hard work doesn’t sound so great. In fact, it sounds kind of hard. However, hard work has the best chance of yielding the best results. Selling easy paths that don’t work distracts people from the real path that could actually help them.

Telling people that cutting out trans-fats will cause them to lose weight distracts them from the fact that eating less will cause them to lose weight. Telling people that they can earn six figures by flipping houses distracts them from the fact that good investments and budgeting will build wealth. Publishing a video claiming that good thoughts are the catalyst for improving one’s life distracts people from the fact that hard work is the only reliable catalyst for improvement.

The Truth in the Law of Attraction

I’m willing to grant that there’s a little bit of truth to the law of attraction. If you concentrate on improving your life, while your neighbor concentrates on how much his life sucks, you probably stand a better chance of improving than your neighbor, if only because you’re more likely to see the opportunities and take the risks that can help you out.

There’s no magic, though, and no law. It’s about you trying to better yourself. Big surprise. Trying to do something increases the chances of succeeding at doing something.

I’m sure that The Secret‘s cast would use this to defend themselves, saying that it’s good thoughts and hard work that really accomplish improvements. Sleezy infomercials pitching ab exercisers do the same thing when they briefly mention “proper diet” when claiming weight loss. Real estate scams print “results not typical” in tiny letters when discussing all the millionare success stories. A scam is a scam, even if you aren’t technically lying. Ab infomercials aren’t selling proper diet, real estate flipping programs aren’t selling personal bankruptcy, and The Secret isn’t selling hard work.

The Lies in the Law of Attraction

Since concentrating on negative issues is a surefire way to attract more of them, according to The Secret, your best bet to get out of debt is to simply not worry about it. Imagine having more money, and keep spending the way you’ve been spending. Somehow by imagining you’ve got money, you eventually will. Budgets are for chumps! That money you want will show up eventually. Either that or the debt collectors. But don’t think about that. That would attract problems.

If the law of attraction really worked the way The Secret says it does, then your best bet for improving your financial fortune would be to buy lottery tickets and think really, really hard about winning. Let me know how that works out for you.

The Insanity of The Secret

The Secret says that the people who have debt, heath problems, etc. are attracting their problems. Likewise, people with wealth are attracting prosperity. As evidence for this, The Secret cites the fact that people with debt and health problems talk more about these things than people without them, while prosperous people talk more about their wealth. This clearly shows that thinking (and talking) about debt attracts more debt, while thinking about wealth attracts more wealth.

First off, most of the wealthy people I know don’t talk about their wealth much. Second, isn’t it possible that people get problems and then talk about them? Doesn’t that seem to fit Occam’s Razor pretty well? I don’t talk about my lung cancer very much, but if I actually had lung cancer, I might.

Joe Vitale, a “metaphysicist” who appears in The Secret, tells us that people who get into car accidents do so because they were thinking about them too much, that they attracted car accidents. In my experience, the people who get into the most car accidents are not thinking about the possibility of accidents, or anything else to do with driving.

What about the people who get struck by lightning? Are they the ones thinking about it the most? When I think about getting hit by lighting, I get off the damned golf course.

A Case Study

The Secret tells the story of a gay man who had a terrible job with coworkers who treated him like crap, who was constantly physically assaulted by gay-haters, and who was heckled by homophobes when he did stand-up. By concentrating on his problems, he was causing them to magnify. When he learned about the law of attraction, he changed what he was concentrating on. By just concentrating on the good life he wanted, the mean coworkers quit their jobs, the gay-haters stopped assaulting him, and suddenly he was a riot on-stage and the hecklers were gone.

Are we seriously supposed to believe that good thoughts made others quit their jobs? That good thoughts stopped constant physical attacks and turned audiences full of homophobic hecklers into gay-embracing, supportive audiences delivering standing ovations? Are you kidding me?

Burglary victoms, don’t invest in better locks and an alarm system. That’s just concentrating on the problem. What you should do is concentrate on what you want. You know, a house that hasn’t been broken into, and a stereo that hasn’t been stolen.

Rape victoms, it’s your fault. If you were thinking good thoughts, those rapists wouldn’t have attacked you and violated you in ways you never thought possible. Now, go clean up and think about something positive, because if you keep thinking about the rape, it’s going to happen again. Mr.Vitale says so.

Why Even Care About The Secret?

Why do I have such a problem with the secret? Because it’s taking advantage of gullible people. It’s a slick sales pitch targeting the unfortunate. Sadly, people like Oprah and Ellen DeGeneres are helping them, instead of promoting people who actually have useful advice.

Promoting a false hope, a lie, about what it takes to improve ones life simply exacerbates the problem. Every person who spends more time hoping for extra money spends less time actually budgeting. Encouraging people to hope and think about change, rather than working for change, digs them deeper into the holes they are in.

It’s the right of every slimy guru to sell artificial hopes and dreams to fools, just as it’s the right of gullible people to buy that snake oil. That doesn’t mean we should say its acceptable.

A Solution that Doesn’t Rely on Hope

The truth is that improving your situation is usually possible, but it’s usually not easy. If you want to get out of debt, you need to build a budget and plan. Thinking about more money isn’t going to help. Actually getting a second job to earn more money will help. Hard work will always triumph over good wishes.

You don’t have to work hard if you don’t want to. You can take the false hopes. You can think really hard about improving your situation, instead of actually trying, and working, to improve your situation. But while you’re feeling upbeat about how eventually all your “hard thoughts” are going to pay off, your neighbor is actually getting a second job. In a few years, he’ll have whittled his debt down, while you’ve continued to rack up more credit card bills. In the meantime, the makers of The Secret will have made a pretty penny off your indulgence and gullibility.

My “Scientific” Experiment

In the name of fairness, I’m going to try the law of attraction for myself. If it works, I’ll rewrite this post to say that the law of attraction is scientific fact, and I’ll buy copies of The Secret for all my friends and family. I’m going to think about something I really want, and I’ll really hope it materializes. I’m going to hope like I’ve never hoped before.

However, if my thoughts can really control reality, then everyone involved with The Secret, you’d better stay off the streets, because what I’m thinking about, what I’m really, really hoping for, is that each of you gets crushed by a runaway garbage truck.

(See also: The Top 6 Reasons Why the Law of Attraction (and “The Secret”) is Bunk)

Best Comment

Sosuke Says:
February 20th, 2007 at 3:43 pm

“The Secret”, when combined with hard work and good exercise will make all your dreams come true!

*Hard work not typical of those who purchase “The Secret”