Fad diets fascinate me because they are a perfect example of applied magical thinking
Because the real diet is the one you follow that has nothing to do with whatever the fad diet is about.
Let’s take avacados. Let’s presume the latest thing is The Avocado Diet. Plausible, yes?
What the people behind the diet will tell you is that by eating avocados, you can make the pounds melt away!
And they are right…. if you follow the entire Avacado Diet.
And you know what the rest of the diet says? What every diet says. Eat these healthy foods more, those unhealhy ones less, and maybe get some exercise.
You know…. to make sure you “activate” the avocados’ full “fat-melting power”/
The avocados bring nothing to the process in and of themselves. They are merely the talisman for people to fixate upon in order to make doing the things we all know lead to weight loss – diet and exercise – a lot easier.
Thus, it bypasses the need for the motivation to make sacrifices for one’s own betterment – a cold and abstract motivation even at the best of times – with something far more direct and real – making the magic work.
So to speak.
I am sure the Placebo Effect helps too. If they believe the avocados work, they will. Ergo the proponents will have no problem getting as many glowing testimonials from thinner, happier people as they want.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc. They did the diet and lost weight, ergo the diet works. The fact that the avocados had little to do with it is irrelevent. These people will believe in that diet until the day they die.
Religion works similarly.
And as a humanist, I want whatever makes people healthier. Even if it’s something that is obvious bunk to us clever types.
It could be the Voodoo Diet for all I care, as long as it does more good than harm.
So now you know how fad diets work!
Did you enjoy that? I have thoughts like that all the time. There is a lot of the world I can explain with comparable ease and I have to think there must be a market for that.
Maybe I should start my own Wiki and fill it with my explanations for things and then promote it as the wiki for people who want to know how things work.
No, that sounds too much like I am going to be explaining how your toaster works. Which I could totally do, of course.
I mean, it ain’t rocket science.
But I was thinking of more abstract things. Like explaining how the capital city corrupts politicians and turns them into terrible people, why the rich are evil, what the deal is with people who have sex with the lights out, and so forth and so on.
Honestly, what I really want is an advice colum, like Dan Savage has.
Only, ya know…. nice.
I figure if I have this gift for knowing and explaining how many things which seem to make no sense have simple, understandable explanations, I should use it for the betterment of both humanity and my bank account.
Obviously, were I to be doing this for a syndicated column or even just for a wider audience, I would hone my ability to get to the point faster and eliminate as much non-informational content as I could.
The above explanation of fad diets was just a test of the basic idea of trying to write down these explanations of mine and see how they look on the page.
Were I writing for pay, I would work on it till it meets my standards, which are high.
But this is my blog, and I use my blog as my judgement free scratch pad where I don’t have to judge my words or imagine how they would look to a reader. Here, the most important thing is to express what is in my head and thus reduce the pressure of all those words building up in my head.
And with every thought I put down here, my mind gets a little clearer, a little happier, and a little bit less cramped.
And that is why I have such love for you, my gentle readers. You read this despite the fact that it is not written with entertainment in mind, and I adore you for that.
So consider yourself thanked once again, Nice People.
You make this whole thing possible.
Moodwise, things are meh. I am still struggling to defuse the bomb of harsh self-judgment that keeps me from acting on my ambitions or even just my desires.
At some point, I rigged myself to explode if I ever stepped out of my tiny safe place, and now it is up to me to thread my way through my own defenses in order to be free.
Or maybe all this talk of defusing myself is just my depression finding a way to get me all tangled up in problem solving and buying into the whole mystery of the process so that I will not discover the simple, easy solution that is right in front of my face.
A lot of the tales of enlightenment I have read end with the hero learning that the answer they seek is something they have known all along, or something else that seems absurdly obvious once you get there.
But patient readers know things are never that simple. The seemingly obvious revelation is merely the end of a long process in which you clear the way for the revelation by doing the emotional work you need to do to clear your mind and let that simple explanation occur to you and make your life better.
So maybe my depression is creating mazes for me to explore in order to keep me occupied just like the avocados keeps people fixated while they diet.
I suppose we all need a little magical thinking in our life.
Some of us just need a more complex kind of spell.
I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.