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How can it fail?

From everything we've learned about feedback, it should be abundantly clear that there is simply no way your weight can get out of control as long as you keep the feedback this plan provides in effect. And whatever could possess you to abandon it? A desire to be fat once again? Not bloody likely, especially after you've just spent so much time and trouble getting thin! Because it's too much bother? Preposterous! It only takes 30 seconds a day to log your weight, compute the trend, and plot it on a chart, even if you do it by hand. To avoid restrictions on what you eat? But there are no restrictions, not a single one. All that feedback, the eat watch, does is tell you how much to eat--you eat whatever foods you like, whenever you wish. What you choose to eat can make a difference in how you feel, but it won't affect your weight.

Will you tire of making the continual adjustments? Don't confuse the incremental month to month changes in what you eat based on the trend with the rollercoaster of binge eating and dieting that afflicts so many people. First, as long as your weight never strays outside the 5 pound band, adjustments are completely optional and in any case are tiny: fewer calories per day than a glass of skim milk. As you monitor the trend month after month, you'll probably find that before long you don't have to do any arithmetic or formal meal planning at all. Whenever the trend's a little above the goal, eat less, and when it's below the goal, enjoy a little more every day. It is entirely possible to spend years without ever straying outside the 5 pound band.

Will you become frustrated by repeatedly having to cut back calories when you exceed the band or hit the brick wall? Again, no. As you master controlling what you eat, these occurrences will become increasingly rare, but even when it happens it's not that awful. Since the brick wall triggers weight loss when the trend exceeds the goal by 5 pounds, you're never more than about a month from the goal. In fact, if the diet you use after hitting the wall has a moderate 500 calorie a day shortfall, within three weeks the trend should be back within the band.

The only way you can gain back the weight you lost is by deliberately choosing to; by discarding the simple and easy feedback that keeps your weight under control; by taking off the eat watch. The slow creep into snowballing weight gain that is the undoing of most dieters simply cannot happen to you any other way. And if you aren't already committed to maintaining your weight, wait until you've gotten really used to being thin and fit. Then no temptation will induce you to resume the life of a fat person.


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Next: Proportional feedbag Up: Feedback forever Previous: The rules of

By John Walker