John’s Piece
John Nicholson
C o n t r o v e r s i a l l y, I
celebrate New Year
and Christmas on
21st December, the
winter solstice. The
days start to get longer, we
begin the long trek back to the
sun of summer. This new year is
part
of the cosmic fulcrum of
existence....err...like...man. Being more connected
to waxing and waning of the cycles of nature is
not the worst thing we could strive to achieve,
especially in our world of processed information
and processed food.
The more calendar-orientated amongst us more
traditionally use January 1st as inspiration to
change life. Top of many people's list is to do
something about their diet. This is usually as a
consequence of eating their body weight in Terry's
All Gold chocolates over the holidays and having
found themselves drinking rum at 11am once too
often.
That sense that we need a new start, a reboot, or
a change of routine is a universal one and that's
why a lot of people make a lot of money one way
or another from this innate human desire. Top of
the money tree is, of course, the weight loss
industry for whom New Year is time to start
broadcasting ads of people (usually women)
standing joyfully in their old massive trousers;
holding them out to show just how much blubber
they have lost on the diet being pushed. What a
hero.
They tend not to show the people crouched in the
corner of their bedroom weeping tears of selfloathing and suffering from a chronic sense of
worthlessness because they're still overweight
despite dieting. They're not a hero. Nor do we see
those who feel nothing but despair because they
can't stick to the prescribed diet. Yet this is a
much more common outcome.
I call these 'big pants diets' and they perpetrate a
vicious and cruel trick. In fact, I'll go further, they
push a form of slow torture. They sell you weight
Diet & Health Today
loss heroes but push a diet that doesn't work. Or
rather, they only work long term for a tiny minority
of those who start them. It doesn't matter if they're
telling you to live off bananas, cabbage and deepfried socks, or that you need to drink 10 pints of
water and hop everywhere on one foot, whatever
the regime, eventually most people end up back
where they started or worse. Yet weirdly,
sickeningly, everyone knows these diets don't
work for most people - there are stats to prove it but the industry continues to thrive because they
know everyone hopes they will be the one upon
whom the magic diet