The sleeping dragon of rebellion 30 The Mental Gymnastics Olympics So we know that the prospect of going on a diet is enough to trigger over-eating. To make matters worse, often what happens is that we plan to go on a diet, eat up big, and then don’ t go on the diet at all! How’ s that for some elaborate mental gymnastics? Another mental gymnastic feat that has been observed is how people who are to attend a party or buffet dinner in the evening, knowing they are likely to over-eat, will start eating up big in advance. Just knowing that at some later time we are going to over-eat allows us to start doing so immediately. There’ s no time like the present! Let me tell you Martha’ s story. She was a 55-year-old, very obese woman in group and individual psychotherapy for longstanding difficulties in establishing intimate relationships with both sexes. She was a social worker who had few relationships outside of her conflicted, enmeshed relationships with her parents – especially her mother. In therapy, she identified how, when she was a child her distant, nondemonstrative, and frequently critical mother had repeatedly invalidated her emotional responses to the point where she became deeply confused by, and disconnected from, her emotional world. In short, because her mother always told her what she was‘ really feeling’ she no longer understood her own emotions. Without her emotional guidance system she had great difficulty navigating her way through relationships. In the course of her therapy attention turned to her weight and the meaning it held for her. But it was not until she was asked to complete an eating awareness diary, that this became clear. My instructions were‘ don’ t change the way you eat, in particular don’ t try to make yourself look better than usual’. In a clear case of the Last Supper Effect, Martha opened her next session by saying that her food choice had actually worsened just by keeping the diary.( This is unusual, despite my instructions, most people cannot stop themselves from wanting to look good.) Her intake of sweet foods, e. g. candy bars and doughnuts, had increased significantly.