Goal sabotage 56 current weight-loss treatments. I believe that the failure to recognize this has lead to the medical profession aggravating the problem of obesity in the Western world. The Low Sacrifice Diet is designed very much around an awareness of this third element of the False Hope Syndrome. In developing it, I have looked very closely at what makes the most difference and gives us the greatest long-term weight loss, for the effort we put in. In more colloquial terms it is all about getting the most‘ bang for our buck’. The fourth and final unrealistic expectation that people have is that losing weight will bring them certain indirect benefits, such as success in some form: getting a promotion, attracting a partner or being generally more popular. As a relationship therapist I can tell you that being attractive to the opposite sex( as with being more popular) has more to do with how much you are attractive to yourself and thereby how much you like yourself, than any other factor. On the other hand, being physically attractive is critically important if you want to attract people who are most interested in superficial appearances and brief sexual interludes! Getting a promotion has to do with how much you value yourself and how good you are at meeting the requirements of your job description. I wouldn’ t waste much time losing weight for work unless this was a requirement of your job. The very real indirect benefit of losing weight is that we feel a sense of achievement – which makes us more attractive to ourselves( more important than how we look to ourselves in the mirror). But the sense of achievement, as with all worthy pursuits, comes primarily from developing our own strategy and successfully executing it, rather than from the end result. The working towards a goal is nearly always more interesting and rewarding than the achievement of it, which can wear off fairly quickly.