He Can Make Me Thin

There is this show on TLC about a guy that gives the "secrets" to losing weight. His name is Paul McKenna and he's one of those self-help guys with a mini-series called I Can Make You Thin.

I've actually seen the first two episodes so far and it's I have to admit it takes a different approach to weight loss. The first show basically revealed the 4 golden rules, some being obvious and some not:

1. When you're (physically) hungry, eat.
2. Eat what you want, not what you think you should have.
3. Eat slowly, consciously and without distraction; enjoy every bite
   
4. The second you think you're full, stop.

The first rule is pretty obvious, but he's talking about physical hunger which comes on slowly and not fast-emerging emotional hunger. If you starve yourself all day you'll end up gorging yourself and eat way more than necessary. The second one was kind of surprising; eating what you want avoids cravings. If you want something that you don't eat because it's unhealthy, you end up craving it more. As for number three, he said you should slow way down and eat at a quarter of your normal speed. Take a bite, put your fork or spoon down and chew 20+ times. Don't eat while watching TV or reading because you need to really concentrate to tell when you first get full. The forth rule is also pretty obvious, stop when you're no longer hungry. I guess the trick is knowing when you're full.

The second episode dealt with emotional eating. Basically people don't like how they feel and try to change the feeling by eating. He did this charade with people to changing how they feel so they don't use food. It apparently uses acupressure points on the body to "rewire" your brain. Here's the order of operations:

1. Tap your cheekbone below your eye a few times
2. then tap your collar bone on the same side
3. go back to tapping below your eye
4. tap the bottom of your hand below your pinky knuckle
5. tap the back of your hand
6. while continuing to tap:
   1. close your eyes
   2. open your eyes and look down and to the right
   3. look down and to the left
   4. move your eyes in a clockwise circle
   5. do a counter-clockwise circle with your eyes
   6. hum any tune for a couple of seconds out loud
   7. count from one to five out loud
   8. hum another tune
7. go back to tapping under your eye
8. back to the collar bone
9. back to the eye

Through out this modified hokey-pokey, you're supposed to be concentrating on your craving or your bad feeling and after it should be dramatically reduced. Since you change how you're feeling through external means, you don't need to eat something to make yourself feel better. I wonder how many people do this dance when they walk past the pretzel shop in the mall...