"Please don't deny my experience"

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If you've visited here before, you may have read this recent post in which I reacted to a Ragen Chastain post the deployed some of the same illogic that Big Food uses to undercut its foes.

As I have before (check out the Ragen Chastain keyword link near the top of this post), I asked Chastain to engage on these and other questions, since certainly she and I have far more in common than Big Food and I do. As a nod to the variety within our commonality, I acknowledged her impressive athletic prowess, and left a comment at her blog to ensure that I wasn't talking about her behind her back. I was disappointed when she left my comment in moderation — declined to post it — while she let many, many more through, and otherwise ignored my approach.

Until, possibly, this morning. It doesn't acknowledge me at all, so it could just be the ordinary form of self-reference that only *I* have, but I think she was addressing me, or at least a group she has put me in. "Communicating" with someone through these means is almost guaranteed to expose the fool who thinks he's communicating at all, but I'm going to "respond" anyway. If nothing else, I'll provide some mirth for you. You're welcome.

"Some people who are part of the small percentage of people who diet successfully think that everyone can be successful because they were and, that those who don’t succeed (never mind that it’s the vast, vast majority of us) must be doing it wrong even though plenty of people who do what they did have a very different result."

I didn't diet, but people make that mistake. Anyway: I so often say, "If it worked for me, it could work for anyone because I'm not that special." I guess her rejoinder is, "yes, you are special," though I'm guessing she might not use that word. Since "my" method, (prescribed by others — I'm no guru), wasn't a diet, but a change of menu within a larger framework of change, I don't think it's fair to say "it" won't work unless one sincerely slips into that framework for a sufficient trial.

Then there are people who think that if everyone ate like they did, then everyone would be their size- so if they are thin and eat a lot, then fat people must be eating tons more than they do. Of course everybody knows people who eat a ton and stays thin, it’s not surprising that others would eat a small amount and stay heavy.

OK, this paragraph has got to be to someone else in the group, but I wanted to comment anyway: "Of course everybody knows people who eat a ton and stays thin..." Huh. I know very few who carry off this anomaly. "Everybody knows." 

The idea that “If I can do it, anybody can!” is completely false on every level, ... “If I can do it anybody can!” is a lie, the truth is “if I can do it, I can do it under the particular circumstances that existed when I did it.”

This is more overstatement: "Completely false on every level" is three absolutes in five words! And yet, I've have my experience, and I'm sure I'm not that special. In addition to my practicing humility (I don't know how you perceive it, of course, but it's what I'm trying to be), I know enough other people who've had similar experience to be convinced of it. And if I could only "do it under the particular circumstances that existed when I did it," then those circumstances have been existing for more than 20 years, which, to me, argues for sustainability, not alignment-of-planets stuff.

I'll end with this one:

Consider not talking about your experience as if it somehow negates someone else’s

Yes, please do!

Meanwhile, you may be wondering: "Dude, she doesn't want to talk to you. You're making a fool of yourself by carrying on this conversation in your head, and then splaying it in the ether." To which I say, "Yeah, probably. But even when I got to the end of the exercise, it still seemed worth publishing."


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