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November 8, 2003

Commitment Experiment

I have been reading a book, "Influence, The Psychology of Persuasion", by Robert b. Cialdini, PHD. The book has been around for awhile, but I have just now found it. It explains how simple it is for people to be persuaded to do things they might not otherwise do - from Prisoners of War being convinced to colloberate with the enemy to people being convinced to become an Amway Dealer - to a smoker successfully quitting.
One of the very interesting techniques involves writing down a goal and making that goal public.
Well, in the interest of science ( I was a psychology major, lo those many years ago!), I decided to make public my rather embarrassing goal of losing a lot of weight.

To be exact, I need to lose a minimum of 70 pounds. I have tried many diets, but after I lose 10 or 20 pounds, I just gain back that much and more. Thus, I have gone from a size 10 (that I shoulda been happy with) to a size 20 in the past 10 years. Yes, even the famed Atkins diet (which caused all sorts of embarrassing farting noises that emanated from my bum during the night) failed me.
So, I am not going on a diet, but just letting everyone know that I have a goal of losing 70 pounds. As part of this goal, I will weigh myself each morning and post my loss or gain.
I ain't telling nobody how much my current weight is, but I will tell you how many pounds I have gotten rid of and how far from my goal I am.
This will be the only long post about this, - the rest will just be tiny little notes under my Beth's weight loss category.

Thanks for putting up with this interruption. Back to blogging.

Posted by Beth at November 8, 2003 1:35 PM