Diet Trap # 9 : Being Misled by Association
When it comes to most weight-loss and food products being advertised in the media today, the
people paid to promote them are the least likely to actually use them. That is one of the reasons
they look so good!
Let’s talk about the “professionally beautiful” and the mythology that surrounds and supports them.
“The Celebrity Milk Mustache” is a blatant example. As Paul Zane Pilzer, author and economist, so
incisively remarked in The Wellness Revolution, “Imagine the hypocrisy of celebrities who sport
milk mustaches in paid advertisements, but themselves drink only soy milk-based products.^51 ” In
fact, wearing a milk mustache every day is one of the best ways to ensure that you’ll never look
your best!
Let's look at another example of how eating behaviors that lead to weight issues are consistently
modeled in film and television. Toned, slender actors, who could not work in their profession if they
ate the way that their characters are portrayed, are depicted eating whatever they want and yet
retaining their perfect figures. The rail-thin actress gulping pizza and beer; the lean, well-developed
actor drawing laughs as he appears to consume piles of high-fat foods; and the perfectly fit sitcom
couple eating the standard American diet (SAD)—all of which in the real world would lead them all
down the path to obesity and numerous other health complications! Don’t be fooled.
“Movie stars, talk-show hosts, entertainment professionals, and
many leading business executives inhabit a secret world in which
the physical fundamentals of life (food, exercise, etc.) are seen from
a perspective radically different than that of most human beings. To
the wellness elite, each act of apparent pain or denial, from sessions
with their personal trainers, to navigating through menus at
exclusive restaurants, is a positive, almost religious experience.
These people focus on how they will feel hours later because of each
laborious exercise, or they focus on how much stronger they will
feel that evening because of what they are not eating for lunch or
dinner. Thus, what may seem painful to others becomes to them a
euphoric experience with almost immediate rewards!”- Paul Zane Pilzer
Diet Trap # 10 : Thinking You're “Not Motivated Enough”
Do you think that because you aren't starving yourself or haven't joined a gym that you are not
motivated to lose weight or be healthy? Do you think that your lack of healthy eating success is due
to your lack of desire? The fact of the matter is, you're not unmotivated—you’re just diet-trapped.
(^51) Pilzer PZ. The New Wellness Revolution: How to Make a Fortune in the Next Trillion Dollar Industry. Hoboken,