- Concern over health effects. My father was diagnosed with type II
diabetes. So was my mother's mother.
- Curiosity as to what it's like to be lean.
- Curiosity and challenge -- why is it said to be so
difficult? Who says I can't do it?
- Annoyance with claims from twelve step people that I can't do
it without a twelve step program. (I won a bet
with one of them.) (Maybe I'm just stubborn: "You must..." results in
my being less likely to, while "you can't..." has the opposite tendency.)
- I had noticed that I don't tend to get hungry when I go without
eating for a day or two, and that hunger wasn't what motivated most of
my eating.
- Discovering that exercise isn't necessarily painful -- I had been
doing it all along (walking, using stairs, carrying things) without
noticing. I had never bothered to buy anything with a motor in it,
except things like fans, disk drives, clocks, record/tape/CD players,
etc.
- I was between jobs, and wanted to save money. Why not save money
on food, and on bus fare?
- I was between jobs, and wanted to make a good impression at job
interviews in a year or two, since lean people are more likely to get
any given job, and are more likely to get a higher salary.
- I like to see some kind of numerical progress in something
at all times. Between jobs, my savings weren't growing as they were
before and are now. So why not look at numbers on a scale instead?
- Time was moving too quickly for my tastes. I correctly thought this
change would make it seem to move slower, as any major change would.
Last updated July 4th, 1995.