You don’t have to use them, the speaker assures the crowd. But they’re so much easier that going it alone! Gawd forbid you sit down with charts and all that complicated stuff, when you can just measure scoops of powder and get all you need from “whole food” powder shakes.
There is a display of the products set up, and little anecdotes: You know, Kyle and I are just so busy when we get home, too busy to cook – so I just mix up a little shake, and voila! Dinner is served. All I have to ask is: Peanut Butter, or Chocolate?”
They talk a lot about toxins built up in our bodies that simply must be cleansed.
They talk about this a lot, even though there is nothing to support it in the medical literature. If you cleanse out the toxins, they say, you'll feel so much better. You'll lose weight. It. Will. Change. Your. Life.
I look around the crowd, earnest, hopeful faces. I hope future happiness isn't hinging on “whole food” powders, as they write checks to a promise to change their lives.
So why am I doing this? Well, the structure, and the proceeds go to charity. It's a contest, also, where your before-and-after pictures and essay are judged, so I joined for fun and, well, "the challenge." I have gotten some very good information about diet and exercise from the book they gave me and the handouts that is separate from the constant push to sell the product.
My stuff is from Kroger or Costco, including the 6-8 glasses of Crystal Light I drink despite dire warnings that Splenda is just one atom away from pool treatment and will just make me so toxic that nobody, not even me, will be able to stand me and Baboo may immediately divorce me. Or something.
I look around at the couples who are talking. They are clearly interested in the pitch. Some are disappointed when they find out the prices - Introductory programs are $200, $300, and up. I can't afford it, their faces say. That hopeless look makes them an easy target for a good pitch man to move in for the kill:
We give you the opportunity to earn money immediately every time you personally enroll an Associate with us. We offer you a one-time Product Introduction Bonus of $10-$80 for each new Associate you personally enroll, when they order an optional Product Introduction Pak at time of sign-up (within 60 days for a President's Pak).Cheap, simple changes are easier to maintain. My weekly resistance-training plan and eating tracking is on SparkPeople, using my body weight or resistance bands. Since I can't run right now; I'm power-walking several days a week during lunch, with a longer hike on weekends. I've divided up my eating into 6 small meals a day and increased my protein intake and eat the bulk of my calories in the first half of the day. When I gain weight, it's because I ate too much and moved too little. Simple.
I notice a pretty, but very large woman sitting alone. She looks in her checkbook and then back up to the stage, considering. She's going to do it, I think. She's going to spend a couple hundred or more on this stuff.Oh, do I know that naive, desperate feeling.
They couldn't say it if it weren't true, could they, she might be thinking, it must work...I want so badly to be thinner. I know I would be happier if I were thinner...
She looks hopeful. I’m hopeful for her. I hopeful that she eventually figures out that to feel better about herself, she doesn’t need all those white plastic canisters up on stage.
Canisters that are, ironically, stacked in a pyramid.
...
RULES: list 5 things you're "addicted" to, then bestow the honor on five of your favorite bloggers.
ll the planning and arranging, and he surrounds me in a nice, big bubble in which I am protected. There are contingencies for every possibility...I am insured and protected in every way I can be.
7) My pager battery has been dead for several weeks. I know this, and I haven't replaced it.
