Um-m-m...I don't think I have it right, yet.

My few experiences with a 'placebo effect', where it worked anyway, have always included a degree of doubt.

AND, a kind of 'throw-away' attitude to my 'statements'. I say the program clearly, once, maybe twice, and then forget about it.

Or I stick up a picture of my ideal, and soon forget to look at it...I was on to the other areas of my life.

That time I lost 65 pounds in eight months. I ate better than ever before in my life, but I didn't follow any 'diet'.

The ladies in a weight-loss group, where everyone followed their own program, were quite disgusted with me, I ate a Reuben sandwich in front of them...a couple of times...and I still won the group award for pounds down.

The best I can explain the weight loss, is that I had thrown out white flour and White Sugar , bought myself a Magic Mill for grinding flours, got access to some unpastuerized milk, switched from margarine to butter, and dropped iodized salt for pickling salt. The weight just fell off...often 1/4 pound per day.

But I was also going through an emotional crisis at the time. That alone will do it, I think.

Here's a question: Does an emotional crisis bring on weight loss...or does weight loss bring on an emotional crisis?


The one real time I remember actually emotionally over-eating, years earlier, I was happy, ecstatic, in fact. I had just been told that I had been accepted as an adoptive mother, that our son was coming someday soon.

The social worker left. I was alone...and I circled the house in a flurry of energy, nine times. Each time I passed through the kitchen I took a fresh-baked chocolate chip cookie.

In fact, it was the cookies that slowed me down. After the ninth, I didn't feel like eating any more.


Other 'statements' I have made, and then forgotten, have worked very well...something like one studies for a school exam, waits at least eighteen hours, then goes in to be tested and aces it.

Restful sleep, and a good period of time between the 'cramming' and the exam seem to be important to success.

And emotional events going on at the same time didn't affect those successes.

So, my three-raisin theory may work, or not. I don't know.

What I do strongly suspect is that people who do respond to the 'placebo effect', getting better from swallowing 'sugar pills', have somehow accepted a statement that they 'should' improve...probably without thinking much about it.

Times when I have repeated the 'statement' and 'concentrated' on the desired result, didn't work.

So, back to the drawing board...

Thanks for your responses, my friends.

Fledgling