The search for the fountain of youth is an everlasting human preoccupation that has fascinated the world with its rosy possibilities. The proliferation of books, manuals, tapes, gyms, gym equipments, exercises, diets and what have you, to facilitate the over-indulgent humanity’s need to be healthy and to look good is testament to that utopian vision. Each flattering suggestion dangled with promises in myriads of lotions and potions and notions regales that human obsession. Only the immense capacity of the mind to imagine exceeds these boundaries of health oriented technology.

This is the sweeping view of the global landscape, littered with people who face up to the daily battle with their waistlines. The truth is most of the above weight loss solutions work for a while. Then they stop working.

The basic philosophy for those who desire to get rid of excess weight is rooted in this simple regimen: the body’s consumption must be less than the amount of energy it uses up. Everyone professes patriotic allegiance to the concept. Therefore everyone who gets involved in the application should reap the warranted reward of health and beauty. Logic says it should. Nevertheless when human predispositions and habits get involved in the equation, logic falls by the wayside.

Any new program or product in the marketplace is meticulously designed to captivate the hopeful searchers for the fountain of health. In fact the user of any health program is soon rewarded with the first visible results. The ensuing weeks and months are zealously chronicled in a diary to extol the liberating effects of the initial weight loss, surely a tiny triumph worth celebrating. Yet when this ongoing health crusade slams into that plateau where conflicts in certain life’s schedules start to interfere with personal and social conveniences, the irresolute crowd start floundering amid the whirlpool of overlooked priorities. The struggles slowly eat into their customary vitality and behind the camouflage of the flimsiest excuses indecision puts an end to what was just famously begun.

But “hope springs eternal in the human heart”. Another advertiser will come along and entice these poor souls once more with a much better product, faster outcomes, easier routines to follow and more frills. The hype ensures inevitable surrender to the path of least resistance.

Man in general, not just the weight-challenged, most often leans towards that path of least resistance. Each individual weight loss initiative is triggered by the irresistible allure of that freshly discovered health innovation in one late weekend infomercial. It piques his interest and freezes the navigating fingers on the remote control long enough to be amused with more propaganda. What woman or man can weather that fusillade aimed at the fickle fortress of human vanity?

Many have been there, done that. Most have been held hostage by their own hopes founded on fractured sensibilities. The lack of conviction, the lack of passion will sabotage physical and mental involvement in any discipline where one’s desire for improvement succumbs to any mundane pressure.

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