{"id":58030,"date":"2025-01-18T00:00:15","date_gmt":"2025-01-18T00:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=58030"},"modified":"2025-01-18T00:00:15","modified_gmt":"2025-01-18T00:00:15","slug":"placebo-effect-takes-hold-maybe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=58030","title":{"rendered":"Placebo effect takes hold … maybe"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n

Three weeks into a nutrition and health management program run by the Veterans Administration and I am going to issue a preliminary progress report.<\/p>\n

I signed up for this program a few weeks ago because I determined I need professional help with shedding the weight I gained after I lost my bride, Kathy Anne, to brain cancer. I devoured far too much comfort food and I paid the price with a lot of excess weight.<\/p>\n

The program I joined is 16 weeks long. We just finished the third week of lessons delivered via online connection to my laptop here in North Texas.<\/p>\n

Have I lost significant amounts of weight? Am I now able to look at myself in the mirror? No on both counts. However, there must be some sort of placebo impact taking hold of me.<\/p>\n

Why? I feel better. It’s tough to define. I am proud of myself that I am able to exhibit some long-lost dietary discipline. I am keep strict daily logs of the calories I consume and the calories I expend through exercise and, well, just moving around and about.<\/p>\n

I have heard about docs prescribing placebo medication — which, of course, is fake — as a sort of disguise to determine whether a patient is really sick. I will consider this positive effect on my outlook as a form of placebo I am receiving from the dietitian I am meeting each week.<\/p>\n

I know that Billy Crystal’s SNL character “Fernando” would say it is “better to look good than to feel good.”<\/em> Baloney. I feel great. I’ll settle for that gladly as I continue along this journey.<\/p>\n\n

Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Three weeks into a nutrition and health management program run by the Veterans Administration and I am going to issue a preliminary progress report. I signed up for this program a few weeks ago because I determined I need professional help with shedding the weight I gained after I lost my bride, Kathy Anne, to … Continue reading Placebo effect takes hold … maybe<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,11],"tags":[10416,5077],"class_list":["post-58030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","category-medical-news","tag-nutrition","tag-va"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58030"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58030\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58031,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58030\/revisions\/58031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}