Chicane

Chicane (pronounced shi-keyn or chi-keyn)

(1) In bridge, a hand without trumps.

(2) In motor sport, one bend or a short section of sharp bends formed either by the design of the track or by barriers placed on the circuit.

(3) To quibble over; cavil at (now rare, probably extinct).

(4) A less common word for chicanery (deception; trickery); to use chicanery, tricks or subterfuge (rare).

1665-1675: A borrowing from the French chicane, from chicaner (to quibble (of obscure origin)), from the Middle French chicaner, from the Middle Low German schicken & schikken (to arrange), ultimately from the Proto-Germanic skikkijaną, origin of modern French chic.  The word has been used in English in various senses, including as an "act of chicanery” (the art of gaining advantage by using evasions or cheating tricks) from the 1670s.  The now most familiar sense, "obstacles on a roadway" didn’t emerge until 1955 (quickly spreading to motor-racing circuits) although it had been a technical term in bridge design since the 1880s.  All the English forms are from the archaic verb chicane (to trick), first noted in the 1660s, from the sixteenth century French chicane (trickery) from chicaner (to pettifog, to quibble).  Chicane, chicanery & chicaner are nouns, chicanerous is an adjective and chicaned & chicaning are verbs; the noun plural is chicanes.

Chicanery & low skullduggery: The film Mean Girls (2004) was based on Rosalind Wiseman's (b 1969) book Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and Other Realities of Adolescence (2002) which explored the interaction of the shifting social cliques formed by school girls.

Of the chicanery of the FIA

The FIA (Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (International Automobile Federation)) has since 1904 been involved in the organisation and regulation of motor-racing.  The FIA used to be mostly harmless but in recent decades has degenerated into about the most dopey regulatory body in sport, making the men of World Rugby’s (the old International Rugby Board (IRB)) standing Laws Committee look like chaps of rare skill and talent.  For a long time the FIA have approved not at all of any interesting form of motor-racing, their response always to make things slower and more processional, a curious approach in a sport about speed.  Although most obsessed with publishing volumes of complex regulations which require the employment of FIA officials to administer, the FIA also has an almost fetishistic relationship with chicanes.  A chicane is essentially an obstruction which requires a racing car to slow to negotiate.  While curves, climbs and corners have always been part of just about any form of motor-racing, the FIA seems never convinced there are enough.  It’s suspected if the FIA had their way, there would be no straights on motor-racing circuits, just corners.

Le Mans, before and after.

Mulsanne Straight (Ligne Droite des Hunaudières in French) at Circuit de la Sarthe where the annual Twenty-Four Hours of Le Mans (24 Heures du Mans) is run was once 3.7 miles (6 km) in length.  It was one of the sport’s great institutions, the speeds attained a benchmark of progress in engineering and aerodynamics.

Year	Car	Config	CI	CM3	MPH	KM/H
1961	Maserati Tipo 63	V12	183	3.0	173.6	279.4
1962	Ferrari 330 TRI/LM	V12	244	4.0	182.9	294.3
1963	Ferrari 330 TRI/LM	V12	244	4.0	187.2	301.3
1964	Ferrari 330 P	V12	244	4.0	192.2	309.3
1965	Ford GT40 Mk1	V8	289	4.7	192.2	309.3
1966	Ford GT40 MkII	V8	427	7.0	201.5	324.3
1967	Ford GT40 MkIV	V8	427	7.0	212.6	342.1
1968	Porsche 908	F8	244	3.0	191.0	307.4
1969	Porsche 917 LH	F12	275	4.5	197.8	318.3
1970	Porsche 917 L	F12	275	4.5	205.2	330.2
1971	Porsche 917 K	F12	298	4.9	224.4	361.1
1972	Matra-Simca MS670	V12	183	3.0	205.8	331.2
1973	Ferrari 312 PB-73	F12	183	3.0	210.8	339.2
1974	Matra-Simca MS670C	F12	183	3.0	207.1	333.3
1975	Gulf-Mirage GR8	V8	183	3.0	193.4	311.2
1976	Renault-Alpine A442	V6	122	2.0	208.9	336.2
1977	Renault-Alpine A442	V6	122	2.0	218.2	351.2
1978	Renault-Alpine A442B	V6	122	2.0	227.5	366.1
1979	Porsche 936	F6	131	2.1	218.8	352.1
1980	WM P79	V6	165	2.7	217.6	350.2
1981	Porsche 936	F6	159	2.6	220.7	355.2
1982	Porsche 956	F6	159	2.6	220.1	354.2
1983	Porsche 956	F6	159	2.6	230.0	370.1
1984	WM P83B	V6	165	2.7	225.1	362.3
1985	Porsche 956B	F6	159	2.6	230.6	371.1
1986	Porsche 962C	F6	159	2.6	231.9	373.2
1987	WM P87	V6	165	2.7	236.2	380.1
1988	WM P88	V6	165	2.7	251.1	404.1
1989	Sauber Mercedes C9	V8	303	5.0	248.0	399.1
1990	Nissan R90CP	V8	214	3.5	226.9	365.2

These achievements impressed most but not the FIA which, for reasons of their own, decided to sabotage things, initially by reducing the maximum engine capacity in the premier class, firstly from seven litres to five and later to three.  When this didn’t prove sufficient to nobble the engineers, they insisted two chicanes be added to Mulsanne Straight.  They were installed in 1990 and proved effective, no car since has, in the race, come within 20 mph (32 km/h) of the marks set in the late 1980s and speeds in excess of 200 mph (320 km/h) are now rare.  The FIA has emasculated other circuits too; in 1987 a chicane (the Chase) imposed upon Conrod Straight at Mount Panorama, Bathurst in Australia.  Quite why the FIA remains involved in motor-racing isn’t clear when it’s apparent they'd be better suited to the administration of something like competitive basket-weaving.

Recursive

Recursive (pronounced ri-kur-siv)

(1) Pertaining to or using a rule or procedure that can be applied repeatedly; periodically recurring.

(2) Drawing upon itself, referring back.

(3) In mathematics, of an expression, each term of which is determined by applying a formula to preceding terms

(4) In computing, of a program or function that calls itself (often in the form of an endlessly repeating script).

(5) In computing theory, of a function which can be computed by a theoretical model of a computer, in a finite amount of time.

(6) In computing, a set whose characteristic function is recursive.

(7) In linguistics (as recursive acronym), an acronym in which the first letter of the first word represented by the acronym is the acronym itself.

1790: From the stem of Latin recursus, perfect passive participle of recurrō (I run or hasten back; I return, revert, recur), the construct being recurs(ion) + -ive.  The –ive suffix is from the Anglo-Norman -if (feminine -ive), from the Latin -ivus; the related forms are the adverb recursively and the noun recursiveness.  Until the fourteenth century, all Middle English loanwords from the Anglo-Norman ended in -if (actif, natif, sensitif, pensif et al) and, under the influence of literary Neolatin, both languages introduced the form -ive.  Those forms that have not been replaced were subsequently changed to end in -y (hasty, from hastif, jolly, from jolif etc).  Like the Latin suffix -io (genitive -ionis), the Latin suffix -ivus is appended to the perfect passive participle to form an adjective of action.  The use in mathematics dates from 1934.  Recursive is an adjective inflected form of recursion which is a noun.  Recursive is an adjective, recursivity & recursiveness are nouns and recursively is an adverb; the noun plural is recursivities.  

The recursive acronym

Although recursive acronyms had existed before, appearing in fiction as early as 1968, the term first gained wider attention when discussed in US physicist’s Douglas Hofstadter's (b 1945) 1979 book Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid.  Recursive acronyms typically form backwardly: either an existing ordinary acronym is given a new explanation or, a name is turned into an acronym by giving the letters an explanation of what they stand for, in each case with the first letter standing recursively for the whole acronym.

Not an easy txt to absorb for those without a helpful background, even the title of Gödel, Escher, Bach is at first glance misleading because it’s not a look at the relationships between art, music and mathematics but instead an exploration of the abstract structures which exist within each.  These Hofstadter called “strange loops”, the logician Kurt Friedrich Gödel (1906–1978) having demonstrated their existence in any mathematical system of sufficient complexity.

Relativity, lithograph (1953) by MC Escher (1898–1972).

Hofstadter pursued these structural imperatives in music and art, suggesting it’s strange loops which creates consciousness, the connections and chemicals in the human brain creating the fundamental base of the framework on which are hung ideas, feelings, hopes and desires, all of which manifest further up the framework.  Consciousness became possible (and there are those who suggested inevitable) because the hierarchy clinging to the framework can twist back on itself: higher and lower levels influencing and interacting so the lower which once must have entirely determined the upper is also changed, ideas and feelings having an actual physical impact, this tangling of hierarchies being our sense of self.

Others, tentatively had posed similar questions.  Eugene Charniak’s (b 1946) strangely neglected PhD thesis (MIT, 1974) at least hinted it might be fruitful to explore the relationship of knowledge and inference to natural language understanding and Gödel, Escher, Bach is a playful, clever, if sometimes obviously contrived way to offer one explanation of how cognition emerges from a mechanistic structure which is reflected in work that cognition can allow to be created.  As a technical point, remarkably for a piece so dependent on the nuances and interplay of language, Gödel, Escher, Bach has been translated.

Many recursive acronyms come from the field of computing; it’s nerd humor.

TLA: Three Letter Acronym

AROS: AROS Research Operating System

BAMF: BAMF Application Matching Framework

BIRD: BIRD Internet Routing Daemon

GNU: GNU's Not Unix

KGS: KGS Go Server

LAME: LAME Ain't an MP3 Encoder

MINT: MINT Is Not TRAC

MiNT: MiNT is Not TOS (which later became MiNT is Now TOS)

TIARA: TIARA is a recursive acronym

UIRA: UIRA Isn't a Recursive Acronym

WINE: WINE Is Not an Emulator (was originally Windows Emulator)

XINU: Xinu Is Not Unix

XNA: XNA's Not Acronymed

XNU: X is Not Unix

Cooper

Cooper (pronounced koo-per or koop-er)

(1) A person who makes or repairs casks, barrels, etc.

(2) A drink of half stout and half porter (obsolete).

1350–1400: From the Middle English couper (craftsman who makes barrels, tubs, and other vessels from wooden staves and metal hoops), which etymologists are convinced would have come from an Old English form but it has proved elusive.  Both the English words are almost certainly related to the Middle Low German kūper, the East Frisian kuperor and Middle Dutch cūper, from the Low German kupe (cask, tub, vat), from the Medieval Latin cūpārius, the construct being cūp(a) (cask or vat) + ārius. (from the The nominative neuter form -arium which, when appended to nouns, formed derivative nouns denoting a “place where things are kept”).

The meaning "craftsman who makes wooden vessels" was originally associated with the word couper, cooper a later construct of coop + er.  Coop is from the Middle English coupe & cupe, from the Old English cȳpe (basket; cask) or possibly the Middle Dutch cûpe (related to the modern Dutch kuip, Saterland Frisian kupe & Middle Low German kûpe), from the Old Saxon kûpa & côpa (cask), related to the Middle Low German kôpe, the Old High German chôfa & chuofa, the Middle High German kuofe, the modern German kufe (feminine form of cask), which most sources trace back to the Classical Latin cūpa & Medieval Latin cōpa (cask) although the OED has cast doubt on this etymology because of the mysterious umlaut in Old English cýpe.  The er agent (noun-formation) suffix is from the Middle English er & ere, from the Old English ere, from the Proto-Germanic ārijaz.  It’s thought a borrowing from the Latin ārius; cognate with the Dutch er and aar, the Low German er, the German er, the Swedish are, the Icelandic ari and the Gothic areis.  Related too are the Ancient Greek ήριος (ḗrios) and Old Church Slavonic арь (arĭ) and although synonymous, actually unrelated is the Old French or & eor (the Anglo-Norman variant is our) which is from the Latin (ā)tor, derived from the primitive Indo-European tōr.

As a surname, the name is attested from the late twelfth century, either from the unattested Old English or a Low German source akin to Middle Dutch cuper , East Frisian kuper, ultimate source the Low German kupe (which became kufe in German), cognate with the Medieval Latin cupa.  A now rare variation is hooper although it remains common as a surname.  Within the profession, a dry cooper makes casks to hold dry goods, a wet cooper those to contain liquids and a white cooper, pails, tubs, and the like for domestic or dairy use.  The surname Cowper is pronounced koo-per or koop-er everywhere except Australia which preserved the fifteenth century spelling but modified the pronunciation to cow-pah.  The Australian federal electorate of Cowper was created in 1900 as one of the original sixty-five divisions and is named after Sir Charles Cowper (1807–1875) who was on five occasions between 1856-1870 the premier of the colony of New South Wales (NSW), Australia.

The Maserati Formula 1 V12, 1956-1957 & 1966-1969

1954 Maserati 250F "short nose".

Remarkably, the three litre Maserati V12 used by Cooper to win Grand Prix races in 1966 & 1967 was an update (developed out of necessity) of a 2.5 litre engine used (once) in 1956.  Maserati’s new straight-six 250F had enjoyed a stunning start to its career, enjoying victories in the first two Grands Prix of the 1954 season but was soon eclipsed by the Lancia D50 and particularly the Mercedes-Benz W196, both with more powerful eight cylinder engines and advanced aerodynamics.

1955 Maserati 250F Streamliner.

Maserati responded and, taking note of the all-enveloping "streamliner" bodywork Mercedes-Benz used on the W196s used on the faster circuits, developed a quasi-enveloping shape, the emphasis wholly on reducing drag (downforce would attract the interest of a later generation).  For the slower tracks, there was also an aerodynamic refinement of the open-wheeler, the “long-nose” which proved such a success it would become the definitive 250F.  The more slippery shapes helped but the problem of the power deficit remained, the advanced Mercedes-Benz engine, built with the benefit of experience gained with the wartime aero engines, used fuel-injection and a desmodromic valve-train which permitted sustained high-speed operation.  Maserati’s engineers devoted time to devise a fuel injection system and borrowed an innovation from the roadsters built for the Indianapolis 500, an off-set installation of the engine in the chassis which permitted the driveshaft to be to run beside rather than beneath the driver, lowering the seat and thus improving both aerodynamics and weight-distribution.

1954 Maserati 250F "long nose".

Two grand prix wins in 1956 suggested progress was being made but, although Mercedes-Benz withdrew from racing after 1955, competition from other constructors was growing so Maserati turned its attention to both chassis and engine.  An all-new multi-tubular space-frame chassis was designed, lighter and stronger than its more conventional predecessor, it retained the double wishbone front and De Dion rear suspension and, perhaps surprisingly, the engineers resisted the more efficient and now well-proven disc brakes, the revised drums instead aided by enhanced cooling.  The new engine was not ready for 1956 so the straight-six was again fielded although the off-set layout was discarded.  The new chassis was called Tipo 2.

Maserati 250F Typo 2, Juan Manuel Fangio (1911–1995), German Grand Prix,  Nürburgring, 1957.

Developed specifically for the Tipo 2 was the V12, its twin camshafts driven by front-mounted gears with the novelty of the Weber carburetors being mounted between the camshafts.  Maintaining a Maserati tradition, a twin spark ignition system was fitted, the 24 spark-plugs fed by two sturdy magnetos, again gear-driven and linked by 24 individual coils.  In many ways the state of 1950s engineering art, the marvelously intricate 2.5 litre V12 produced 320 bhp at what was then a startling 12,000 rpm, an increase of 50 bhp over the 2.5 litre straight six.  With the V12 still being developed, the team started the 1957 season with the 250F Tipo 2 and the straight six.  The faithful six was reliable and proved powerful enough to prevail over the Ferraris and the cars which unexpectedly emerged as the most impressive competition: the British Vanwalls.  The season would be Maserati’s finest, Juan Manuel Fangio winning his fifth world championship (at the age of forty-five) and, had there been a constructors title (not awarded until 1958), Maserati would have taken that trophy too.  The season is remembered also for Fangio’s famous victory in the German Grand Prix at the Nürburgring, in which he broke the lap record ten times in twenty-two laps, the Tipo 2’s straight six clearly good enough.

1956 Maserati 250F Tipo 2 V12.

The success of the straight-six afforded the engineers a wealth of time thoroughly to develop the V12.  After early tests showed the power delivery, although impressive, was too brutal to deliver the flexibility needed in a racing car, attention was devoted to widening the torque curve.  Three Tipo 2 chassis were built for the V12 engine, one ready in time for the final Grand Prix of the year, the symbolically important home event, the Italian Grand Prix at Monza.  A redesigned gearbox housing again allowed an off-set mounting which, although improving weight distribution, made the body sit so low on the frame, two bulges had to be formed in the bonnet to clear the carburetor intakes.  It looked fast and it was.  However, in scenes reminiscent of the troubles suffered by the ferociously powerful Auto-Unions and Mercedes-Benz of the pre-war years, the V12 250F, although fast, suffered high tyre-wear, the rear tyres clearly not able long to endure the abrasive demands of 320 bhp.  Still, it had been an encouraging debut, even if a lubrication problem had prematurely ended the venture.

Lindsay Lohan in Mini Cooper, Mauritius, 2016.

Unfortunately, there would not for a decade be another chance to run the V12 in a Grand Prix.  Financially challenged, Maserati retired from international racing at the end of the 1957 season, the remaining 250Fs sold to privateers either with the straight six or as a rolling chassis.  How competitive a fully-developed Tipo 2 V12 might have been in 1958 will never be known but the credentials were there and, against the dominant Ferraris and Vanwalls, it would have been an interesting contest, the 1958 season the end of an era, the last year either the drivers’ or constructors’ championships would be won using front-engined cars.  On paper, the Maserati V12 was the most powerful engine fielded during Formula One’s 2.5 litre era.

Cooper-Maserati T81, Guy Ligier (1930–2015), Belgium Grand Prix, Spa-Francorchamps, 1967.

Although it did see some use in sports-car racing, the V12’s most (briefly) illustrious second life came when, in 1965, a doubling of engine displacement to three litres was announced for the next Formula One season, the 1.5 litre voiturettes used between 1961-1965 exquisitely engineered but lacking the noise, speed and spectacle with which others were attracting interest.   This created a scramble for competitive engines and with renewed interest in the mothballed V12, Maserati dusted-off the cobwebs.  Cooper adopted it and enjoyed early success with the advantage of being the first team running cars with a full three litres, the reliability of the old V12 adding another edge over others still shaking down their initially fragile new engines.

Cooper-Maserati T81b, Pedro Rodríguez (1940–1971),  German Grand Prix, Nürburgring, 1967.

Soon however, Cooper were running a decade-old design against much newer competition and the antiquity began to tell.  Although some updating had been done, early experiments with six and even a remarkable twelve carburettors quickly abandoned for the even by then de rigueur fuel injection, in that decade, several generations of engineering had passed and the V12 was looking pre-historic.  Unable to change anything fundamental, Maserati bolted on what it could, including 18-valve cylinder heads that added weight and complexity, but did little to narrow the widening gap.  Rumors of 24-valve heads and even three spark-plugs per cylinder never came to fruition but the latter did prompt some wry comments questioning the efficiency of Maserati's combustion chamber design if that many fires needed to be lit.  Maserati withdrew from Formula One during the 1968 season and Cooper soon followed.

Thinspo

Thinspo (pronounced thin-spoh)

Material created, curated or used (almost exclusively in distributed digital form) to inspire thinness or weight loss; a sub-set of the pro-ana community which exists to support those who have chosen to anorexia nervosa as a lifestyle.

2005–2010: The short form of thinspiration, the construct being thin +‎ (in)spiration.  Thin was from the Middle English thinne, thünne & thenne, from the Old English þynne, from the Proto-West Germanic þunnī, from the Proto-Germanic þunnuz (thin) (and related to þanjaną (to stretch, spread out)), from the primitive Indo-European ténhus (thin), from ten- (to stretch).  It was cognate with the German dünn, the Dutch dun, the West Frisian tin, the Icelandic þunnur, the Danish tynd, the Swedish tunn, the Latin tenuis, the Irish tanaí, the Welsh tenau, the Latvian tievs, the Sanskrit तनु (tanú) (thin) and the Persian تنگ‎ (tang) (narrow). A doublet of tenuis, it was related also to tenuous.  Inspiration was from the Middle English inspiracioun, from the Old French inspiration, from the Late Latin īnspīrātiōnem (nominative īnspīrātiō), from the Classical Latin īnspīrātus (past participle of inspīrō).  It displaced the native Old English onbryrdnes (literally “in-pricked-ness”).  Thinspo inspired others forms such as fitspo (encouraging fitness) and blondespo (advocating being blonde) and between thinspo and fitspo, critics noted some overlap, suspecting that in at least some cases the later identity is assumed as an attempt at disguise.  Thinspo is a noun; the noun plural is thinspos.

Thinspo's idealized bone definition.

The companion term ribspro (the short form of ribspiration (known also as bonespo)) is a particular genre within thinspo.  Whereas thinspo material can be long or short-form text, diagrams or images, rinspro is almost exclusively visual, the text limited to perhaps a few admiring or encouraging words and as the names suggest, the focus is on ribcages or other bones proximately highlighted against taut skin.  Backbones, ribs, clavicles and hipbones seem the most favored, presumably because they tend to provide the most definitional contrast but there’s also the suspicion that the particular aesthetic construct of the thinspo community finds there the most attractive, unlike a knee or elbow which, however boney, seems not to be thought photogenic.  Another genre (a kind of applied thinspo) within the community is meanspo (the short form of mean inspiration), from the “tough love” or “cruel to be kind” school of weight loss and this school of thought advocates issuing critical and insulting comments to those considered “insufficiently thin enough”, the rationale being this will convince them to reduce intake, exercise more, purge and thus lose weight.  The thinspo ecosystem has also proliferated thematic variations such as “vegan thinspo” although that to some extent was opportunistic give that the most extreme of the thinspo operatives had long since banished animal products, regarding recommendations like “lean mean” or “chicken strips” as just so much fat.

Like much in the pro-ana community, the thinspo sites exist on a spectrum, those thought innocuous left to continue while any judged to be encouraging eating disorders subject to being shutdown although the efforts undertaken by (and sometimes imposed on) the platforms is a Sisyphean battle, the content shifting as required.  It’s also organic in that thinspo, like all that’s curated by the pro-ana community, is just another function supply-demand curve; the supply of pro-ana content at least to some extent a product of demand and, like much that is on-line, some of the material is blatantly fake, something most obviously detected in the dubious before & after photos which appear with frequent duplication.  Whether there were statistically significant differences in the nature of the content of thinspo and fitspo sites attracted academic interest and there were studies, the results differing in detail (and demonstrating widely divergent results depending on the platform analyzed which was thought to be a reflection more of the degree of success a platform achieved in enforcing its policies than any difference in the collective user profile) but displaying the same general trends: Thinspo sites portrayed body parts with more than twice the frequency of fitspo and posts highlighting bony body features and references to mental illness were overwhelmingly almost specific to thinspo.  Interestingly, the differences between fitspo & thinspo relating to sexually suggestive images, appearance comparison and messages encouraging restrictive eating were not statistically significant, the divergences being striking but almost wholly correlated with the platform on which they were posted.  The more extreme of the forks such as self harm (such as the cutter subset) also appear on thinspo sites.

Thinspo Rules

Thinspirationism: Lindsay Lohan during thinspo pin-up phase, 2005.

(1) Never eat something just because you want to finish it.  Eat only enough to stop the worst of the hunger pangs and don’t eat until sated; those extra bites add up.

(2) Don’t let emotions take over and eat only if hungry.  Stop yourself once you start eating if you know it’s for the wrong reasons.

(3) If you catch yourself in a binge, stop the moment you realize.  Don’t forgive yourself for screwing up; it will only permit you to screw up again.

(4) Every calorie counts.  Review every recipe and remove as many calories as possible.  Where possible, choose the diet or low cal version and drink water (soda water is fine), black tea or black coffee instead of other beverages.  Avoid zero-cal sweeteners (1) because they’re a chemical cocktail and (2) on thinspo goal is to completely cure the body’s natural sugar addiction. 

(5) Don’t feel guilt about wasting food.  The undesirability on environmental grounds is noted but the sooner you change yourself, the better.  Set a goal always not to eat everything you’re served and gradually increase this quantity.  Before long, you’ll be throwing away food without barely a thought.

(6) Eat slowly, savoring each bite.

(7) Drink water during meals, as much as you can manage.   This curbs hunger, is filling, aids in digestion and maintains hydration which has many benefits.  Water has zero calories and can be taken as ice.

(8) Chew your food more, taking at least one 1 full breathe after every bite.  It can vary according to what’s being eater but as a guide, chew 30 times for each mouthful. This not only assists digestion but slows the pace of eating, reducing consumption.

(9) Cut food into smaller pieces which slows eating, can make you you’re eating more and it will makes other people think you ate more, something which can be important.

 (10) Associate unhealthy food with something else: ice cream with saturated fat, bread with carbs, juice with sugar etc.  Concrete visual examples are also helpful: cake as fat sitting in your thighs, chips as a permanent lining in the stomach etc..

(11) Learn from other people eating because while there are individual variations, overall, the patterns should be consistent.  Watch skinny people and apply their principles to your own diet; watch fat people with disgust and revulsion, avoiding what they do.

(12) Decide beforehand how much you are going to eat and never eat more.  If cooking, cook only one serving, so you can’t eat anymore.  The idea model is to have no food in the house and each day but only what you’re that day allowed.  It can be difficult at first but it can be done and if stuck to, it’s a foolproof diet.

(13) Always remind yourself of your goals and rewards.  Keep track of daily nutrient and food goals (some use diet minder journal or cronometers but the best method is whatever works for you).  Weigh yourself twice a day (before morning coffee and just before going to bed), the goal being always to see a lower number than previous weigh-in.  If you have achieved a target weight and operate in a variation of +/- 100g, that is acceptable.

(14) Don’t eat 2½ hours before bed.

(15) You’ll sometimes eat with friends or family so you may need to develop techniques surreptitiously to dispose of food.  You’ll get good at knowing where to sit so one hand can always been unseen and a good trick is to wear clothes with big pockets you can line with plastic bags.