Several Self-Address Sizes Smaller

NYT: [The] weight loss company, Medifast, is introducing an advertising campaign that eschews celebrities.

A new commercial opens on a woman named Kimberley Vandlen, who is overweight, standing in a kitchen speaking to a woman whose back is to the camera.

“You look beautiful, you do,” says Ms. Vandlen, choking back tears. “You look so beautiful.”

After text flashes on the screen that says, “Kimberley discusses weight loss,” the camera shifts to face the other woman, and new text appears on the screen: “With herself.”

That woman, it turns out, is also Ms. Vandlen, but almost 50 pounds lighter — and radiant. Voice quavering, the thinner Ms. Vandlen says, “This is all you.”

Her two versions, thanks to crafty editing, face each other in the same frame and appear to converse in real time.

Heavier Ms. Vandlen: “I never thought I could look like that. Thank you.”

Thinner Ms. Vandlen: “Thank you for wanting it.”

The commercial, which closes with the tagline, “Become yourself,” is by Solve, an independent advertising and branding agency in Minneapolis. It will be introduced on television and online on Jan. 1, along with spots featuring two other Medifast dieters — another woman and a man — conversing with thinner versions of themselves...

While I played this on YouTube the other day, it just happened to show up again on TVLand.

Kimberley talking to herself: shades of "Rikki Don't Lose That Number" by Steely Dan ("Send it off in a letter/To yourself"), "I Found a Reason" by The Velvet Underground ("And I've walked down life's lonely highway/Hand in hand with myself"), and George Carlin's bit on borborygmi, or stomach growling ("Your stomach is talking to you").