Obesity
Does your weight go up and down like a roller coaster? Is it steadily climbing, year after year? Have you tried every diet and even “succeeded” only to gain back all the weight you lost and then some? Does it seem like your doctor/family/friends are tired of hearing about your struggle? Then you have come to the right place!
A wise man pointed out that a problem well defined is a problem half solved. When it comes to obesity, we have not defined the problem well. Unfortunately, when we fail to define the problem, we usually make mistakes about the causes as well. For example, obesity is often thought to be a result of laziness, as in the person just doesn’t care and therefore doesn’t try to be more healthy. That has not been my experience, nor does the science back that up. If you are overweight and if you have tried “everything” you know what I’m talking about. When we define the problem of obesity as one of over indulgence and lack of initiative we are effectively blaming the victim.
The problem of obesity in the US is complicated involving everything from the micro (endocrine system) to the macro (society) level, but what is clear is that during the 1990’s we started gaining weight and we haven’t stopped. Currently the US is the most obese nation in the world with the most obese children. Obesity in the US is an epidemic with significant health consequences as well as enormous costs for the individual as well as for the nation. Blaming the victim is not the solution.
There are several things that are clear that may shed some light. For example, Americans do eat more calories than folks in any other developed nation. One of the reasons may be that food is less expensive in the US than it is in other countries.
But another reason is that US food is loaded with pollutants that are addicting making the food impossible to resist. Did you know, for example that sugar is as addicting as heroin or cocaine? True. Worse though is the fact that it is in almost all processed foods in one form or another. Processed foods are much more common in the US than in other developed nations. That is partly because we are the Fast Food Nation. We expect food to be “made” when we buy it.
Many of us do not even know how shop for, prepare and clean up after a meal, let alone plant and harvest our food. Most of us do not want to know how to do these things. But not because we are lazy, since we are currently the hardest working country in the world. It is because we have bought in to the idea that food is fast, instantaneous. Abracadabra! The upshot is that we are stuck with whatever the food industry wants to put in our food.
What they want to put in the food is whatever will ensure that we will eat it and keep eating it. So they load it up with extremely addicting sugars like High Fructose Corn Syrup. Don’t think you are eating HFCS? Think again. Check the ingredients of your catchup or your cereal or your cappuccino. It’s in there.
Another one of the “causes” of obesity may actually be dieting. Yes, I said dieting. Turns out that it is fattening. In our ED survey nearly half of the respondents said that they are almost always on a diet. This is a major problem considering that dieting leads to weight gain instead of weight loss for the vast majority of people who diet. That is correct, most people who diet lose the weight, only to gain it back and more. The research says that this happens almost 95% of the time.
Another issue is the misconception that fat is fattening. It isn’t. But you would never know it from our low-fat guidelines which began in the 1970’s. When they took the fat out of milk, they added sugar. Fat does not cause weight gain, but sugar does!
What does all this mean? Put very simply, the quality of the food matters. The healthier it is, the less weight you gain. I know, you have always been told that a calorie is a calorie. Nope. The more “polluted” the calorie, the more weight you will gain according to this rat study:
I have seen this bear out over and over. I put someone on a “clean” diet and they lose weight even though they are eating significantly more calories. I’m just saying….
