Willpower or Gaslighting: what is causing the US obesity epidemic?

Here is a sample of the Myths and Facts section of my soon to be released book Below the radar: what they’re not telling you about your food.

A Cleveland Clinic survey from 2019 found 74 percent of those surveyed in the U.S. are concerned about their weight and 65 percent are worried about getting heart disease due to extra pounds.

Conclusion: We do worry about our weight and what it might mean for our hearts.

But, the study goes on to say:

“Despite these concerns, less than half (43 percent) of Americans have tried to make dietary changes to lose weight…” You would think that almost everyone would somehow connect the quality of what they eat to how much they weigh, but only 43% did, while 57% did not.

This has also been my experience anecdotally. Most people believe that their obesity is strictly related to the number of calories and not the quality of the calories that they eat. They never stopped to sink that their food might be dangerous.

The other finding was that “40 percent of those who describe themselves as overweight or obese say they aren’t careful about which foods they eat.” In other words, they pay more attention to the quantity than the quality of the food they eat. Again, this is what I see in my practice. It is not an issue of motivation. It is an example of being misinformed or some might even say gaslighted.

Why gaslighting? Well, we here in the United States, believe that our government protects us when it comes to the quality of our food when nothing could be farther from the truth. Oh, we have a rating system in the United States, and there are some laws on the books that prevent companies from poisoning us outright, but not nearly enough.

The gaslighting comes in when the government acts as if it’s doing a good job, presenting its efforts as though they were effective in keeping us healthy when they clearly are not

The gaslighting comes in when the government acts as if it’s doing a good job, presenting its efforts as though they were effective in keeping us healthy when they clearly are not. Given the fact that we are the most obese country in the world, with the most obese children, and at the bottom of a very long list when it comes to health compared to other wealthy nations our government is failing miserably when it comes to protecting us with clean food. But we don’t see it that way we don’t recognize it at all. We blame ourselves. The fact is our food is polluted but you would never know it from the way it is presented, and the façade of safety in which we live.

So what? Well if we are effectively being gaslighted, and we believe, therefore that our food is safe, then the only conclusion we can draw when we become morbidly obese is that it’s our fault, right? And what I mean by believing that it is our fault is that we simply think we eat too much. It never even occurs to us that no matter how much we eat we will gain weight unnecessarily, and that we will become addicted to the foods that caused the weight gain without even realizing that foods can be addicting. Finally, we have no idea that many of our foods are sprayed with Obesogens , yes, things that cause obesity. Check out how Round Up contributes to obesity, cancer, autoimmune disease, and allergies.

But based upon our understanding, which is that WE are doing something wrong, I.e. we are eating too much, we go on a 1200 calorie diet (why do people always use 1200 calories?)

At this point we lose some weight. if we’re lucky….because at some point, we are no longer able to lose the weight no matter how little we eat as we have damaged the thyroid which regulates metabolism ,by eating foods that have been sprayed with pesticides like Roundup. Did I mention that these were outlawed in most other countries? (That’s why you can go to Europe and eat pasta as much as you want and not gain an ounce.

I have seen this dynamic of self blame and misdirected solutions play out again and again. The obese individual comes in for treatment and wants help but does not want to change anything about the way s/he eats except the number of calories. This tells me that they really have no idea how damaging the foods they are eating are, especially to the parts of the brain that regulate eating behavior and fat storage.

This is 100% consistent with the findings above. In other words, they are willing to cut back on the number of calories for a while (the study found that people would cut back on calories for a week to a month) but they were not willing to permanently give up the sugar and sweeteners or the processed foods loaded with GMOs, glyphosate, and damaged fats.

Instead they want to return to eating the desserts, the pizza, and the soft drinks that they have grown to love when they resume “normal” eating. This is the diet mentality. Sound familiar? Been there?

No wonder 95% of diets fail. The question is, why is it so universally popular despite being spectacularly ineffective?

Again, it is not for lack of trying that Americans are so unhealthy. For example, researchers have found that eighty-four percent of Americans say they have tried at least one weight-loss method in the past. About one-third (30 percent) say they typically stick with it between one week and one month.

Sounds about right. Dieting is hard and the fact that it fails almost 95% of the time doesn’t make it any easier. But a lot of people are trying it in desperation, partly because the diet industry has done a great job of making it look so easy, but also because they do not know of any other way to frame the problem.

John Pepper, beloved CEO of Proctor & Gamble, once told me that “A well -defined problem is a problem half solved.”

The health crisis in America is not well-defined. Eating less and even exercising more is not solving the problem, because lots of people are doing both. The Cleveland Clinic survey found that Americans cite dislike of exercise (24 percent) and lack of time (22 percent) as their main barriers to maintaining a healthy weight. That leaves 75% who are favorable and/or have the time though, right? So if exercise is the problem then a little over 70% of us should be a healthy weight when in fact only 30% of my age group is a healthy weight and only 50% of the adult population overall is not obese.

My point is that it is a gross oversimplification to think that Americans don’t care or that telling them to eat less and exercise more will solve the obesity problem that is literally killing us here in the US. We live shorter lifespan than any other wealthy country in the world. Our children will live shorter lives than we will. I don’t know about you, but I think that’s a problem.

I have plenty of patients who exercised regularly and who were either overweight or a normal weight but were still experiencing the symptoms of vascular disease, diabetes, and cancer until they changed the quality of what they were eating. In other words, when they switched from conventional (read as polluted) foods to clean foods, their health improved dramatically in most cases and for those who needed to lose weight, they did.

One last interesting finding: According to the survey, most Americans also believe their metabolism is detrimental to weight loss – 60 percent of women and 46 percent of men say their metabolism is working against them.

They are probably right. But why? Not because they are lazy. But because the organ responsible for metabolism, the thyroid gland, is under attack from polluted foods, tobacco and alcohol. So, to be clear, even if you do not smoke or drink, your thyroid is under continuous attack from polluted US foods. But if you do all three, your thyroid is doomed until you stop.

Damage the thyroid and everything suffers, especially your metabolism since the thyroid’s main function is to burn calories. So yes, your metabolism is working against you. In fact, it may not be working at all. More importantly, the thyroid is the energy source for every organ in the body, so damaging it can have widespread and often catastrophic consequences. However, the researchers of the study did not make this connection either.

One of the first things I do when working with an obese individual is ask my new patient to have their thyroid tested. Nearly 40% of all patients I treat who suffer from Anorexia, Bulimia or obesity have undiagnosed thyroid disease. You can see in the graph below from a survey that I have had running since 2007 how folks report on dieting and for what lengths of time:

According to the survey, nearly 50% diet 95% or more of the time. Obviously, if they are dieting 95% of the time, the dieting isn’t working. So why keep doing it? Because they don’t have any other strategy to use based on their understanding of what causes the problem . From their frame of reference the cause of obesity is over eating. This is wrong. The cause of obesity is eating conventional US food. Individuals who switch to Organic foods lose weight and get healthy within the first year.

If you’re trying to lose weight and failing miserably, please reach out to me because I can help. I’m the Mind, Weight Wellness Pro. Contact me at 513-205-6543 or schedule a free 15 minute consultation below.