About Weight Loss
.Welcome to your future.
Get ready to reach back in your closet and take out your
ladies size 6 dress or men’s 32 inch waist pants.
Pretty soon you’ll be wearing them!
Over the past twelve months, the only topic that has
graced the covers of Time and Newsweek magazines, and
the
front pages of the New
York Times, Los Angles Times, and Washington Post more
than the subject of obesity is George W. Bush’s war on
terrorism. Obesity is a national disaster and a personal
tragedy that has been repeatedly addressed using old
clichés and worn out lines of logic.
As many as 95% of the people who go through weight-loss
programs fail to keep the pounds off. In fact, after one
year, the majority of participants actually weigh more
than when they first began the program. Almost every
diet/weight-loss book ever written has failed to deliver
on their promises because they do not take into account
the ingrained habits of readers. Any program that
attempts to be successful must begin from where the
reader is, not from where the writer is!
Since 1950, the amount of nutritional information
available to the public has roughly doubled every seven
years. During that same period (1950-2000), obesity rose
by 214%, until today, where 64.5% of adult Americans
(about 127 million) are categorized as being overweight
or obese. In that light, one might conclude that there
is a direct correlation between knowledge of obesity and
obesity itself.
The point is, people aren’t foolish. They know that
salad is better for them than pizza; that grilled
chicken is better than a smothered burrito; that tofu is
better than hamburger; that fresh fruits and vegetables
are better than candy bars and French fries. People are
swimming in information. They are anesthetized by
information. More has not, and will not, lead to
enlightened behavior, less craving for food, or improved
health.
It has been suggested that obesity is genetic. This
notion flies in the face of evolutionary biology.
Consider that there was far less obesity in the 1950’s
than there is today. In fact, less than 10% of the
population was classified as such in 1950. It is only in
the past fifty years that the problem has become
systemic. Would it be reasonable to say that we have
changed genetically in fifty years, when, in fact, it
takes hundreds of thousands of years for even the most
minor of such changes to take place? No, it is not
genetics that have caused our obsession with food.
Some blame our increased consumption of fats for the
rising rates of obesity. Yet, during the past fifty
years, while obesity rates have skyrocketed, the
consumption of saturated fats rose only 7%. And,
according to The U.S. Department of Agriculture, total
fats in our diet have fallen from 40% in 1990 to roughly
34% today.
Others say it is the way we eat. Dr. Walter Willett,
Harvard School of Public Health is in charge of the
government’s revamping of the food pyramid – now called
“The Healthy Eating Pyramid.” This is the third overhaul
of the pyramid in the past thirty years. Yet while the
pyramid continues to be revised, obesity rates in the
United States have continued to rise. This food pyramid,
as the ones before it, has been touted as the answer to
the obesity epidemic. Yet it will fail as its
predecessors did because it is flawed, not simply in its
factuality, but by its lack of perspective.
The strategy of focusing on what we eat has been
addressed unsuccessfully for decades. Further studies,
weight-loss programs, and media emphasis on the same
note, will not bring the desired results.
