I'm writing this article as I helplessly watch my old co-worker, in her late 30's like me, have her leg amputated due to advanced Type II diabetes. Despite all the excruciating pain she complains about (exposed bone, bedsores & an inability to control her bladder & bowels), she just requested donations on Facebook so she doesn't have to eat "hospital food". She wants takeout from Panda Express. And no, this isn't the plot from a "My 600-lb Life" episode, though I wish it were. She's definitely resigned to dying from this, though I'm not entirely sure she's not in some kind of glucose-induced altered mental state because she sounds almost giddy about losing her leg. Nurses frequently chide her for overuse of ambulance services & other misuses of the medical system, and honestly I can't blame them. It must be frustrating af watching someone kill themselves in slow motion while taking resources from sick people who didn't choose their fate. My friend takes zero responsibility for any of it, writing long screeds about the terrible "room service" at said hospital every other week.
In other words, there's no saving her.
While my friend is an extreme case, I'm surrounded by many variations of the same thing: overweight & morbidly obese people walking around in various states of denial about their food addictions & the health consequences caused by them. This has never been more apparent than since COVID hit. America has lost 1.02 million people and counting to this disease, the most deaths of any nation on Earth. At least some of this death toll must be attributed to our unseemly weight problem. When I weighed just 140 lbs at 5"1, my cholesterol was in the high category, so it doesn't take much for a weight problem to start damaging your health. If anything, the health consequences of obesity are underrated. It's been shown to have a worse effect on health than smoking, heavy drinking or poverty.
So what can be done? People behave as if losing weight and keeping it off is nigh impossible, and no doubt it is a very hard endeavor. We live in a fast-paced world where convenience, cost effectiveness & taste are our top priorities. We want the most food for the least money and we want it FAST. We often eat in a rush too, scarfing down our meal like rabid animals without even stopping to taste it or appreciate its smell or texture. Likewise, when we attempt to lose weight, we want FAST easy results that require little effort on our part. Notice a pattern? It's this FAST bit that's at the root of our failures when it comes to weight management. Things that are worth it are rarely fast or easy, yet that's hardly a reason to throw in the towel... especially when the stakes are this high.
If you're serious about sustained weight loss and--more importantly--maintaining good health markers like high energy levels, proper liver & digestive function, normal blood pressure, blood sugar & heart health in the long term, read on.
The (Biological) Purpose of Eating
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| Don't worry: You don't have to eat this healthy to lose weight |
"Eat to live, don't live to eat." Let's break down that overly simplistic (but true) saying, shall we?
The purpose of eating is to fuel the body with calories & nutrients which provide the raw energy we need to power our consciousness & complete all the physical activities we need and want to do each day. If you're feeling sluggish, foggy headed & tired after eating, that means you're eating too much of the wrong things. Silly terms like "food coma" and "tryptophan nap" are references to this very real phenomenon of overloading your digestive system with greasy, fatty foods that are hard to break down & steal energy from other vital organs like the brain. I repeat: food is FUEL. It's supposed to give you energy, not weigh you down & make you need a nap. People who eat to live recognize this.
If you're living to eat--i.e. planning your daily activities, social events & holidays around extravagant meals--you're doing it wrong. Humans did NOT evolve to eat for the purpose of enjoying the taste of food. Eating is not supposed to be a hobby or source of comfort that stimulates your senses. If something tastes palatable rather than repulsive, that means it's safe to eat & not poisonous, which is what our taste buds exist for. In other words food should taste palatable, not hyper-stimulating like a hot Cheeto. This distinction is paramount in the journey toward sustained weight loss.
Why does this matter? Because obesity is a modern affliction; something our ancestors didn't deal with. They ate to live. Food was for survival, not pleasure. They lived in environments of scarcity where their meats had to be chased down and killed, their fruits & vegetables grown or wild-harvested. Those things required work. Even in modern times with the advent of agriculture & grain farming, there was not an abundance of things like refined white flour, high fructose corn syrup & other dirt cheap ingredients you find in junk food today. That's why people from 1900-1980 simply were not obese at the rates we started to see at the tail end of the 20th century. If you weighed anywhere north of 400 lbs, you were considered an anomaly & could join a circus, like this guy. Now 600+ lbs is so common they've made a weekly television show out of it.
Weight Loss That Sticks
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| Hares never win when it comes to health |
So here's the bitter truth: If you're not willing to make some sacrifices in the areas of flavor & portion size, you're never going to lose weight & keep it off. That's the bad news. The good news is it doesn't mean you have to give up things you enjoy like caffeine, but you will need to forgo sweet, calorie laden drinks like Starbucks coffee or soda if that's the delivery mechanism you use to get it. It's all about trade-offs & substitutions, not losses. Replacing bad habits with better ones that you can live with.
But above all else, the difference between crash diets that fail (and often cause weight gain in the long term) and sustained healthy lifestyle changes is the pace at which these changes are implemented.
Everyone wants to see fast results on the scale, but unfortunately health isn't about quick fixes and silver bullet solutions. We still haven't found a way to separate the miraculous painkilling effect of opioids from the addictive high that comes with them. Vaccines are lifesaving but they don't prevent COVID or influenza entirely--only reduce their severity & duration. This means you still have to do "inconvenient" things like wearing a mask, washing your hands and avoiding close contact with sick people. Likewise, there's no known way to drop weight quickly, safely & permanently without some effort on your part.
Anyone can lose weight fast with pills or crash diets, but the drastic changes needed to do so are not sustainable long term which means it'll always pile back on. Read that again because most people have a hard time accepting it. Weight lost rapidly through extreme dieting or exercise will ALWAYS be re-gained in the long term, often with additional pounds added. And this makes it harder to lose weight in the future as the body fights to hold onto its highest weight. This is the truth about why diets fail.
The difference between a "diet" and "permanent weight loss" is like the difference between a "celebrity crush" and a "lifetime commitment/marriage".
Junk vs. Food
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| Health effects of fast food (click to embiggen) |
Many of the items we call "food" are nothing of the sort. Foods are things that nourish an organism's cells & provide energy for growth & activity; the junk sold in restaurants, takeout joints & corner stores does not meet that legal definition, yet it's still somehow allowed to be marketed as food. These faux-foods contain only sugar, refined flour, unhealthy fats & salt in varying ratios, as well as some outright toxic additives. These food-impersonators are created by food psychologists to be as addictive as possible, with parameters like "crunchiness," "crispiness" and "creaminess" carefully rated by focus groups before being approved for sale. So it's no surprise that masses of people become addicted, eating overly large portion sizes of these faux foods every day & gaining weight to the point of morbid obesity. That's the effect they're designed to have.
Meanwhile they lack any nutritional value whatsoever, often clocking in at 0% fiber with little to no vitamins or minerals. Examples include alcoholic beverages, cakes & donuts, potato chips, soda & lemonade, sweet or sour candies & sugary cereals like Fruity Pebbles & Golden Crisp. At the same time, another kind of false advertising is taking place in which fast food companies use CGI & other tricks to make their junk appear more appetizing than it is in real life. This should earn them a blatant charge of false advertising/consumer deception, but it never does.
Can this crap be eaten in moderation? That depends. If you've never had a binge eating or food addiction problem, probably. But viewing these junk foods as "treats" for sticking to your healthy eating plan or otherwise completing some accomplishment will always end badly. You're not a dog, therefore food shouldn't be viewed as a reward. Eating this junk even occasionally may provide temporary pleasure but will end with you feeling sluggish, bloated & miserable in the end. Remember, the purpose of eating is to power your body so you can carry out your daily activities.
And that's where the focus should be: on activities you're passionate about. What are they? Do you even know? Many people overeat in an attempt to soothe themselves or fill some void in their lives left by a lack of fulfilling relationships & hobbies. Figuring out what your "void" is can be extremely liberating & is sure to help your mental & physical health in the long run. Once you figure out what it is you truly enjoy, reward yourself with those things when you accomplish a goal or otherwise want to celebrate. Splurging financially or "treating yourself" to unhealthy food is also dangerous--spend that money on other things that bring you joy & aren't likely to trigger a relapse.
Yep, I said relapse.
That's how you have to view overeating: as an addiction. If a heroin addict shouldn't take a Percocet after having a tooth pulled, a junk food addict has no business stopping at a food truck for tacos & funnel cake after a bad day. Just because these deadly "foods" are openly marketed in our culture does not make them any safer or better for you than drugs & alcohol. Quite the contrary. Despite all the fentanyl, meth & other drugs flooding our country, the #1 preventable killer by far is still obesity-related disease. These diseases--Type II diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, fatty liver disease, atherosclerosis, colon cancer--were also the #1 preventable cause of death by COVID. "#1 cause" includes conditions like drug addiction, emphysema & all other diseases you can think of. This is why I say the health effects of overweight/obesity are under-emphasized.
Yet so many overweight people with these very conditions justify overspending on fast food, Starbucks coffee & other atrocious junk despite what it's doing to their health. That's called denial. If someone with COPD was doing this with cigarettes, we'd label it addiction & plead with them to stop. If a cocaine or heroin user was doing it with their drug of choice despite having abscessed arms from shooting up, we'd call an intervention (or maybe the police). It's high time we start viewing food addiction with the same urgency because it's the #1 cause of preventable death & disease in the U.S. and other Western countries. It's reducing both the quantity & quality of our lives & costing us billions in healthcare expenses. If a foreign nation was doing this to us, we'd go to war with them.
In Part 2 I'll get specific with my "Rainbow Plan" for sustained weight management. No drugs, workouts, surgery or fad diets necessary. Stay tuned. 🌈💪
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