Take it easy

I get frustrated when complex issues are made to be simple. Bloody video games cause school violence and people are fat because they have no will power. I get it. It's nice to think about things as being black or white, good or bad, on or off. We want simple solutions. Take a pill. Have surgery. Go on a liquid diet. None of those things are necessarily EASY, but they don't address the myriad of reasons why men and women take in more calories than they can burn.

There are a number of ways to lose weight. It's simple math. Almost any diet invented will work provided one sticks to it. We've all lost weight, but we always seem to find it again. Why? Because we revert back to old behavior. We take in more calories than we burn. What does that tell us? Does that mean that 80% of the people who diet have no will power and are flawed?

No. It means that changing behavior is a complex, difficult process. Changing your diet isn't as easy as getting a food list. It's even harder than reaching your goal weight. Look at Oprah who is recognized as a talented, intelligent, determined and successful woman yet continually struggles with maintaining a healthy weight.

That's why I hate reading about the next diet fad, watching a Kirsty Alley sell frozen food on TV, and hearing about a new wellness center opening up that offers gastric bypass, as if those are viable solutions to the obesity epidemic. Sure there are some people who will be successful with those programs, but not the overwhelming majority of people who try them.

I wish I had the right book to read or counselor to recommend who could help us wash away our food and body issues, but it isn't that easy. It's a good place to start, of course, but even after years of reading these books and talking to good people it's still an intimate problem. It's the closest, quietest most private problem. So hushed that we don't want to talk about it and many times choose to ignore it. Maybe part of the solution is to talk about it more.

What do you think?