FAT: What No One Is Telling You

Last night on PBS I saw a 2-hour special on obesity; its causes, its solutions, and the emotional pain of being obese. The woman in the photo lost a lot of weight, as you can see by her old green jacket which fit her perfectly at one time. She is still plump, and it takes three hours of exercise for her to maintain her current weight, along with controlling her food intake.

It is hard for me to recap the program, but one outstanding fact sticks with me. That is that the Abdominal Brain and the subconscious or non-volitional parts of the brain have a lot of control over our eating habits. If it were merely a matter of eating less and exercising more, there would be many fewer fat people. For those who have been obese as children or teenagers, the fight is much much harder.

They have discovered that when they do a bariatric surgery, which limits the size of the stomach and bypasses the upper portion of the intestine, there is something that happens to limit a person's appetite as well as not having the stomach capacity for large meals. They sever nerves in the intestines that somehow hardwire overeating to the brain.

I am not advocating severing those nerves, but it is important not to be too hard on ourselves for our desire to eat. It is hormonal.

We know what we need to do, but it is not always so easy to accomplish. Watch less TV, walk more, eat smaller portions, eat more vegetables and fruits, eat less fatty foods. Even so, the body will fight back and it is subtly programmed to increase body fat as much as possible to defend against starvation. Therefore, we have to give it enough food so it does not feel threatened.

I also think we need to use visualization and reinforce whatever good choices we are making. Set a size goal and when we reach it, buy a new outfit. Look in the mirror and congratulate ourselves on having eaten well today, or this morning.

At pbs.org they have the program and more online.