Fat Chance!

I grew up on a farm where everything was self-sustaining.

We grew our own food, we build our houses and made our clothing.

Everything was treasured and nothing was wasted.

The world still fights to feed its people.

Having enough to eat is still a main problem in many countries.

It seems ironic then that some people’s problem is having too much to eat.

When I came to the US in 1983 one of the many cultural shocks I experienced was the American food culture.

I have never heard of “dieting” before and obesity use to be a disease caused by a wacky metabolism. I knew only one obese child growing up and yes we call him “Fatso”

But he was the exception, a medical anomaly not the rule.

America is obsessed with its overweight problem.

You cannot turn on the TV or open a magazine without being bombarded by another miracle diet plan, diet food, diet drink, diet supplements or God knows what other diet snake oil they will come up with next.

Diet is a big business and dieting has become an industry and national obsession in America.
Let me tell you a little dieting secret you’ll never hear on Oprah:

Healthy, slim, normal people don’t diet!

To listen to all the so called “experts” that have lost 300 pounds tell you how to lose weight is like taking advice from a crack addict on how to stop smoking!

Overweight is not a problem. Overweight is a symptom, for God’s sake.

We do not suffer from overweighting, we suffer from over eating.

The problem is our dysfunctional relationship you have with our food.

To go on a diet is to replace our dysfunctional relationship with our food with an even more dysfunctional one!

That’s why diets do not work. Dieting is not a normal way of living.

Once again: Look at your normal friends. They do not diet!

Why are they then not fat? Because they have a normal relationship with their food.

Yes relationship. – Don’t give me that BS excuse: they have good genes.

I used to be a therapist and I dealt a lot with overweight people. The problem is always the same. People use food as a crutch.

Some people use it as a love substitute, lover substitute, sex substitute, self-esteem substitute, success substitute and so on and so forth.

Whatever we lack in our lives we substitute it with food.

Instead of getting what we really need in our life, we eat and that creates a false pleasure in our mind, a false sense of wellbeing.

Yes, it all starts in your mind.

So change your eating habits you have to change the way you think and feel about food.

Without that you’ll never lose weight.

You have to stop dieting and instead develop a healthy relationship with your food.

But trust me if your relationship with food doesn’t change, same forces that have made you gain weight in the first place will put your weight back and then some.

Building a relationship with your food has to start with the basics; like knowing your food.

Go to the farmers market and buy your own produce instead of going to a restaurant.

Cook your own food, control what goes in your body don’t let yourself become addicted to the fat, sugar and salt that oversaturates the processed foods.

Healthy people do not eat in restaurants, at least not in the restaurants you and I eat.

If you have enough money and price is not an objection you can buy anything, even healthy food but for the rest of us, the 99% as they say, money is not a luxury.

What makes the difference between the healthy normal weight people and the overeating crowd is the relationships we have with our food.

 Healthy people do not diet.

A diet works less than 1 in a 1000 and it is by pure accident, by chance – like gaining back your self-confidence once you see yourself slim in the mirror.

So if you thinking of starting yet another diet, think again at your chance to succeed.

Fat chance!