Not Another Article Offering Weight Loss Advice

It never fails. As the winter turns into spring and summer begins to creep up on the horizon, the inevitable "Look your Best for Summer!" or "Lose those Winter Pounds" articles start to appear everywhere. These are in addition to the regularly run "How to Lose and Keep off the Weight" articles that fill up screen space on many media sites. Now I know why they exist and I really don't mind them overall but my problem with them is that they are usually posted by people who have never had a legitimate weight problem in their lives.


These articles offer the most basic of advice: get some exercise, eat more fruits and vegetables, drink more water, cut down on your meat intake, add more fibre, blah blah blah. Great advice for those who don't have food issues but they don't address those of us who do and can't follow such simplistic advice. And it's not just these bloggers and such who spew such prattle, I hear it from my doctor, my pharmacist, co-workers, family and just about any other person who thinks they are offering pearls of wisdom because obviously I must not have gotten the memo. It's not that they are being disingenuous with their council, it's just that it's not very practical.


I don't think I know of anyone who has been battling weight issues all their lives who doesn't already know these things. In fact, I would dare say most of them probably know more about food, diets and exercise than the majority. And that is because we've been hearing about it all our lives. We've been on diets, many times popular fad diets, we've taken pills, joined gyms and hired trainers, read articles and other literature explaining how calories work and how to make lifestyle changes to ensure life long success, you name it we've done it. Sometimes I hear people around the office talk about trying to lose weight and what they're doing. Oftentimes, they'll repeat debunked myths like cleanses, spot training and different other types of diets that offer only short term solutions. Some of them aren't even fat! They're just consumed with bringing their body fat or weight down to some unrealistic level. Others you can tell are suffering from middle aged weight gain; they were slim during their younger years but are now finding that paunch catching up to them. I've seen some people I knew back in high school who were quite slim and attractive now ballooned up. I try not to be vindictive but sometimes it's really hard when you remember how rotten some of these people were back in the day. These people do not really understand the battle like we lifelong fatties do and therefore, maybe some of this simplistic advice is appropriate and helpful.


But for the rest of us, it just isn't. These health bloggers, I can't refer to them as weight loss experts, are generally fit and look like fitness models. None of them look like they've ever had an issue with food and weight gain so what's it to them to regurgitate a 1000 word article offering basic health advice? They work in the industry and it's easy. But what would happen if you pressed them on the issue? Could they offer something a little more helpful? I've read a few articles dealing with how to cope with cravings, eating out, vacation and so forth and it seems reasonable, for many. But when you have been fighting your weight all your life, it isn't that simple. There's a lot of guilt, resentment and anger to deal with. Those feelings of failure and inadequacy. You want to live like a regular person but you don't know how. It's not that you can't, you don't know how. And all those articles aren't going to change your thinking.


For people who don't understand the battle, they will never get it. It isn't as easy as just "eat less" or "get some exercise" or "eat smaller portions". We understand that. It's something else; something normal people will never get. I've said before that most people have coping mechanisms be it nail biting, drinking, smoking or overeating. Something drives that behaviour, something deep inside of you. Until that is dealt with, you may never see success.

Thinking about Religion and Overeaters Anonymous

One of the ideas I've toyed with over the years to help get me sorted out with this food thing is joining Overeaters Anonymous or OA for short. I've often thought that talking out my issues with food, listening to others relate their stories of success and failure and having some kind of support system in place might be useful as most of the people around me really don't understand or have nothing helpful to offer other than pointless platitudes and clichéd advice (yes, I have thought about putting down the candy bar thank you very much).

The idea of having a support buddy in times of temptation kind of appeals to me, the ability to call somebody and talk out what is going on with me at that particular moment might actually yield some benefit. However, the other side of the coin is having your support buddy calling you at some inopportune time when you really don't feel like listening to it. This give and take thing could be dicey, especially for someone like me who is, admittedly, a little selfish with his time. Don't get me wrong, I'm a great listener and I'm interested in people; why they do the things they do, how they think, why they think that. But I really don't have an interest in being available 24/7 to listen to someone have a crisis over a slice of pizza late at night after being out at the bar. I probably wouldn't make the best support buddy.

The other problem I'm having with OA is the religion thing. They've modeled their program on the 12 steps program created by Alcoholics Anonymous. I'm going to list the 12 steps here as presented on OA's website.

The Twelve Steps of Overeaters Anonymous

1. We admitted we were powerless over food — that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to compulsive overeaters and to practice these principles in all our affairs,

Notice the overarching religious slant? If you are Christian, this is probably not an issue for you. But what if you are not? Say you are Muslim? Or Buddhist? Or *gasp* atheist? You can see how this program and its religious overtones were created back when America (and Canada for that matter) were primarily christian. With our global community now firmly entrenched, this program seems horribly outdated. And what's this crap about turning our will and our lives over to God so that He can save us from the double bacon cheeseburgers we so crave? 

Going over them, I'm okay with the fist one. I do feel powerless over food, it has a strange hold over me. It's the ultimate love/hate relationship. I love food and eating brings me so much pleasure but I feel such self loathing when I eat. The back and forth that goes on in my head when it comes to food is maddening. Numbers two and three begin the surrender and acceptance of God where Him and only Him can save us from the terrible food demons that haunt us. A problem if you don't buy into theistic thinking. Number four is fine, making a searching and fearless inventory of ourselves makes sense. Five, six and seven take us back into God country where we ask for salvation from our shortcomings and defects of character (defects of character???). Admitting to others our wrongs? I'm sorry, did we kill and eat babies in some hunger lust? Try to eat a spouse during sleep?  Steal slices of pizza meant for orphans?

Eight, nine and ten are ridiculous in this context. Make a list of people we harmed and make amends? I can see how some alcoholics may need to do this as they may have actually harmed others in a drunken stupor or rage. But fat people? Who did they harm? Too much cheese on that pizza send them into a gooey psychotic episode where lives were endangered? Was the garbage man injured on the job while collecting that enormous pile of pizza boxes stacked at the end of your driveway? Silliness. Finally, eleven and twelve return to the God thing and again, if you are not a believer in such things, well...

I did a little research (I cannot stress enough the word "little") and found out that the religious thing does play a large role in meetings with many members being quite militant in their beliefs about the 12 steps and how God is central to their success. This flies in the face of what OA itself proclaims on its website about not being a religious organization. Sure, they are not advocating a particular religion but you can't deny the Christian slant to everything they do. Some former participants reported the heavy handedness of religion and prayers ending each meeting which made them uncomfortable and they did not return. As an atheist, I know I couldn't sit there and listen to them talk about surrendering themselves to some imaginary being in the sky because they can't find the will power to make it happen on their own. A better approach might be to help people find that will power, to encourage them and teach them how to tear down their toxic relationship with food and rebuild that relationship in a healthy productive manner. Showing them that they aren't defective people with terrible shortcomings who need to apologize to others for being fat. 

I don't know what kind of success rates an organization like this actually has. I've read that AA doesn't really have that great of a success rate either, I guess it depends who you ask. I'm still curious about OA and whether it might be of some benefit to me, but I have too many questions and concerns at this time. And from what I've read about it, I'm not sure I want to find out.

Bariatric Surgery On The Rise

I watched a news report this evening on the CBC about the huge leap in bariatric surgeries over the past few years and was rather alarmed at the attitudes of the doctors they spoke to. Now I have documented my experiences with this invasive procedure here, here, here and here. If you haven't read it and you are considering this operation or just want to know what it's really all about, you need to do so now.

The good folks over at the CBC added the story to their website which gave me an opportunity to look it over again and I have to say I'm disappointed in the medical establishments attitude towards this particular "fix". The prevailing attitude seems to be that since we have the technology to perform this surgery, then why not? People are fat and getting fatter and surgery has become the go to fix for just about everything that is wrong with people so why not this? I do understand that some people are in seriously bad condition due to their weight and surgery may be necessary to save their lives, but you can be sure there are others who are viewing it as an easy fix to their weight problems, much like liposuction. The medical community is supposed to have qualifiers before they okay this procedure and I hope they are followed diligently but somehow I doubt this is happening.

Bariatric surgery should be a last resort, one made after all other avenues have been exhausted. There are simply too many risks and complications and often, the underlying problems are not resolved so the patient will continue their eating patterns despite the fact that this will be met with severe consequences by the body itself. Intense vomiting, which among other complications, wears the enamel off your teeth, excessive scarring, which causes blockages in your abdomen and could result in life threatening situations (like I suffered), and painful gallstones requiring the removal of your gall bladder are some of the very real ramifications many will face. Some don't make it beyond a month or so before being readmitted to hospital with a variety of other complications and the need to perform a reversal. Some die although that number is very low.

Surgery should always be a last resort for anything. Once you open up the body you risk infection and the beginnings of other problems you probably never would have suffered from had you not gone under the knife. The fact that this surgery continues to increase in popularity as an obesity fix is frightening. Back in 1990 when I had mine done, I knew of nobody else who had experienced it. I was given no support or therapy to help me adjust to the new reality I was about to be exposed to and certainly no information or insight into what to expect. They just gutted me like a fish, stapled off most of my stomach and sent me on my way. I know the technology is supposed to be better now but is the support there? Are they treating the underlying issues? Twenty four years after my surgery and reversal, my issues remain and I'm no further ahead in getting them under control than I was when I eagerly agreed to the operation. My fear is that this is becoming just another routine procedure like lipo or botox injections. And that is sad.