"Eat This, Lose Weight" the Headline Screams

I received the February 2011 issue of Readers Digest last week.  The cover features two sunny-side-up eggs and a slice of curved bacon.  The overall effect is a smiley face.  In bold all-caps is the headline, "EAT THIS, LOSE WEIGHT: The New Science of Dieting."

If you've read the last several posts of this blog, you know that I'm working on weight loss and healthy living, so this cover obviously intrigued me.  What is this new science that says I should eat bacon and eggs?  Something new from Dr. Atkins?  Wait, isn't he dead?

So I turned to page 110, and read the interview with Gary Taubes regarding his new book, Why We Get Fat - And What to Do About It.  (Unfortunately, RD hasn't posted the article online, so you'll have to read it in the paper format.)  Taubes isn't specifically an Atkins Diet shill, but he does support most of what the Atkins diet proponents say.  But that's not the point of this post.  Taubes is clearly on to something else when he said this in the interview:

"There's this absolutely fundamental idea when it comes to weight and obesity - that the way we get fat is that we take in more calories than we expend.  It's the gluttony and sloth hypothesis: We eat too much and exercise too little.  It sounds undeniable, as commonsensical as can be, and it's actually nonsense - it doesn't tell us anything meaningful about why we get fat.  If I get fatter, its obvious that I must have overeaten.  But if you ask the question, Why did you overeat? Well, that question I can't answer - not with the calories-in/calories-out theory of weight gain."

While I don't think the calories in/out ratio is nonsense, Taubes is absolutely right that the science behind that theory ignores the question of why the ratio is out of whack for so many of us.  Even more, it doesn't help us to know how to get the ratio back into a correct balance over the long haul.  The Yo-Yo dieter is the person who works to fix the ratio, succeeds for a while, but then the ratio gets out of whack and the pounds pour back on.  The cycle continues until one of two things happens: either the person gets the ratio permanently in balance, or the person quits trying.

I can't guess at how those two groups break down, but I wouldn't be surprised if the split were less than 5% balancing their ratio long-term and more than 95% giving up trying.  The latter group is instead increasingly turning to something more drastic than watching what they eat - they're reducing their internal capacity to eat.  Yes, bariatric surgeries: stomach staples, gastric bypasses, lap bands, etc.  A family member had this done, and the results were truly remarkable: more than 150 lbs were shed in a little over 12 months.  But there are other stories where the dream became a nightmare from complications, botched procedures, infections, etc.  I'm not convinced that's right for me - especially since I want to get to the why of Taubes' question.  Why do I overeat?

"The past 40 or 50 years, obesity research has basically been an attempt to explain why obese people just don't have the moral rectitude of lean people, without actually saying that.  It's terribly damaging.  It's inexcusable, but it's still conventional wisdom.  Most doctors don't want to deal with obese patients because they think they're dealing with someone who simply doesn't care enough to do what they do: eat in moderation and exercise."

Hmmm ... did you catch what Taubes has done in each of these quotes?  He says the established science behind obesity is treating overeating as a moral issue:  the "gluttony and sloth hypothesis" and "moral rectitude of lean people" versus fat people.  But, he says, they don't really want to admit to that.

Fat people are immoral??  That sounds terrible.  But what if it's true?  Is being overweight an example of sinfulness in a person's life?  Nobody likes to be called a sinner, and yet all of us are sinners.  No one wants their specific sins spelled out, yet confession is required. (See 1 John 1:9)  So if over-eating is a sin, then I should name it as such, confess it as such, and then repent of it.

Repenting means to do something different.  In this case, don't overeat.  Simple, right?  Not!  Remember the Yo-Yo dieters syndrome?  Or the 220,000 Americans who underwent some form of bariatric surgery in 2009?

I don't have the wisdom to provide the answer to this question.  I can only deal with it within my own self-limitations.  So far, I've successfully changed my behaviors in a way that weight is coming off.  I'm actually wearing a pair of slacks from my storage bucket today that were put away years ago as too tight to wear.  Cool!! New slacks and I didn't go to the store to buy them!!

Take a look at the Readers' Digest interview (if you can get a copy).  Read the articles on Atkins and bariatric surgery.  What do you think about all of this?  Should we think of it as sin?