The #1 *Effing Problem:
You're a Diet Addict
Take a look around—almost everyone is fatter than they should be. Our waistlines have steadily ballooned over the last three decades before finally leveling off in the past few years. Obesity has been declared public enemy number one by both the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the American Medical Association (AMA). Obesity is the second leading cause of preventable death in the United States, and most public health experts agree that unprecedented levels of overweight and obesity pose an immediate and growing threat to human health. CDC statistics show that about one in three U.S. adults are obese—they're not just fat, they're obese. That's 72 million people! Millions more are considered significantly overweight. In fact, less than one-third of American adults are currently at a healthy weight. That means the number of supersized people in the United States today outnumbers (and by far outweighs) the number of normal-sized people. While obesity is difficult to define in children because they are still growing, there has been nearly a fourfold increase in childhood obesity since 1970. At least one in five children are currently overweight, and 80 percent of children who are overweight as adolescents become obese by age twenty-five. Yikes!
Americans spend $47 million each year on Twinkies and $36 billion each year on pizza. That's quite a lot of dough. But can you believe Americans spend much more on diet products? In fact, we spend more money on diet products than all those pizzas and Twinkies combined. That's right—according to the most recent statistics compiled by the American Dietetic Association the United States spends more than $68 billion on diet programs and products from Atkins, Jenny Craig, South Beach, Slim-Fast, and Nutrisystem, and on pills like Alli, SlimQuick, and Hydroxycut. At any given time, approximately one in four American women are on a diet, and so are one in six American men. Many of them jump from diet to diet like strung-out junkies searching for their next flab fix.
But take a look around and take a good look in the mirror—diets don't work well for anybody, even if they are rich and famous celebrities. After losing 160 pounds, talk show host Oprah Winfrey appeared toned and trim on the January 2005 cover of O magazine. In 2009 she confessed to gaining most of the weight back. Actress Kirstie Alley lost seventy-five pounds by using the diet program Jenny Craig, but she regained all those pounds after three years. Ex-Dodger manager Tommy Lasorda famously trimmed down by using the diet shake Slim-Fast, and so did NFL Hall of Fame coach Bill Parcells. Both men gained all the weight back.
Diets simply do not work. Most people who initially lose weight on commercial diet programs regain one-third of the weight loss within one year, and most of them are back to their baseline weight in three to five years. That's exactly what happened to Oprah, Kirstie, Tommy, and Bill, and that's exactly what happens to nearly everyone on a diet. In fact, dieting is so unsuccessful that many experts put the diet failure rate at 95 percent. But we still keep trying, despite the fact that yo-yo dieting alters metabolism, making it easier to gain weight and more difficult to lose it. So why do people keep trying diet after diet and keep failing? The answer may surprise you—dieting is addictive.
Are You a Diet Addict?
1. -Have you repeatedly tried and failed to control your weight with diets?
2. -Has dieting interfered with your life, social activities, or employment?
3. -Do you have constant thoughts about dieting?
4. -Do you jump from diet to diet?
5. -Have you ever dieted in a way that put your health in danger?
Diets can be psychologically and physically addictive. If you answered yes to two or more of the above questions, you could be a diet addict. Scientists have long known that behaviors among yo-yo dieters and relapsing drug addicts are quite similar. What drives people to alcohol and drugs in the first place drives many others to extreme diets, overeating, and other eating disorders; genetics, emotional strain, depression, peer pressure, and insecurity are just some of the reasons.
Dieters frequently lie about their food intake and often hide their diet effort—or lack of effort. Certainly, the foods in your diet can be addictive; high-fat, high-salt, and high-sugar diets have all been shown to be moderately addictive in scientific studies. The urge to diet can be so irresistible for some people that they will do destructive things to their bodies just to be slimmer; anorexia nervosa and bulimia are just two extreme examples of this behavior. Needless to say, many people abuse diuretic medicines (aka 'water pills'), laxatives, and amphetamines to stay thin. Some people even continue smoking cigarettes for fear that quitting smoking will make them fatter.
Animal models suggest that repeated phases of dieting, followed by tasty food choices, results in excessive eating, weight gain, and an increase in anxiety behaviors. Does that sound familiar? It should, because the same mechanism is probably at work in people who repeatedly diet. Think about it. If you have been eating chocolate fudge cake every day for one month, it loses some of its day-to-day appeal after a while, doesn't it? Now imagine that you haven't eaten chocolate fudge cake for a month and someone offers you a piece. How does it taste then? It tastes downright delicious. When you deprive yourself of a desired food, your brain gets primed for the next food fix. This is probably an evolutionary survival reflex that kept our ancient ancestors searching for fatty, calorie-dense food when food was scarce.
But in modern times, in most places food is widely available. You starve yourself on a diet, your body thinks food is scarce, you binge on your favorite foods, and you get a pleasurable rush. You may not feel like an addict, because this is the normal eating pattern for so many Americans. Many drug addicts use drugs to feel 'normal,' not necessarily to get high. But that bad-food buzz becomes stronger and stronger with each subsequent diet-and-binge cycle, and that is what makes most people sabotage their own weight-loss efforts. Diets can work for some people, but only under very specific circumstances:
- Diets do work for short-term weight loss.
- Diets do work for some people who need to control their blood sugar for diabetes.
- Diets do work for some people who are trying to control their high blood pressure.
- Diets do work for some people who are trying to lower their cholesterol.
Diets do not work for long-term weight loss in 95 percent of people.
©2010. Dr. Sean Kenniff. All rights reserved. Reprinted from Stop Effing Yourself. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the written permission of the publisher. Publisher: Health Communications, Inc., 3201 SW 15th Street, Deerfield Beach, FL 33442
|
