Obesity, It's Not Your Fault

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I just returned from a trip to Boulder, Colorado, for a few days to see my son and to drive out to the plains of Nebraska, about 4-5 hours northeast of Boulder. The visit to North Platte, Nebraska, was to see the annual stop-over migration of the Sandhill Cranes.

What a sight to behold! Thousands of cranes descending on left-over corn stalks to feed and just hang out. It was really one of the most exciting experiences in nature that I've had. Here are a few photos my husband took.

Our Trip to See the Sandhill Cranes

We had a great time, but one thing I was most struck with while we were in Nebraska was just how many overweight and obese people we saw. And that was everywhere we went, and everywhere we stopped - young and old.

I know that it's a complicated problem. It's not all their fault. If you read about the science of it, you'll see that we are programmed to want to eat fat and sugar, and you can add salt to that, too. No wonder the U.S. has some of the worst health statistics in the developed world.

You can read more about that in an article at businessinsider.com if you're interested.

Making Food Choices

It took some patience, but we could make pretty good choices from the menus at hand during our travels - choosing the salad bar when possible (although half of it was made with fatty sauces) and steamed veggies instead of fat and cheese-laden ones. And we'd eat oatmeal at the breakfast bar.

Recommended Book

The "bad" can be tempting, though. It really does take resolve not to choose the pastries when stopping for a coffee at Starbucks - so I am recommending a new book called, The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite. It goes into depth about why we have such trouble resisting, and if you have the patience to get through this part, you will find very helpful guidelines for building your resistance muscles.

I'll start with a few tidbits from the book here, and in the meantime, you may also want to refer to a previous post I wrote titled "Working on Resistance."

Here are a couple of quotes from the section of The End of Overeating book that begins the "treatment":

"Every time we act on our desire for fat, sugar, and salt and earn a reward as a result, it becomes harder for us to act differently the next time. Effective treatment breaks the cue-urge-reward-habit cycle at the core of conditioned hyper eating."

"Eventually, we can begin to think differently about food, recognizing its value to sustain us and protect us from hunger, and denying it the authority to govern our lives."

I also found a book by Dr. Neal Barnard entitled, Breaking the Food Seduction, The HiddenReasons Behind Food Cravings, and 7 Steps to End Them Naturally you might find interesting.