Master Class
(Illustration: David Cowles for Rochester Review)About 13 years ago, the World Health Organization declared that obesity had become a worldwide epidemic. Food is still relatively cheap and, in many places, incredibly abundant. The United States leads the trend. Our culture has become obesogenic. This is a relatively new term to describe environments that promote excessive weight gain.
In the United States, unhealthy eating has become normalized. Many people think of a cheeseburger, fries, and a big, sugary drink as a normal lunch, and from a nutritional standpoint, that鈥檚 a travesty.
The number one reason so many people fail in their efforts to lose weight is that they don鈥檛 understand what it takes and what they鈥檙e up against. It鈥檚 like going into battle without knowing anything about the enemy.
Moderation, though it鈥檚 the prevailing view, doesn鈥檛 work. My approach focuses very much on helping weight controllers become like athletes in training. Part of that includes eliminating fat from the diet in addition to introducing several other scientifically based principles to reduce appetite while retaining enjoyment of food.
Dan Kirschenbaum 鈥�71
Chicago, Ill.
Professor of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences, Northwestern University Medical School; Clinical Director and Vice President of Clinical Services, Wellspring; author of The Wellspring Weight Loss Plan (BenBella Books, 2011).
Thoughts on River 人妻少妇专区 food, 1967鈥�71: 鈥淚t seemed pretty good to me. My mother was a terrible cook.鈥�
The next steps are consistent exercise and self-monitoring. The latter is a cornerstone of cognitive-behavior therapy. Self-monitoring means writing down what you鈥檙e doing and evaluating it, leading to the development of a 鈥渉ealthy obsession.鈥� It doesn鈥檛 take a lot of time to self-monitor, just a couple minutes a day once you get used to it.
When you鈥檙e considering buying books on weight loss or any other aspect of health, check out the references section to see if the authors have published research on the topic in peer-reviewed scientific journals. The authors of best-selling diet plans, such as the Zone Diet, the Carbohydrate Addicts Diet, the South Beach Diet, or the Atkins Diet, may seem like experts because they have doctoral degrees, but they have published little to nothing in scientific journals.
As a therapist and designer of weight loss programs for adolescents, I talk to kids a lot about the question, 鈥淲hy do this?鈥� They can鈥檛 really relate to the possibility of avoiding cancer in 50 years, but they do want to feel stronger and happier as well as look better in clothes. Immersion programs that feature cognitive-behavior therapy can help them believe they can do it.
The concept I convey is: Obesity is a disease. Treat it like a disease and not like a social affliction. Most people don鈥檛 make the kind of major changes required to lose weight permanently just by reading about diet and exercise. There are great sources of information, particularly on the web鈥擬ichelle Obama鈥檚 鈥淟et鈥檚 Move鈥� (www.letsmove.gov) or WebMD鈥檚 鈥淔it鈥� (www.fit.webmd.com), for example. But information alone usually doesn鈥檛 produce lifestyle change.