For many of us, what we eat and how we eat it is an important component of following social customs and/or religious rituals or both. Food is the centerpiece of hospitality and celebration. However, like everything else in existence, even all allowable fees can be for both good and bad. What we eat can nourish our body and give us strength or it can cause harm even when fresh and well cooked. With all the fuss about hundreds of “weight loss” diets advertised as low fat, high protein, low carb, raw food and diet recipes of all kinds with diet pills like Hoodia and Phentermine, fat burners and the like, People spend billions each year on weight loss programs that help them lose a few pounds, and most gain the weight back after a few months. Furthermore, the fact that diet books seem to be at the top of bestseller lists every month is a clear indication that there continues to be strong public interest in weight loss.
Overeating is one of the most difficult problems to overcome. It arises from an addiction to sugar. Unlike chemical dependency, sugar is a substance that we need. We cannot eliminate it from our diet and expect to live more than a few days. Therefore, we must develop a special attitude toward food if we are to have any hope of controlling our intake. It’s time to just think thin. Have you ever noticed any skinny person in your life? I mean the guys who don’t seem to have a problem controlling their appetite. They don’t run to the buffet like people who haven’t eaten in three days. In fact, it often seems like they couldn’t care less about the food. As a writer, I interviewed several of these people and found that they all had a fundamental difference in their relationship with food from overweight people. The difference is eating to live instead of living to eat.
To continue, while it is good to be athletic with a daily exercise program and eating healthy things, there are many who for various reasons cannot go much beyond a sedentary life. Therefore, we have to look more at what and how much we eat and make our appetites commensurate with our body’s need. The idea of exercise, while vital in the scheme of things, is a separate topic for the purpose of this discussion. Hence, we return to the thin person to find out how he thinks in order to learn to think thin. One thing I found out about skinny people is that they watch little to no commercial television. If you watch enough TV, you’ll be hungry because there are images, both obvious and sublime, of people eating appetizing food thrown at you in commercials and on shows. Another thing is that the thin people I have interviewed stay busy with projects and away from sound images and people who stimulate the desire to eat.
In conclusion, the whole idea of losing weight is a matter of avoiding temptation. Trying to resist the temptation to eat beyond our needs is like trying to stop a stampeding elephant because we have this constant fight with our inner animal and hunger is one of the three great drives. The animal does not know how to count calories and does not care about the unintended consequences of binge eating. Therefore, avoiding temptation is the only way to go. We can achieve this avoidance behavior by staying away from commercial television and taking an interest in projects that don’t involve a lot of lunches and cocktails. Finally, it would help to reach out to the skinny people in your life and find out more about how their relationship with food differs from yours. Then we can work on learning to say “no” to food.
