I keep waiting for the analogy of diet and finance to break down, and it just won’t.  Well, I thought, there’s no analog to bankruptcy; how do you wipe away a huge calorie debt by taking one extreme step that will have serious long-term consequences?  And then it hit me– gastric bypass is diet bankruptcy.

Too Far Down the Hole to See Daylight

When you find yourself so overextended that you just can’t see a way out financially, you declare bankruptcy.  Your first step should be to see a credit counselor, because sometimes there are much less extreme remedies.  Creditors would rather have something than nothing, so you can often play “let’s make a deal” (especially with credit card companies) to skip payments, reduce interest rates, or simply negotiate a lower balance to pay.  It will take longer to get out from under your debt, but you won’t have a bankruptcy on your credit history affecting the next decade of your life.  Sometimes, though, the debt monster is so huge that bankruptcy is your only option.

So let’s equate this to your weight.  If your everyday diet and exercise efforts (or lack thereof) have left you more than 100 pounds over your healthy weight, that’s a huge calorie debt monster.  That much weight is likely to do significant health damage before you can get it off via even a medically-supervised diet plan unless you can afford to do nothing for several months except devote yourself to diet and exercise (the “Biggest Loser” method).  That’s when diet bankruptcy becomes an attractive option.  Just as with your finances, your doctor should counsel some less extreme plans.  You should both agree that you’ve tried enough other methods to know that you’re not going to be successful without big-time intervention.

I have two friends who went through gastric bypass, and they are tiny, happy, and positive that it’s the best thing they ever did.  I have two more friends who lost a lot of weight initially and then saw their weight creep back up.  They are now again fighting a daily weight battle, but they’re fighting it at a lower weight than they were pre-surgery.  (Check the fine print– most gastric bypass “centers” count a success in their statistics if you lose 50% of your excess weight.  I wonder how they’d feel if you paid 50% of your bill?)  I have one friend who is heavier now than before surgery.  With financial bankruptcy, you can file again in the future if you need to, but there are darned few doctors who will perform a second gastric surgery if you went back to double-meat pizzas and Krispy Kremes (and even fewer insurance companies that will pay for it).

Will It Work?

Success with both diet and financial bankruptcy depends mostly on two factors.  First, find a professional who will be with you for the long haul.  You’ll have questions at many points in the process, and you’ve got to have someone to answer those questions, and act as both cheerleader and taskmaster.  If you had been able to fix the problem on your own, you wouldn’t have gone for bankruptcy.  Accept that you need help and find someone you will be able to work with.  It also wouldn’t hurt to find a forum and talk to some people who have been where you are.

Second, and more importantly, recognize that you need to make some changes.  Financial bankruptcy sometimes results from catastrophic medical bills that were unforeseen and unlikely to repeat, but those 100 pounds didn’t just creep up behind you and tap you on the shoulder one day.  You need the diet equivalent of cutting up your credit cards and buying a shredder for all those pre-approved credit applications that will still come in the mail every week.  You’re still going to pass temptation on every corner, so you need a calorie budget.  Work with your doctor or a nutritionist to develop a reasonable plan, and dial in the occasional splurge.  Be realistic about how much you will work out.  Above all, recognize that this is forever, so be sure your budget is one you can live with.  Forever.

Bankruptcy, diet and financial, comes with some serious negatives.  But it also offers a fresh start that may be the incentive you need to get your life back on track.  Get lots of advice, and do a lot of thinking, then make a plan that has the best chance at success for you.

I hope you were strong.  I hope  you didn’t let the diabolical marketers who put the Halloween candy out in July or August entice you into buying it, seeing it around the house, and then eating it so you were forced to buy it again.  Personally, I think there should be a law that stores cannot put Halloween candy displays out before September 15th (or later).  Write your representative.

But the day is here, and in theory, adorable tots should be showing up at your door to remove all the calorie-laden goodness and take it home to ruin their dinners for many nights to come.  But if you’re like me, and you live on a major street in a safe, kid-friendly neighborhood, you’ve laid in enough candy to decorate every witch’s house from here to Düsseldorf, and that means you’re going to have leftovers.  So unless you want to fit into that Santa suit without padding by Christmas, it’s time to get creative.

Give It Away, Give It Away, Faster, Faster

The simplest solution is to avoid leftovers in the first place by becoming increasingly generous as the evening wears on.  If you’re giving out one or two pieces of candy early in the evening, and you can see that you’re going to have more candy than you need, start passing out double portions.  The older kids tend to be the ones out well after dark, so it actually makes sense to hand out more candy per trick-or-treater at 8:00 than you did at 6:45.  If you play your cards right, you can empty your candy bucket and turn your lights out when the traffic dies (around here, that’s between 9:00 and 9:20).

If November 1st still dawns with pounds of sugary bliss left in your living room, start looking for places to give it away.  A lot of schools and churches have leftover candy drives.  Take it your next meeting.   Take it to the police or fire station.  Do not take it to work, as it will sit in a bowl on your desk and you’ll still eat most of it.  Look for places to take it so that other people will eat it.

Yesterday’s Candy, Tomorrow’s Baked Goods

If you really want to get creative, and you can do some advance planning, start looking at the candy in a new way.  If you do Christmas baking like I do, you will soon be buying the ingredients for that baking, and if you think about it, you’re going to be buying a lot of the same stuff you just gave away.  Next year, before you buy your Halloween candy, take a look at the recipes for your Christmas baking.  M&Ms can go into cookies and Rice Krispies treats.  Hershey Kiss cookies?  Hershey’s Special Dark bars and nuggets can be chopped into chocolate chips or melted down for icings, fillings, and more.  Jolly Rancher candies and Life Savers make gorgeous “stained glass” cookies.  Do a search for “leftover candy recipes” and you’ll probably find some way to use up whatever you’re stuck with, and you might find a new recipe you really like.

If you don’t bake, you might have a neighbor who does, and you can work a trade of ingredients for finished baked goods.  If you like toppings on your ice cream, you can crush most chocolate candy bars into sundae toppings.  Crush them up and place them in well-marked bags in your freezer; that way, they’ll be out of sight (and hopefully out of mind) and you’ll use them by the spoonful instead of by the bar.  If you are really virtuous, you’ll simply buy candy you don’t like yourself, so you’ll never be tempted by the leftovers.  Write and tell me what that kind of virtue feels like, because I sure don’t have it.

The bottom line is, get them gone.  Get them out of the house entirely, or earmark them for another purpose and get them into the freezer.  Otherwise, you’ll hear them calling you in their little chocolate voices every time you pass by the bowl.  And you don’t want to pack on extra pounds now, because turkey, stuffing and pie are waiting right around the corner.  Boo!

How many times have you heard diet pundits advise, “Never reward yourself with food”?  How ridiculous is that?  The phrase “comfort food” wouldn’t have any meaning if we didn’t get an emotional boost from our favorite foods.  Besides, from the time we’re toddlers, we get the clear message that when we endure something bad, we get a sweet treat as a reward.  No?  Didn’t you get a lollipop from your doctor after you got a shot?  From a medical professional, no less.

On the other hand, those same diet gurus will tell you to find something else that makes you happy, like buying shoes, and they’ll recommend you reward yourself for sticking to your diet by treating yourself to shoes.  Congratulations, you’ve dropped two dress sizes, but you can’t buy a new wardrobe because your credit cards are maxed out from buying all those shoes.  You simply substituted one compulsion, overeating, with another, impulse buying.  You traded one problem for another.

U Earned It

There are two lessons here.  First, we need to embrace the concept of an earned reward.  We worked for it.  The doctor didn’t give us a lollipop to make our arm hurt less, he did it to reward how brave we (hopefully) were.  If you are sad, and you eat in the hope that it will make you happier, you will be a depressed size 22 in no time.  If, however, you do an extra 20 minutes on the treadmill, you have earned the calories you burned just as surely as you earn your paycheck by going to a job every day.  And just as, once the essentials are covered, you are free to spend your money on anything you want, you are free to spend those earned calories on a hot fudge sundae if you want to.  Of course, the prudent thing is to put the extra money in savings, and use the calories to pay down some of your calorie debt (i.e., your fat), but sometimes it’s nice to have that pair of shoes.  And that hot fudge sundae.

The second lesson is to match currency.  If you work an extra shift or brown-bag for the week instead of going out, you will have gained money.  That’s your currency.  Your reward for your virtue should use the same currency.  Buy those shoes, or get a mani/pedi.  Do not eat a whopping slice of cheesecake.  If you bust your rear end at the gym and have salads for lunch every day, you will have banked calories.   Have the cheesecake.  Earn money, spend money.  Earn calories, spend calories.

It’s interesting to note (well, it is to me, because I am a huge word geek)  that the use of the word dessert as ‘what we deserve’ dates to the 13th century, while the word dessert as ‘a dish served after the rest of the courses have been cleared from the table’ dates only to the 16th century.  As charming as the idea is of “just desserts” meaning ‘nothing but cookies and ice cream’, the real meaning is what we have earned, what justly belongs to us.  Keep that in mind and walk that extra mile so you can enjoy your hot fudge sundae and know you have earned it.  Deserve your dessert.

 

When I was 39, my doctor informed me that I had virtually no thyroid function left.  I went screaming home and called my mother in a panic, and she calmly commented, “Of course your thyroid stopped working– you’re about the age when mine stopped working.”  Okay, I thought to myself, thanks a heap for the heads-up.  I realized that though I was generally aware of the medications my mother took, I had never noticed her taking thyroid supplements.  She explained that in her era of stay-at-home Moms and bridge parties, her doctor had discouraged taking synthetic thyroid hormone and recommended that she “get more rest when she feels tired.”  Uh-huh.   We’ve come a long way, baby.

This episode taught me a couple of important things.  First, it was time for a loooong conversation with Mom about health issues, which wasn’t easy; our parents come from a generation that was not raised to discuss intimate subjects, especially with their children.  (Hopefully we’ll do better when it’s our turn.)  I also learned to keep notes as my mother encountered  health issues, as I was pretty sure I was getting previews of coming attractions.  I was able to recognize the next inherited gift, lactose intolerance, without too much drama.

Nature Taketh Away, Abbott Labs Giveth Back

Once I realized that my thyroid had retired to a cottage in the Cotswolds where it was unavailable for my future metabolic needs, I wasted no time in starting on thyroid replacement hormone.  To my delight, not only did I feel better, but five pounds dropped off like I’d taken off a backpack.  Our systems run with such precision that it doesn’t take much slowing of your metabolism to put weight on.  Your metabolism will slow as you age, but if you’ve gained a bunch of weight in a short time, and you can’t easily assign a cause (well, there was the leftover Halloween candy, then Thanksgiving, then Christmas…), see your doctor for a chat and a blood test.

Of course, the opposite is also true.  I have a good friend who was skinny all her life no matter what she ate and how little exercise she got, until the day her doctor realized her thyroid was stuck in overdrive.  What with the long list of ill effects of chronic hyperthyroidism (including heart failure), she started treatment and now has a weight problem because of the years of bad habits she got into when those habits had no visible consequences.  The angel on my right shoulder compels me to tell her how glad I am that she is no longer in danger of dropping dead of a heart attack.  I try to ignore the devil on my left shoulder shouting, “Hah!  Welcome to MY world!”  Dying is a steep price to pay for being thin.

If you are lucky enough to still have your Mom (and your Dad, especially if you know you take after his side of the family more), make a plan today to talk about family health history, even if you’ve done it before.  As successive generations live longer, they may encounter health problems that their parents died too early to experience.  And give your Mom a hug from me.  I lost my Mom a few years ago, and I miss her.  When I consider all the amazing things she gave me, I guess getting an underactive thyroid is part of a package deal I can live with.

Any number of people have remarked that one of the smartest things you can do to be healthy is to, “choose your parents wisely.”  That’s doubly important when it comes to your weight.  I feel very fortunate that I had normal-to-thin parents with no life-threatening inherited diseases (a few quirks here and there, but no cancer or diabetes, so I really mustn’t grumble).  I know plenty of people who aren’t so lucky.

Taking After Dad

I have a friend who is one of four children born to a willowy, sylph-like mother and a stocky, heavily-built father.  You’ve seen this couple a zillion times– it’s the classic “head cheerleader marries football team captain” story.  Three of the kids, both boys and one of the girls, seem to have received their genetic material exclusively from Mom’s side of the family; the other girl, sadly, got Dad’s.  She spent her formative years eating pretty much what her siblings ate, and maintaining roughly the same activity level as they did, yet her siblings were all model-thin and she was shopping at Lane Bryant.  At best, that’s got to be terribly depressing; at worst, it can drive you to dangerous starvation diets just to try to achieve your family’s “normal.”

In absolute scientific terms, you get exactly 50% of your genes from each parent.  That’s rarely how they are expressed, though.  Why?  No idea, and I started my college life as a Genetics major.  If you can figure it out, they’ll probably give you a Nobel Prize.  (I didn’t grow up planning to be an accountant.  The day I started at my firm, nine of us started together; seven of us were former science majors and the other two switched from engineering.  Nobody with a soul dreams of a future as an accountant, and I get to say that, because I AM one.)  The older I get, the more I look like my mother.  My brother is the spitting image of my mother’s father.  My sister looks like my father’s sister.  You pull the lever on the genetic slot machine and hope that it comes up sevens and not lemons.

The Size You Were Meant to Be

There are plenty of other factors that govern weight besides heredity, chief among them environment and lifestyle.  I often see two very overweight parents walking with their normal-weight young children, and I want to take the kids and give them to somebody who does not eat double pepperoni with a 72 oz. Coke on a daily basis, because even though the parents are clearly not allowing their children the same overindulgences the parents enjoy, that behavior is what the kids are learning.  Those kids are going to chow down as soon as they get the chance, because that’s what they’ve seen their role models do.  And they just might one day say to themselves, “Well, I guess my fat is in my genes– I mean, both my parents are fat.”  And it won’t be true.  They inherited a normal-weight destiny that was corrupted by Donut Depot and House of Hamburgers.

Ask your parents for pictures from when they were children and teens.  If one or both of them has always been stocky, you may have inherited a predisposition for bulk.  This doesn’t mean that you can’t still be svelte, but it does mean that you’re going to have to work harder at it than the rest of us with thin parents.  You’ll probably need to see a nutritionist, but if it’s what you want, you can do it.  And to all you cheerleaders out there, please marry the quarterback or the running back; they tend to be long and lean.  Leave the middle linebackers and offensive tackles for the larger girls.  Otherwise, sure as the sunrise, you’ll end up with a daughter who will starve herself into neurosis and malnutrition trying to fit into your old cheerleader outfit.

Today I’d like to address a scourge on Society, a class of nefarious evildoers determined to corrupt the innocent and lead them down them the long, dark road of addiction.  Of course I’m talking about the store employees at your local Krispy Kreme donut shop.

We’re Givin’ ’em Away!

Sometimes the siren song of that “Hot Donuts Now” sign is just too much to resist, and I find myself inexorably drawn into the parking lot.  I never use the drive-through; I figure if I’m going to have a donut, the least I can do is get off my butt and walk into the store.  The trouble is, nine times out of ten I am met at the door by a store employee holding out a hot, fresh, glazed donut and asking, “Would you like a free sample?”  What am I going to say, no thanks, I’m just here for the coffee?

Now I am in a real bind.  Even if I was totally committed to having ONE donut, I can’t possibly do that.  You can’t just take your free donut and walk out.  So now I figure I have to buy at least two donuts, and now I am looking at eating three donuts.  And then you look at the pricing and it’s cheaper to buy a dozen than just a few.  It’s either cottage cheese for dinner, or it’s time to get creative.

Paying Your Donuts Forward

Here’s a chance to save yourself calories and do something positive.  Buy that dozen donuts and have ONE.  What do you do with the rest?  Take them to work with you; you’ll be incredibly popular.  Take them to your kid’s school and give them to the secretaries at the main office.  Take them to your local police station; you know how cops love donuts.  Take them to a local nursing home or hospice facility.  You will be amazed at how touched people can be by a gesture of kindness.  They’ll smile, you’ll smile, and you won’t have to skip lunch.

You can do the same thing with any evil goodies.  I bake at holiday time like Martha Stewart on crack, and I always load up a big box for my local police and local firefighters and deliver them on Christmas Eve as a thank you to the people missing Christmas with their familes just to keep me safe.  But it doesn’t even have to be Christmas; most people are happy to get treats anytime.  It’s a good thing to get to know your local police and firefighters; you might need them someday, and you won’t be a stranger.  One year the firefighters actually invited me to dinner (hey, I brought dessert).  And since those guys spend most of their on-call time working out, the eye candy will totally take your mind off the rest of the yummies in the box.

So have that donut, and dare the Donut Pusher to do his worst.  (I actually call the manager of my local KK “Donut Pusher” and he smiles and says, “The first one’s free!”)  Then relieve your guilt with a purchase, and find people to share it with.  You just might make eleven friends.

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If you were ever near a TV in the 70s, you probably remember the series of ads where an off-camera narrator tried to foist Chiffon Margarine off on Mother Nature instead of butter.  She responded with the phrase, “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature,” accompanied by thunder and lightning to express her displeasure.  It’s a shame we can’t seem to take the lesson to heart.

In the era of the commercial campaign in question, American consumers were switching to margarine as a “healthy alternative” to the saturated fat of butter.  It was decades before research revealed that the trans fats used in most margarines were at least as bad as the saturated fat, if not worse.  For some reason, our bodies don’t seem to know what to do with trans fats except use them to coat our arteries.  You’re better off (yippee!) with butter.

You Mean Fat Doesn’t Make You Fat?

The scientific community is still fighting over the possible explanations of the “French Paradox,” namely, how a country that drowns everything in butter manages a relatively low rate of heart disease.  Some argue that the diets of pregnant women have an impact on the developing fetus such that the baby “learns” before birth how to handle saturated fat.  Some believe it’s simply that we are better able to fully metabolize natural fats, as the French diet is low in hydrogenated or otherwise chemically manipulated fats.  The low-carb pundits would have you believe that’s the answer; obviously, they haven’t been to a French bakery lately.  Sadly, the impact of red wine has been thoroughly debunked (but I’m having a glass just to be on the safe side). 

Whatever the explanation turns out to be, there is a general consensus in the medical community that a diet high in natural saturated fat is not the ticking time bomb it was once thought to be.  So be aware that butter is hugely high in fat and calories, but if you want it, have it.  It’s probably better for you in the long run than anything that pretends to be butter but isn’t.

No Sugar Added?

I’m also thrilled that there is new evidence of the evils of artificial sweeteners.  Recent studies at the University of Texas, San Antonio, have revealed a high correlation between people who drink diet soda and the development of obesity.  Yep, not regular soda, diet soda.  They aren’t suggesting that artificial sweetener directly causes weight gain, but that something in the behavior of people who use a lot of artificial sweetener puts them at risk for obesity.  As one of the lead researchers says, you can fool your tongue, but not your brain.  Your body is expecting a certain metabolic effect from sugar that it doesn’t receive; your angry brain may actually cause you to crave the calories it has been unjustly denied.  How many times have you heard the joke about, “I’ll have a candy bar and a diet soda”?

We live in an era where “light” versions of things abound, yet we are fatter than ever.  That’s because we still have to please our fat-loving taste buds, so when you take something out, you have to put something else in.  Take out fat, and typically they put in starch, which turns to sugar the second it hits your saliva (remember that from 7th grade science class?).  Take out sugar, in go chemicals that fool your tongue but not your brain.  The more we try to fool Mother Nature, the less satisfied we feel, and the fatter we get.

As the saying goes, don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.  If you want a sweet drink, have it with sugar.  At least your body will know what it’s getting.  Have butter, mayo and cream cheese.  Do you want a no-fail product with half the fat and calories of a stick of butter that still tastes exactly like butter?  I have it.  HALF a stick of butter.  Want half the sugar of a 16-oz Coke?  Drink 8 ounces.  It’s that easy.  Decide how many calories you want to take in, and portion out that much of the real thing (no pun on old Coke slogans intended), not some feeble imitation.  Your taste buds will thank you, and so will your waist line.  And Mother Nature can turn off the lightning.

A few years back, when a certain psychologist (I’ll call him “Dr. Bill”) was hawking diet advice via the TV show of his good friend (let’s call her “O”), I watched just long enough for the top of my head to blow off.  I mean, in the first place, where does a 6-foot-4-inch, um, portly man, who is not even a medical doctor, get off telling an audience of mostly women how to control their weight?  You might as well go to a Catholic priest for advice on feminine hygiene products.  But here was Dr. Bill, taking audience questions and phone-ins about diet plans.

A Fallen Woman Seeks Guidance

So a woman calls in asking for advice because, after a long, hard week of working, caring for her family, and sticking to her diet, she had broken down and had a hot fudge sundae.  Does Dr. Bill tell her it’s okay, it sounds like she deserved it?  Does he ask if she enjoyed it?  (Does he ask if it was regular or bittersweet?)  No, he tells her to “forgive herself” for her terrible sin of sabotaging her diet, and to resolve to do better next week.  Excuse me?

As I talked about in “Survival of the Fattest,” we are hard-wired to want sweet, high-fat, high-calorie foods.  It requires tremendous strength of will to choose a salad over a chili burger, or to actually bake that cookie dough into cookies for the bake sale rather than tucking into the bowl with a large spoon.  Even Weight Watchers, that stalwart organization which has been fighting the fat for decades, has gone to a system where you have “free points” that you can save up and, if you want, HAVE that hot fudge sundae.  There is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to forgive.

Indulgences For Indulgence

Calories are like money– you can either save up and spend, or spend and owe.  But the save up and spend option is the better one in every respect.  If you limit your calories during the week, you CAN splurge on the weekend.  You will have earned it, and knowing you earned it will allow you to enjoy it guilt-free, which can never be said for the “spend and owe” plan.  Besides, just like there’s interest on owing money, you’re going to pay interest on calorie debt, because the longer your body has those extra calories, the more able it is to squirrel them away into places where removing them is much more difficult.  And the collection agencies?  That would be the store clerks selling you the larger-sized jeans.  It’s not a morality issue, it’s a perfectly objective business issue, and the more you can think of it that way, the better off you’ll be.

Happily, Dr. Bill got out of the diet business, though not before an FTC investigation and a class-action suit.  But I think his big mistake was trying to treat dieting like an emotional problem.  Oh sure, lots of people overeat for emotional reasons, but even solving the emotional problems and perhaps fixing the behavior isn’t going to repair the damage that has already been done.  Dieting isn’t psychology or theology.  It’s science.  It’s math.  Burn more calories than you take in, you’re going to lose weight.  And vice versa.  It’s not confessional thinking, but checkbook thinking that’s going to make a real change in your behavior.  Good thing, too, because this mortgage is a killer.

I don’t know, do you?

I am a healthy size 14, which apparently makes me the average American woman.  I would like to be a healthy size 12.  I was a size 10 before I had my son, but between the spreading of my ribs that he managed with his little baby knees plus developing actual breasts (Woo-hoo, real boobs!  Where were you when I needed a date for prom?), I doubt that’s in the cards.  But you never know.

I have reached a point in my life where I’ve learned a lot of personal truths, and one of them is this– skinny just does NOT feel as good as chocolate tastes.  I’m a fan of The Biggest Loser on TV and I love seeing people change their lives, but what I’d really love is to see the contestants sit down with doctors and trainers after the contest portion is over and develop a goal weight that will fit into their real lives while requiring no more than 2 workouts per week and permitting the occasional pizza.  By the end of the season, the contestants are so focused on losing weight that they are living at the gym and eating half the calories their healthy bodily functions require.  To no one’s surprise, they put on a fair bit of weight immediately after the show, and some of them get so depressed about it that they gain it ALL back and then some.  The contestants who manage to maintain their ultra-skinny weight are the ones who go professionally  into training, motivational speaking, or spokesmanship, where they are in effect being paid to stay skinny.

When Skinny Wins

If your major life goals include wanting to work in media or entertainment, you want to lose weight.  Media is brutal.  Unless you’re Kathy Bates, you can’t work in television and eat pie.  On the other hand, you’ll likely be well compensated in money and prestige.  Is that what you want?

Do you want your significant other to be a smokin’  hot hardbody?  Then you’d better be the same, if for no other reason than that people who look like that spend a lot of time in the gym.  If you’re not there as well, you’ll never see your honey, and other hardbodies will.  Is that what you want?

Ask yourself if there is something you want to have or do that you can’t, solely because of your weight.  It’s not about whether you love yourself.  Self-esteem is incredibly complex, and whatever the weight-loss industry would like you to think, it’s almost totally unrelated to your weight.  I know skinny people who feel worthless, and fat people who think they are the greatest thing since sliced bread, both equally without objective basis.  Changing the number on the scale will not change the voices in your head.

…On the Other Hand…

Everything in life is a trade-off.  I love good food, good wine, and relaxation, and that means either I’m going to have to be brutal with the rest of my time and calories, or it means I’m going to carry a few extra pounds.  So I do.  My husband doesn’t mind (and as long as his BMI exceeds mine, he’d better not).  My blood chemistry is normal.  I’m fit enough to walk where I want, run up and down stairs, and go swing dancing.  I’m in no shape to run a marathon, but then, I don’t want to run a marathon.

Unless your butt is too big for the airline seat, your weight is probably not what’s keeping you from traveling.  Unless you are so large that you are styling fashions by Omar the Tentmaker in an office where tailored suits are the standard dress, your weight is probably not keeping you from professional development.  And it’s definitely not keeping you from finding love.  If you want to walk the runway, lose weight.  If your knees hurt when you walk, lose weight.  If your glucose numbers are off, lose weight.  But know why you want to lose weight, and be realistic about how much you want to lose versus how you want to live.

From the time some long-ago humanlike ancestor decided it would be cool to walk upright, all the way up to today, the leading cause of death has been starvation.  (Horribly, in some parts of the world, it still is.)  Wars and pandemics can’t begin to match starvation’s body count.  So what’s a Mother Nature to do to protect her children?  Easy.  Teach them to eat it when they see it, and encourage them to like to eat things that will most efficiently pack on the pounds.

The Real Caveman Diet

There is a reason we’d rather have a chocolate chip cookie than a carrot stick.  We have 20,000 years of evolution behind us, in which people with a taste for sweet, high fat, high calorie foods survived the lean and hungry times better than the carrot-stick lovers, and managed to reproduce and bring offspring to maturity, insuring that their genes were passed on.  We are hard-wired to eat this way.

As soon as we can get around under our own steam, we start putting things in our mouths, hoping for a good result.  And our tastes are evident pretty early.  Any mother of a young child will tell you that there were some foods that came back out of the mouth as soon as they were spooned in.  For my son, every one was a vegetable (but not all vegetables– high sugar vegetables like sweet potatoes and yes, even that poor carrot were cheerfully accepted).  But oh, the day when that first french fry or bite of pizza comes your way.  Carrots don’t stand a chance.

Food undeniably impacts our brain chemistry.  Take a hard look at most people’s idea of “comfort food” and it will be high fat, high carb, or both.  Macaroni and cheese, mashed potatoes and gravy (heck, anything and gravy), bacon sandwiches… okay, I’m making myself hungry now.  But we don’t crave these foods just because we remember Mom making them for us, we crave them because our brains tell us that these foods make us happy, no matter how bad our day has been, and no matter the number on that nasty bathroom scale.  It’s not a character flaw; it’s Mom Nature trying to put a winter coat on us that will see us through the frost.

Using Something Cavemen Didn’t Need — Willpower

Unfortunately, now that most of us in the developed world don’t have to worry about getting through the winter, Mother Nature is out of options.  The engine of evolution can’t help us reset our tastes this time.  Even though we are starting to see the first declines in life expectancy in recorded history, primarily due to obesity issues, people simply aren’t dying early enough to effect a change in our ways.  People who die from obesity-related health issues rarely die before they have had a chance to reproduce and pass on their fat-loving genes to their children.

The good news is, that same 20,000 years of evolution has given us an impressive higher brain function.  It drives people to study what high-fat and high-starch diets do to our long-term health, even if it won’t kill us before we reproduce.  Most importantly, it lets us control how much of that yummy almost-irresistible fatty stuff we take in.  I said almost.  We can resist, we just don’t like to.  And we don’t have to, at least not all the time.  Chocolate chip cookies aren’t poison.  If you have to drown your brussel sprouts in butter or Hollandaise sauce to find them palatable, you might as well have a chocolate chip cookie.  Just remember you might want to take that winter coat off come the spring.