Obesity in America

WE’RE FAT WHY???

“It is in vain to speak of cures, or think of remedies, until such time as we have considered of the causes . . . cures must be imperfect, lame, and to no purpose, wherein the causes have not first been searched.” Robert Burton, The anatomy of melancholy, 1883” The way most of us think about obesity today is probably wrong. The reason for this is because most of us believe what we have been told about how and why people are or become obese. It has been stated that obesity is the primary reason many people are in danger of dying of heart disease. It has also been stated many times that most people afflicted with this anomaly have the means if not the fortitude to change their situation. We all know people who struggle to keep excess weight off and some of the painstaking actions taken in this mostly futile effort. If you want to be successful in controlling obesity, you will need to learn more about how your body works.

The argument that someone is obese simply due to too many calories in vs. too few calories expended is based on too little concrete evidence. If the answer were that simple, this issue would have been solved years ago. Next the person is told they need to exercise more,” less chewing and more doing”, once again, with something as complex as the human body, the advice given is way too simplistic. The prevailing hypothesis that we eat less and work out more, calories in calories out paradigm, needs to be rigorously tested. We know that the low-fat, eat less idiom does not work long term for most people, maybe it’s time the alternate hypothesis of obesity being a hormonal problem, set into motion by a individuals dietary choices which in effect cause the actual overeating.

We as a population we are getting fatter and fatter, “Fifty years ago one in every eight or nine people was considered obese, today that figure is one in every three” What these numbers should tell everyone is that we really need to take a look at we...