Thousands of books. Billions of dollars. But society is continuing to get fatter, more un-healthy, and what to do about it stumped me. Personally. 10kg over my desired weight, but just within the healthy BMI range. At 24.9 I had another 0.1 before I was officially overweight. I was doing some exercise, restraining from too much food, too often. But over the last 5 years was unable to make any difference at all to my weight, and I knew that skinny worms lived longer than fat ones. That was the sum of my knowledge.
In a study of formerly obese people, researchers at the University of Florida found that virtually all said that they would rather be blind, deaf or have a leg amputated than be obese again. That is the extent of our desire to be slim and yet two thirds of people in the UK, USA and Australia are overweight and one quarter obese. Why? To be slim, to achieve the thing we want more than our sight, hearing, or mobility, we are told that we just need to “eat less and/or do more.” Quite specifically, the advice is “One pound of fat contains 3,500 calories, so to lose 1lb a week you need a deficit of 500 calories a day.” So, why don’t we just follow the advice? Why on earth do we have an obesity problem, let alone an epidemic, when we so desperately want to be slim?
I wasn’t obese. This wasn’t me. But I did wonder.
This is the story of my journey.
- What did constitute healthy.
- Why Science shows diets fail
- Could Science show how diets work
- What was the least effort I needed to remain healthy and grow old gracefully.