Mel Walsh

The End of Overeating

Gather round and you shall hear…not that I walked five miles through snow drifts to school—but worse.  Much worse.

When I was young, there was no fast food. No pizza joints, no burger palaces. We ate---are you ready?---real from-scratch foods at home. And there were almost no obese people in America then. Americans, if they looked down, could see their toes, not their belly buttons.

But, after World War II, the GI’s stationed in Italy brought back a taste for a tomato pie called “apizza”, and so the fast and fattening food rush was on. It was joined by McDonald’s and also extended into the supermarkets by a food industry that learned how to put together fat, salt and sugar to make snacks that jumped off the shelf and onto your weight scale.

And so the fattening food tide spread over the land. Now there is almost nowhere that unhealthy food is not available. Public rest rooms are the only places I can think of where you have no chance of running into a Triple Bypass Burger.

The End of Overeating

            That’s the title of a new book by David Kessler, MD, who not only does a convincing job of detailing the spread of fast food throughout the US, but also explains how we as eaters get hooked. He explains why, biochemically speaking, so many of us crave what’s not good for us, a conditioned response often engineered by an industry that states out loud that its purpose is to invent “craveable” foods. And so we become hypereaters.

Dr. Kessler also covers what he calls “food rehab”. Food rehab involves unhhooking from the obsession with unhealthy combinations of fat, salt and sugar.

Basic Rehab

Here is the Cliff Notes version of a few rehab principles according to Kessler:

·                   Know that conditioned hypereating is a biological challenge, not a character flaw.

·                   Conditioned hypereating is a problem that needs to be managed, not cured.

·                   Every time we give in to the urge for sugar, fat and salt, it gets harder for us to act differently the next time.

·                   Lapses are to be expected.

The Restaurant Environment

            Now it’s hard to eat out sensibly if you have no idea about the contents of the food you may order. So Kessler wants restaurant menus to list what is in the dish. (Visualize the labels already required on processed foods---something Kessler made happen as head of the FDA. New York City already mandates this menu info, so it is not only possible, it’s already being done.)

Me, I want to know that a medium Oreo® Sundae Shake at Burger King comes in at 1110 calories and 35 grams of fat.

The book is The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable America Appetite.  

The Invisible Antidepressant

Feeling down?

Well, if I said you could self-administer an upper that didn’t require a prescription or any skuzzy dealings with the drug underworld or pharmacies in faraway lands, would you want it? If I told you even more---that this remedy was invisible but real, would you believe me?

Well, maybe you wouldn’t listen to me, but how about the white-coated docs at Duke University Medical Center who ran several studies comparing the benefits of a prescription antidepressant to the benefits of getting your body up and moving? Intrigued by the many indications that the motion of the body and the state of the mood were connected, the Duke doctors set up a formal study that compared the moods of three groups---those who took an antidepressant, those who did aerobic exercise and those who did both.

After 16 weeks, here’s what they found: People on antidepressants had the most immediate relief of their symptoms, but by the end of the 16 weeks, those who were “just” exercising, had the same relief of symptoms and improvement in mood.

Hi ho----sneakers, just as good as pills. What a concept!

The Mayo Clinic Weighs In

Yep, the folks at Mayo agree and add more: They see four benefits to exercise:

·      Confidence: You meet a goal, you look better, you feel better. In other words, heads up, knockers out and proud of yourself.

·      Distraction. You stop dwelling on how bad you feel and shift your thought patterns to more positive channels like walking out to see the sunset.

·      Interactions. Depression and anxiety can lead to isolation. Going out for a walk with a buddy or going to the gym or an exercise class can get you out of the shell of depression and into some companionship. Even walking Fifi is a companionable experience.

·      Healthy coping. You’re doing something positive about your downer mood. You aren’t drinking excessively to make yourself feel better and not just sitting around hoping the problem will go away.

I’d add my own benefit: By using exercise as a natural upper, you’re not putting yourself in harm’s way from drug side effects. Some of the side effects from antidepressants include insomnia, nausea, diarrhea, loss of libido, weight gain and ironically, suicidal thoughts. On the other hand, to be fair, some people do report great relief from these drugs. I just wonder if they tried walking in the sunshine as a way of upping their moods. (Lack of light is an acknowledged cause of depression.)

The Last Word

Dr. Gary Sachs of Harvard Medical School says: “Here’s your exercise program. Go to the door. Look at your watch. Walk 7.5 minutes in any direction. Then turn around and walk home. Do that at least five days a week.”

We can do that.