I finished reading The End of Overeating: Taking Control of The Insatiable American Appetite by David Kessler (see part one below). We have set ourselves up to become ginormous! The layered and loaded food, the new social norms, and the constant cues from advertising condition people to eat and eat and eat.
That slop you're looking at over to the left is called a Luther Burger. It's a bacon cheeseburger served on a grilled glazed donut! It is the very definition of a "layered and loaded" meal. It's an example of the sugar on salt on fat on salt on sugar on fat combo that causes people's brains to short circuit. It doesn't have to be that blatant though. The same thing happens with a restaurant salad. Ever noticed how a restaurant salad is so much more "craveable" than anything you throw together in your own kitchen? That's because in a restaurant, the lettuce is merely a carrier for the salt, sugar and fat. It sounds virtuous to order a salad, but by the time you add the crispy chicken tenders, the cheese, the croutons, the dressing, the bacon crumbles, the bread basket, and the creamy butter, you're just as fattened up and blissed out as the person eating a Luther Burger. If you eat that 1500 calorie salad in good company, on a fun day, and make all kinds of positive associations with the experience, you'll want it again... and again, and again, and again. Chili's, Applebee's, TGI Friday's and The Cheesecake Factory are counting on it.
Not only has this layered and loaded "big food" become standard in the U.S., it's now socially acceptable to eat anytime and anyplace. For example, it's perfectly normal to have a giant spread of food in business meetings. Europeans think our bagel basket behavior is completely bizarro. Why on earth do people need to EAT in a business meeting? Here, food is expected and nobody questions it. The French paradox doesn't look so paradoxical when you realize that they are accustomed to eating meals, you know, where you sit down at a table with other people at a set time. Sure the food is rich and delicious, but if it's not mealtime, you don't eat. Americans eat all day - in cars, on planes, in classrooms, in offices, at our desks, and walking down the street. We eat alone. We eat at odd times. We eat an hour after we just ate. We eat when we're not hungry. We eat when we're cued - popcorn at the movies, ice cream after dinner, muffins in meetings. It's a trip! No wonder the obesity rate is skyrocketing!
Weight doesn't necessarily tell you who is prone to conditioned hypereating and who is not. Thin people can be just as addicted and obsessive. They can experience the same "brain fireworks" response to the sight and smell of certain foods, but they manage to compensate by ramping up activity or lowering overall calorie intake, even if they still exhibit some weird behaviors, or lose control periodically.
There is no easy solution to the problem. I was relieved that Kessler didn't push a restrictive diet as the way to handle it. He says that the only plan that will work is one built around your lifestyle and your personal likes and dislikes, that you can't sustain a change in behavior if it leaves you feeling hungry, unhappy, angry or resentful. He says that early on, you need to avoid being cued. If you always lose control in certain places or circumstances, you steer clear of those for awhile. Then you make your own rules. You control your portions using foods that satisfy you and that you can eat in moderation. Maybe an engineered fully-loaded fast food burger is a trigger for you, but one you make yourself on your George Foreman grill is fine. That way deprivation doesn't enter the picture, but neither does mindless loss of control.
He also talks about counterconditioning and perceptual shifts, taking what's seen as positive and desired and turning it into a negative. He uses the tobacco industry as an example. For years, smoking was socially acceptable, sexy and cool. People did it everywhere without thinking. Now it's seen as something repulsive and dangerous, and the industry is being forced to act more responsibly. He says the same kind of shift needs to occur with "big food." Right now, you have fast food commercials showing skinny, healthy people eating at bright, happy restaurants. They're not showing you the obesity, diabetes, cancer and coronary artery disease.
The End of Overeating gave me some great insight into how we're being manipulated, and also a lot more compassion for people who struggle. You can be an intelligent, confident, loving person with extensive nutrition knowledge and a sky-high self-esteem and still lose all control in the face of your trigger foods. Now I understand why.
