Thinking of Obesity as a Disease,
and
Dieting as the Treatment Plan.

History of the Concept

Weight loss is a big business which comes with a built-in supply of repeat customers, and medical doctors have been involved in that business for a long time.

In 1942, Metropolitan Life Insurance Company used age, weight, and mortality numbers from nearly 5 million policies to create “desirable” height and weight charts. As a result people (and their doctors) began to compare themselves to a standardized notion of what they “should” weigh.

In the 1980s, the BMI ... which is a ratio of height/weight ... became the standard for determining obesity.

 In 1998, the AMA lowered the BMI cutoff of "normal" weight to 25, down from the previous 27 & 28. 

Overnight, millions of people became “overweight” or “obese”. 

Putting more people in those categories made more people eligible for medical weight-loss treatment.

In 2013 the American Medical Association declared obesity to be a chronic disease. 

Call me cynical, but follow the money. Doctors want to be paid for weight-loss treatments, and they get insurance reimbursement for treating disease. 

Although labeling obesity as a disease put the insurance industry on the hook financially, it also activated the concept of obesity as a “pre-existing condition”.

This could affect any person who has ever been obese … forcing such people to pay higher insurance premiums, and to face the possibly of being denied any medical insurance coverage at all.

Helpful Feature of the Concept

At this point, I want to set aside financial concerns about “Obesity as a Disease”,  and consider how the use of this concept might be helpful to someone dealing with obesity.

Heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes, and arthritis are all considered chronic diseases.  Obesity has now been added to that list. 

A chronic disease doesn’t get cured by just taking a pill or a shot.  The effects of a chronic disease tend to linger for long periods of time, sometimes forever.

Embracing the idea that Obesity is a Disease, and that Dieting is the required Treatment Plan, could be used to help make us realize that we need to stay active in managing our weight for all of the rest of our lives.

Some might consider this to be depressing, but consider this.

In order to maintain dental health you have to remember to brush your teeth multiple times a day.

In order to maintain good hygiene you have to maintain a regimen of washing yourself.

In order to maintain good health you have to commit to getting some sleep every day.

There are thousands of routines that we do every single day for our overall health, and we do most of them without feeling resentment.  We can choose to consider managing obesity as just another one of life’s daily requirements.

I’ve now been successfully maintaining my body at or near my “normal” BMI for 11+ years, after spending most of my lifetime with a BMI high in the obesity range. 

This weight maintenance didn’t just “happen”. 

My maintenance success has required ongoing vigilance and … quite frankly.. a great deal of effort … every single day. 

For a great explanation of this issue, see: Running Down the Up Escalator.

FOOD
is not the Enemy,
and
Torturing myself over it
is not the Answer.

 

The substance of FOOD is not what made me obese. 
It all comes back to me
and to my personal eating behavior choices.

Every day, I decide and acknowledge what food, and how much food, is appropriate for me in my life.

That includes accepting that for ME, there can be no “forbidden” foods, and that MY life needs to have room for times of indulgence with food.



Many times in my life, I’ve worked to severely restrict my food intake.  I’ve done many diet experiments with all types and amounts of food substances.

But  I’m now 72 years old, and in the end, ...
part of the diet question has to be: 
“Am I happy right now?" 
"Do I feel fulfilled right now?” 

Time is finite.  Once it’s spent, it’s gone.  At this stage of my life, I’m committed to enjoying as many moments of my life as I can. If I can’t enjoy a moment, then I try to learn from it.

For the past 12+ years, as part of my own weight-loss and maintenance journey,  every day I have consistently recorded all of my food intake into a computer food journal. 

This has kept me Aware of what I’m eating, and helped me with Accountability and Acceptance of my own personal calorie limitations.


My own personal ongoing choice is to eat whatever food that I want in very small amounts, whenever it seems appropriate. 

If I want a cookie,
I eat a cookie, or part of a cookie. 

If I want cake or pie or candy,
I’ll eat a very small amount, like just a “normal size” bite or two.

If I want nuts or cheese or chips,
I’ll eat a small and carefully measured amount of nuts or cheese or chips. 

Even after all these years, I carefully read food labels; and weigh and measure my food.  I consistently record ALL my food ... Every Day ... into my computer food journal which provides me with a running calorie count of the foods I'm choosing to eat. 

For ME, this process is essential for my own personal weight Maintenance, and by using this method I am able to make my personal food choices fit into my daily calorie maintenance budget.

Food is not the enemy, and torturing myself by serving myself food I don’t want, or by avoiding foods that I do want, is not my own personal answer to the question of what and how to eat for weight-loss and maintenance. 

I will never be 100% satisfied
with the way I look.

In general, I like the way I look, but in reality we all have an ideal picture in our heads of what “thin” should be.  No matter how successful I am on any diet, my individual body will never match that ideal image.

The truth is that women come in all shapes and sizes, and women of all shapes and sizes can be attractive.

However, we have developed unrealistic expectations from a lifetime of being continually told, and shown, the type of body image we are supposed to strive for. 

There is an enormous discrepancy between our culture’s recommended fantasy, and bodies that actually exist. 

If we buy into the idea that the perfect body is based on the average fashion model, a perfect woman would be about 5’10” and weigh less than 120 pounds.  However, the average American woman is about 5’4” and weighs about 169 pounds.

Our culture’s current female ideal body is a D-cup breast, tiny waist, sculpted abs, big butt and thigh gaps inches-wide—all in one.

Of course she should also look young and somewhat athletic with no visible flaws or physical disabilities, but as long as she is physically attractive, she doesn’t need to be very smart.

Many people discredit their weight-loss progress because of loose skin, stretch marks, or other features they don’t like. 

I’ll admit that I’ve been strongly influenced by a lifetime of exposure to our culture. Many times I’ve wished my body looked like the body of a Victoria’s Secret model. 

I didn’t look anything like that image at age 16, and I resemble it even less here in my 70s; but I’ve worked very hard to get the best body I can have. 

I appreciate the body I now have, including my wrinkles, scars, loose skin, and current size.  Even if plastic surgery were painless and inexpensive, it would not be a option of interest for ME, personallly.

No … I’m not 100% satisfied with how my body looks all of the time, but it’s okay to live in that space of semi-dissatisfaction.

While my body isn’t as attractive as I wish it were,  I remember how my body used to be when I was super morbidly obese, and I’m grateful for the size it is now, and the way it looks now.

As part of maintaining a large Weight-loss for more than 11 years, here at DietHobby I sometimes share my personal weight and calorie numbers, along with Tactics that I’ve used to help me in Maintenance. 


Treating Dieting as a Hobby (see: ABOUT ME) involves the ongoing task of finding or creating ways to keep myself interested in detailed issues involving Weight-Loss and Maintenance, as well as how MY own body responds to those various issues.

As part of my own Maintenance journey, I’ve experimented with many different diets, and as part of that process I’ve created various ways to track my progress.   When I first began experimenting with Alternate Day Fasting, back in 2006, I created a chart like the one on this page in order to better track how my daily weight reacted to UP days and DOWN days.  I liked this visualization and so I continued using this chart format after I completed my first ADF experiments. 

This first chart shows my actual weight and calories from May 23, 2017 through today, June 9, 2017.

The second chart shows a 10 week Summary of those charts from April 2, 2017 through June 4, 2017.

The first chart shows that on May 23, I weighed 131.0 (red shows a gain from the previous day).

This morning, June 9, I weighed 128.2 (green shows a loss from the previous day). 

So, 131.0 minus 128.2 equals 2.8, which means that my weight dropped 2.8 lbs. in the past 16 days.

During that 16 days, my average calorie intake was 594 per day.

The next chart shows that on the week ending on April 2, my 7 day average weight was 134.5.
On the week ending on June 4, my 7 day average weight was 130.7. 

So, 134.5 minus 130.7 equals 3.8, which means that my weight dropped 3.8 lbs. in the past 10 weeks.

During that 10 week period, my average calorie intake was 669 per day.

A 3.8 loss averaged out over 10 weeks is an average weekly weight loss of 0.38.

So this shows that during the past 10 weeks I lost about  1/3 of 1 lb. per week while eating about 669 calories per day.

          
When others look at MY own personal numbers, it is important to remember that I am a small, inactive, "reduced obese" elderly woman. 

It is not a one-size-fits-all-world so my experience may be vastly different from your own.

Even people who are the SAME size, age, and activity levels often have bodies with different metabolisms. Some bodies burn through their fuel like large luxury cars, and some bodies burn fuel like really efficient economy cars.  The Metabolic Process is an involuntary one, like breathing and temperature, and .... despite what many Diet Guru's, including medical doctors, say, ... an individual's voluntary behavior can do almost nothing to change their personal long-term Metabolic Rate.

To see previous detailed information, including more of my thoughts and comments, see my most recently posted charts in Status Update - February 2017, and the DietHobby section:  BLOG CATEGORIES, Status Updates which provides many posts about my personal progress, including detailed charts spanning my past 12+ dieting years.

There is No “one-size-fits-all” Diet Journey.

This Truth drives many people crazy.

“I’m not losing as fast as this person.”  
“I have to eat less than that person.” 
“I can eat more than that person.” 
“This person eats everything and still loses weight.”
“That person maintains without ever having to exercise.”

You know what all these people have in common?

NONE of them is me!

My body is different from anybody else’s.  In some ways, my body works in similar ways as the bodies of others,  but in other ways, it doesn’t. 

This has an impact on how I choose to live my life.

I find it important not to compare myself, my body, my eating, my routine, my exercise, or my progress to anybody else. That’s a hard thing to actually do, and sometimes I have to work to force myself to stop doing it. But it’s important for me to arrive at that place where the only person I compare myself to is myself.

I hold fast to MY rules.

The world is full of diet "experts" who are eager to tell me EXACTLY how I should eat; how I should think; what I should want; and how I should live my life. 

Just because some other dieter does X,Y, or Z, or doesn’t have to do X, Y, or Z, doesn’t mean that I can Do it, or can Stop Doing it. Over time, I have developed an understanding of MY physical Body and how it responds, as well as how my Mind and my Spirit are involved with my own Thinking, my own Emotions, and my own Behavior.

I work to keep my mind open enough to listen to and consider the experiences and opinions of other people, but ultimately, all decisions about how I live my life are mine.  It is important for me to be the one who chooses what is right for ME, and to do what works for Me, personally.