in which research is carefully applied...

It isn’t a secret that I’ve struggled with my weight for all of my adult life. Becoming obese wasn’t intentional (is it ever?), it was just something that happened and before I knew it, it was kind of out of control. Over these years I developed binge eating disorder, which I kept a secret for a long time, and that made it quite difficult to take any weight off despite attempts at a healthier lifestyle, and health concerns.

Over the last year and a half, after yet another renewed effort to get my eating under control failed, I decided that if I was going to ever lose weight and get healthy, I would need to find out why I overeat in the first place and fix the cause.

This is what I found out:

My reasons for overeating are a combination of emotional and physical (yes physical) factors; to succeed I need to treat both.

People are drawn by years of evolution to seek and eat as much fat, sugar, and salt as they can. These are available in huge quantities now, yet we haven’t changed.

Sugar is in everything, and while it’s quick energy, it’s like alcohol in our liver. We can neutralize the effects of sugar with fiber. Fiber also controls appetite. Nature pairs sugar with fiber. Fruit is high in fiber, and sugarcane is loaded with sugar, but has so much fiber it’s a stick. When we process sugars we remove the fiber, so there’s no antidote to the poison. In order to preserve foods, we processed out the fiber from them as well. When we removed fat from all our foods, we added sugar to make them tasty. Sugar covers up the fact that the processed food I was eating was the nutritional equivalent of packing peanuts.

Like alcohol, tons of sugar can cause dependence and yes, binging.

The result of our modern diet is weight gain and dependency.

The result of weight gain is emotional alienation that results in further dependency.

While it might not have been totally my fault, I got fat, it is my responsibility to fix the problem now that I know what caused it.

Starting Monday, I’m going to try to apply my research and try to “cure” myself. The plan is to lower my sugar levels as much as possible. If I do have sugar I must pair it with fiber. I will also raise my fiber intake to at least the daily recommended amounts, higher if possible. My diet will mostly contain fruits and veggies, beans, nuts, and whole grains. As little processed items as possible, no juices or flavored drinks (all sugar, no fiber). No aspartame or sucralose because I don’t think those are better. Little or no high fructose corn syrup. For this plan, I will not be necessarily monitoring fat or calorie intake, though I will do my best to keep these reasonable because 60 grams of fat in one meal isn’t all that great either.

Exercise is supposed to help you purge toxins, so I plan to exercise a minimum of 5 days a week for at least 30 minutes consisting of 3 cardio days and two strength days.

If my weight is a sign of my illness then it should regulate itself once I fix what’s making me ill. To that end, I will be weighing myself once a week, and measuring my waist, hips, thigh, and arm once a month.

I’ll be using Sparkpeople.com to report my weight and monitor my exercise and food intake. My name is Amazonpage, and you’re welcome to check that out, though I will be reporting my weight weekly on Mondays, and my measurement progress every fourth Monday on both Blogger and Facebook.

I’m treating my attempt at weight loss as an experiment. What happens when I neutralize the toxins in the environment? Is food addiction treatable? I think it is, and I’ll be excited to see where I am one year from now.