Diet Insanity

I’ve come to believe that most Americans are not interested in finding the optimal diet for maintaining a healthy weight. I say this with a heavy heart for obvious reasons – the last five years of my life have been dedicated to learning how to eat for long-term health and well-being. But, alas, it is true. You may ask me what evidence brings me to my conclusion and I would have to admit that I have no rigorous, scientific research to pull out of my back pocket. It’s just my observation based on talking to people I know, as well as consuming my daily serving of mass media fodder. You may also be tempted to ask, well then, what do I believe? It’s simple:

Most Americans want to lose weight and keep it off while eating any damn thing they please.

That’s crazy, you say? Funny, but this is almost exactly the definition of crazy as famously stated by Albert Einstein: “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

Once I came to grips with this realization, however, a lot of things suddenly started to make sense. For one, the unending quest for a magic diet pill. The recent media hoopla over the approval by the FDA of Belviq and Qsymia underscores how much we want all of this to be easy, as we implore the Cruel, Cruel Gods of Fat to just make our hunger go away, pretty please! If you can’t get a doctor to write you a prescription for these miracle drugs, fear not. There are a plethora of herbal diet supplements to choose from, available over the counter at any pharmacy in America. And they’re all safe, rest assured, because they say they’re safe right on the label!

This also explains the relentless pursuit by the food industry of newer and better Frankenfoods. Just this week, it was announced that a new healthier chocolate has been invented, one that tastes as good as the real stuff but contains 50% less fat. Now, wouldn’t that be a perfect world, if you could gorge on double-fudge, deep-fried, Krispy Kreme cheeseburgers all day long without ever gaining an ounce? All you need do is trust in the wonders of modern science to make all of your food fantasies come true. And the additives that make up these engineered edible marvels are all safe, rest assured, because “they” wouldn’t let them be sold if they weren’t safe, right?

I spent the first fifty years of my life looking for the secret to weight only to finally learn that there is no secret, no magic pill, no miracle food. I desperately wanted there to be an easy cure and in some ways I still want that. Yet I haven’t found it and, at fifty-five, I don’t want to waste any more time looking for it. Eat less, move more is all I’ve got these days. It might sound boring, or hard, or crazy, but it works and that’s good enough for me.