The Food Philosophy will show you how to lose weight, feel genuine choice and control around food and set yourself free from overeating for the rest of your life.
Eating disorders are on the rise and it’s well-known that dieting has a lot to do with this rise. There’s oodles of evidence for it - which you’ll have to research yourself if you’re interested, but it’s easy if you just type ‘dieting and eating disorders’ into a search engine. Evidence includes the parallel rise of enforced body dissatisfaction and the advice to diet with rising instances of anorexia and bulimia and binge eating disorder. Also, countries that haven’t been exposed to Western culture and dieting have extremely low to non existent levels of eating disorders. There’s more, though, much, much more.
Anyway, while looking up the statistics for eating disorders in the UK for something I was writing, I noticed – not for the first time – that the way eating disorders are classified excludes obesity and overweight. It’s very strange. It always stands out to me but it seems to be accepted as normal that even a scientific or medical trial paper can separate the two. It’s the perfect example of a sleight of hand that Derren Brown would be proud of, except that it pulls the wool over everyone’s eyes and blinds everyone to the obvious truth in favour of a belief that helps the diet industry to earn millions, but which destroys the quality of life for millions of ordinary people.
Bulimia, anorexia, binge eating disorder, compulsive overeating are all classified as eating disorders with various theories about their cause, including the pathological need for control, the anaesthetising of past trauma and abuse etc, but the main driver for these disorders is well-known to be high levels of body dissatisfaction and chronic addiction to dieting.
The physical effects of eating disorders such as anorexia’s extreme weight loss are taken as a side-effect of a psychological disorder and although shocking, as the physical side effects are, anorexics are never blamed for being severely underweight and they are treated as if they suffer from a mental illness.
Where eating disorders are shown in a sympathetic light and sufferers are largely described as victims, those who are obese and overweight are linked with greed, weakness and lack of self discipline. Obesity is given a class all of its own and overweight people are given a diet sheet and told to control their overeating by self discipline and shown that they are thought of as weak and greedy and lacking in self respect. The message is: if you don’t respect yourself enough to stop overeating, then how do you expect anyone else to respect you?
Overeaters take this on board and struggle their whole lives trying to follow this advice when in fact their problem is as much of an eating disorder as any anorexic or bulimic. In fact, just like weight loss is the physical symptom of anorexia, so weight gain is the physical symptom of compulsive overeating and binge eating disorder – AND the direct cause, as has been established, is body dissatisfaction and the drive towards chronic dieting!
The compulsion to overeat, driven by dieting, is in fact the basic foundation of all eating disorders. Anorexics are compulsive overeaters whose different neuroses and needs drive them to starve themselves and the overweight and obese are compulsive overeaters whose needs drive them to overeat! It’s exactly the same disease. But because of the current prejudice against obesity one is given treatment that, although largely ineffective, is at least sympathetic, and the other is treated by blame, humiliation and given directions to follow a solution that is actually the known direct cause of the problem itself.
THIS is the reason why obesity seems to be on the rise and why everyone is running about like headless chickens worrying about the cost to the NHS and where we’ll be in 2010 when so many more people are predicted to be overweight. This is why our kids no longer grow out of their puppy fat.
It's also the reason why you are sitting there thinking 'I don't suffer from an eating disorder, I just need to be able to stick to a diet,' and then going on to lose control of what you put in your mouth, day in, day out, obsessing and worrying about it and letting it destroy your quality of life.
Many things are truly bizarre about our culture, but this has got to be one of the most unbelievable of all.
If you want to step away from the madness and help yourself in a real way The Food Philosophy will show you how to get out of the overeating trap without giving you any advice that is really designed to keep you yo-yoing for the rest of your life. It’s straightforward, practical and frankly amazing. But I would say that wouldn’t I?
The Food Philosophy is now available for £30 (without coaching), you get all of the online course material as well as limited membership to The FP forum where you can chat to other people who are doing the course, support each other, go through the steps and exercises together and also talk to those who have already been through the course and who are already out of the overeating trap. You'll also get to read regular comments of mine and articles posted in the forum that are full of valuable help and information.
2008-04-17 @ 20:08