You make a lot of good points, Val. I bet the stresses faced by people 100 years ago would turn a lot of people to mush.

I personally think the difference is we now have the luxury of sitting on our butts eating potato chips (or worrying about whether or not we'll ever be able to EAT another potato chip) while dwelling on our stress. That just wasn't an option long ago for most people... it was more like "Work your butt off from dawn to dark in hopes to have a whole potato for supper" for a lot of people. I remember hearing Grandma's stories of the "dirty thirties" and how just surviving was hard.

The same thing happens with me. Not that I don't have food issues to begin with, but I can understand the cycle pretty well. I always thought it had a psychological factor, like I was told if I eat bad foods, I have to overeat, which may be true given America's cultural attitude towards food. But I can at times overeat protein and fat and not experience the same detrimental effects. And once in the cycle of dietary restriction, or should I say carbohydrate restriction, my overeating is weirdly defeated even though according to my therapist I saw a while back, my relationship with food was an emotional one and because I was compensating with food by not being loved by others. I think stress, suppressed desire and other negatives play a factor in my indulgence, but I deffinitely feel food is more than an emotional bind. No doubt, food can deffinitely be an opiate for some people, and many people may not recognize it as one and therefore think the problem lies in the willpower they may never have. Low-carbohydrate books made complete and utter sense to me once I figured out my relationship with the processed junk was much like the relationship a Heroin addict has with his drug. Once my device was out of my life and out of my system, I rediscovered willpower. For those dieters that are successful keeping the weight off without low-carb, then they must have more willpower than me to develope that kind of relationship with all foods. I usually find those guys to be the extremist, measuring portion sizes, food rules etc., which makes sense given America's distorted version of a portion size. And while I admire them, I could never be one of them. To each his own.

The French eat out more often than any other nation. Their food is also rich and decadent, yet they don't have obesity problems. Their secret is knowing when to stop. Which brings me back to what I believe the issue is: eating to live and not living to eat. Why can some people not do things in moderation? I strongly believe it's psychological (not necessarily stress related) and typical of certain personality types. For most of my life I've been too thin. Now I'm severly obese. Cannot do anything in moderation. When I like something I want more. When I dislike something I want nothing of it. A good balance would have helped a lot.

My whole life is like this. Having tasted wealth I want to be a billionaire. Nothing less. I smoke 60 cigarettes a day. Why not 20? (let's not go the "why not stopping" even route ). If I taste something I like, I go to hundreds of stores to buy all the stock they've got because I just cannot face being without this thing I like. Luckily it's now legal food for me But you get my drift. An inability to do things in moderation.

I'm not American and never really liked fast food. My problem was chocolates. I simply wasn't satisfied with one. I had to have 15 bars.

When I go to the DVD shop I cannot stick to one movie. I have to get 10 for the weekend.

So, it's a moderation issue IMHO. Being unable to moderate could show a lack of discipline. However, in my professional life I show know signs of discipline problems. Is it perhaps passion? Or even Type A personalities? Not satisfied easily 'cause we want it all?

Most severly stressed people I know are seriously thin, not fat Stress may throw everything out of balance so you struggle to moderate. I.e. you either eat too much or too little, to a point.

I know eating will always be an issue for me. Thank heaven I have discovered this way of life 'cause it certainly makes things a lot easier. But I know I will always have to watch myself. Plan and control non-stop. I.e. it's hard work and it doesn't come naturally. I can only hope that I would be able to do these things in future

Linda

This has definitely been my experience. Volunteering, starting to write again, deciding to take a chance and move cross-country; I got out of the fear and self-pity and back into my life. The food stuff took a backseat and then began to resolve itself.

Life has always been stressful. What would it have been like to be a garment worker in New York in the 1800s? The farther back you go, the harder it gets. How about that crew that built the pyramids? Wonder what sort of stress they had?

What is different now is the widespread availability of food that is not good for us. It is cheap, available everywhere and widely advertised. And we eat too much of it. There is no simple solution. You just have to figure out what works for you and hope and pray it continues working. Good luck to all because it ain't easy.

Wooo,
Thank you for posting such a thought provoking post. It really made me sit back and think here. I agree with so much of what you're saying - about people working too much and not having enough reflection time. Do you know that the average American now works more hours than any other nation (even Japan!)?

I think this is to do with materialism, which seems to be increasing by the day. People are valued by what they OWN (their house, their Ethan Allen furniture, their shiny SUV) rather than who they are. In fact, personalities are becoming defined by what people own... a very savvy ploy by the advertising and marketing industry.

Personally, I believe that the good life is one in which you work doing something you love, and you have a balance between work and "play". If people lived in smaller houses and drove more economical cars, they would not need to work 50+ hours a week to support these spending habits. Really - that's all they are. I used to be a shopaholic, loving the thrill of swiping that credit card for another pile of new clothes. The last year, I haven't had a penny to spare for that kind of spending. You know what? You get used to wearing the same things, and not appearing in the latest fashions.

Once you can break out of this cycle, and allow yourself free time, you begin to create instead of consuming. Your creativity may be writing, painting, homemaking, designing...

I think once you have some inner peace, it's easier to eat in a healthy way. Time after time people post about not doing their "inner work", and regaining all the weight they've worked so hard to lose. In order to do this inner work, I think you need to spend less time working a job.

I know some people enjoy their jobs immensely, and I am not suggesting that all work is wrong. What I do believe is that, if you have a choice, you should never work a job you hate, or even an "ok" job. Of course, people supporting a family often don't have this luxury. If only for those who have no choice, I feel a fierce responsibility as someone who does have a choice to make the most of this life.

Those people were worked to the bone
and burned calories like crazy.

The kind of stress I am talking about
is from worrying about children, bills,
marital relations, the commute and what
the neighbors think, and then too, what the
future may or may not hold. All while working
a 60 hour week.

There is no secret that people in previous
generations worked hard and ate plenty.
But they worked hard physically and burned
up the calories in creating their lives.

While there has always been stress in the world, the amount and availability of 'comfort foods' available to the population as a whole today is unprecedented. It's only been in the past 80 or so years that humans have had the ability to respond to stress by eating and specifically by eating sweet or salty foods.
For example, my dad was born in 1912. For him, an orange at Christmas was a huge extravagance if one that was edible could even be found and candy was only rarely purchased. French fries and potato chips didn't even exist, nor did soda pop. His mother baked, but rarely was it cookies or cakes (maybe for a birthday or special holiday); flour was primarily for making bread, not sweets.

I believe we do have more stress in our world today than they did 100 years ago as well as different types of stress and more constant levels of it; we have noise, air and light pollution (all physical and mental stressors) as well as financial and emotional stressors and many are chronically short on sleep. If watching the evening news doesn't cause you stress, you're of stronger mettle than I.

French actually eat more at home and less out. The food is rich and decadent but they don't eat foa gras, chocolate mousse, and duck confit on a daily basis, lunch sometimes as simple as baget and some cheese. Fresh and good produce is expensive so the cost is always to consider In Europe, especially in France. The eat tons of vegetables and fruits, all seasonal and no one would eat strawberies or tomatoes in winter. We eat what is in front of us, you put a small plate, we wil be satisfied with it. You place a huge plate with food, human being would eat it all. French go out to eat, americans - to socialize.

I would say the opposite is true, French actually are obsessed with food (in a good way), it's almost a religion to them, otherwise, they won't buy fresh produce almost daily or at least 2-3 times a week, from farmer's markets. They do love and know how to cook using wonderful fresh ingridients, making food that is simple, delicious and therefore satisfying. The can also talk about food for hours, and have a very seriuos discussion.They also are very prudent, they knew food scarse and starvation, so nothing goes to waste. Portions are small but they take time to eat (2 hours lunch) and enjoy every bite of food, so you get full way before the lunch is over. They use entire animal from snout to hooves, and don't eat huge portions of meat everyday.
On the other hand, Americans eat to live, so they just grab bag of chips and a can of soda or frozen lunch just to qvench the hunger, so they can return back to work in 30 minutes. People multitask all the time, myself included, they eat in front of computer (guilty of this), while driving, and I even saw folks eating salad off the plate while walking during lunch. Drive-ins, fast food places at every corner, americans are working long hours, commuting to work, coming home late and exhausted, and some with lower income even keep 2 jobs. So it's maximum convinience with minimum nutriotion and this food somehow taste good, once you start on this roller coster it's hard to stop. Once hoooked up on fats and junk food, ppl acquire this taste, which is in reality addiction, to preservatives, additives, and other crap that food manufacturer's don;t want you to know about. You ask ppl why they eat fast food, the answer is: because I crave it, it taste good, cheap and convinient. Isn't it a real eat to live approach?
My DD goes to university with exchange student from France, very cute girl L.. When she just came here and we took her to Costco, she was shocked looking at all this food that was much cheaper and in huge quantities than in France! She was trying to grab few double packs of Nutella (her very favorite) because it was so cheep, LOL and other treats. She also loves bread, cheese and butter.but she was very slim girl when I met her, size 2, despite her love affair with Nutella. Oh, and she does not drive a car either, she walks everywhere. She told me that her maman goes to farmer's market everyday and cooks fresh every day, and they eat at home 90% of the time. She is not from a poor family, so money is not a problem. So that was last September, fast forward to February, and L. is devastated and hysterical, she can't zip any of her disagner pants and gained at least 15 pounds. So she cried for a couple days, eating nothing and chain smoking, and finally went ...shopping for a bigger size. When my DD reminded her : Did I warn you, she said:" I am too lazy to cook and I love pizza and McDonalds, the portions are huge and it taste good" Initially, she could not stomach fast food, but very soon aquired a so called "taste" for it. On a top, she continues eating bread, cheese, butter, and her favorite Nutella. You got the picture? So my point is, it's not physocological that we eat more because we are greedy and don't know when to stop. It's more circumstancial. I've read that in 50-60s a house wife would buy a porterhouse steak for dinner and feed a family of 4, now it's became an individual portion. It's overcompsumtion of food and everything. supersizing, being obsessed with bigger everything: car, house, steak, while not being able to actualy enjoy any of it. We need bigger cars so we could safely and comfortably commute to work - some up to 2 hours one way, bigger house with few TV sets that we leave at dawn and return at dusk, and enjoy mostly on weekends, and a hue steak for dinner that will give us indigestion and insomnia later on. Not because we are so gready but we work hard and don't have much time to enjoy life, so we are trying to buy more and eat more and it gives us some surrogate feeling of satisfaction, while we are exhausted emotionally and physicaly, overworked, overstressed and overweight, and the cycle contrinues....
But can we stop? This is a good question, I wish I knew the answer. Unfortunately, we do have obligations, we are victims of our circumstances: mortgages, car loans and college loans to pay, retirement plans, etc. but we boruhgt it upon ourselves. We can't simply just walk out of our lives ( I wish I could) and the more we have, the harder it gets to simply stop everything. So what to do? I think one step at a time: stop eating fast and junk food, period. Shop more at Farmer's markets and less in supermarket, but locally grown and only seasonal produce and cook from scratch. Make food enjoyable and delicious and serve individual portions smaller, put the rest away and take it for lunch next day. And be obsessed with food like French are: plan ahead because if you don;t , you will grab whatever. Eat like this 90% of the time, and go out on a special occations and while traveling. This is what we do in our family.
My personal dream is to sell my house and quit my job and move to a quite rural area, buy a small shack and grow my vegetables, may be have chickens, and a cople of sheeps. Live a life that we all are born to live, simple and enjoyable. I doubt it is possible but I keep dreaming..It does not hurt to try first, may be not that easy life but defuinetely healthier and less stressfull.
Sorry for a long post, JMHO.
Dina

I've found it extremely useful to cook meals in advance and/or save leftovers. About once a fortnight I cook up a big stew or something, and freeze what I don't eat. Then when I'm really tired I can throw a bowl of frozen stew into the microwave et voila! I'm not organised enough to be really strict about this yet, but I live in hope that I may someday turn into an uber-domestic diva.

I do agree that nurture plays a strong role. Like you I come from a family of addicts and escapists. My father and his father and his father were alcoholics. My mother is a compulsive eater, her mother also prone to addictions. Both my father and my mother's family had gambling problems. All manners of addictions are there. The only substances/behaviors we are free from are the illegal ones, and in an ironic twist of fate, that might only be because we have very little tolerance to social stress so we are introverted (and drugs are usually first introduced socially). OTOH alcohol and food addiction tend to be passed down in the generations first before friends. So the thing that stops us from being drug addicts might actually be contributing to our stress levels and thus need to abuse other more accessable substances. I know if I ever was exposed to drugs earlier it's probably very likely I would have had a problem. Thank god I had food (and then dieting) which are relatively benign in comparison.

So yea there is a lot of nature... in how you tend to deal with stress and how much stress you tend to accumulate. What stresses out one person doesn't bother another.

But I still think our environment has raised the stress level collectively and in a very unnatural way. Yes life then was hard and had challenges. However people just are not free like they were back then. Our lives are so structured and confined and there is so little that is natural or ad lib about the way we live... this itself is highly stressful.

I definitely agree; people need challenges, and, there's nothing wrong with luxuries. I am not saying that it is natural to have no stress (it's not) and that we should be monks with no possession who live simplicity or anything.

The point I was trying to make is that when we get into this mode of living where we lose who we are and are just doing something for some reason all the time... that's not healthy and it stresses us out big time. I think a lot of us are living like that, in a state of relentless unnatural stress with no repreave. We go nuts or do self destructive things to release the pressure.

I mean, maybe this is a stereotype but back in the day I imagine one parent worked 9-5, and, the other tended house. The family had a meal together and there was plenty of time for the things that were important. THEMSELVES. That doesn't exist today. Both parents are working, often in debt, cannot afford what they own nevermind what they are trying to buy, there is no family meal, people barely spend time with each other because everyone is on the go, etc. I do think this business is perceived as stress, and, it is contributing to our collective tendency to abuse food... and the marketability of drug food itself.

Great post.
BTW...as an American...I have always wondered...why are so many of our poor so obese as well?

I agree but I think even when animals over eat, they can regulate their weight in the long runa ssuming no metabolic disease exists.

For example, there is this naturally thin girl I know, I think we *all* know her... if she eats a giant bowl of pasta, a pizza, soda, etc for dinner, she won't gain weight. Why? She has a very high resistance to metabolic disease. That is to say, no matter what or how much she eats, her body still can use energy well. Therefore, over a long term continuum of time, her body will decrease appetite and increase lipolysis as appropriate to conserve a relatively normal weight range. This does not happen for me and for those of us who become obese.

Metabolic diseases are caused by the combination of drug-like, plentiful food and the lifestyle stressors which makes us crave it.

I think eating in moderation is unnatural. It is popular, though, because it is the way we have learned to circumvent the obesity that would result from the combination of food availability and an environment that is a hotbed for metabolic diseases. Unfortunately most people are more like me and not like the thin girl - if we eat whatever we want with abandon we pile on fat like nobody's business and rapidly disintegrate in health.



I don't think it is causing obesity as a phenomena, but, I think it is the reason it is an epidemic. For it to be so *common* today means things are triggering it. It can't just be food availability. For example, you say the rich had obesity - but did the rich look like america? No, most were relatively thin and healthy, although, of course there were a few who were obese because obesity can only exist when food is plentiful (and those were probably just supersensitive to obesity, and, would be even fatter today). Food has not been *scarce* for a period of time well before the obesity epidemic.

This implies to me it is more than food availability that is causing this epidemic of obesity. It is also more than carbs, since people ate plenty of those in the context of plentiful food diets, without an obesity epidemic.
I do think that the combination of food, plus stressful unnatural lifestyles that is really doing it.

I don't see the obesity epidemic correlating with lack of severe poverty (food availability enough to facilitate over eating). What I do see obesity correlating with is the disintegration of our societies, our families, and increasing consumerism with simultaneously decreasing job & wealth creating opportunities.
I also see the demand for substance foods and take out foods increase too, along with the stress.

This is a casual observation of course, I've no facts to support it... but it just seems to me when we REALLY started getting fat is when life started getting less natural and by extension more stressful.

Catalysts (stress, food, individual sensitivities to metabolic disease) -> metabolic state -> long term weight result

Some of us will remain thin even when stressed to the limit and eating an entire order of pasta from olive garden nightly. We will avoid metabolic disease and obesity.
Others become obese at the drop of a hat.
Most of us are in between. It follows, then, that most of us will become increasingly less healthy (which has heaviness as a symptom) the more we expose ourselves to these catalysts such as stress, food (quantity/quality).

I am not saying obesity is a disease of the successful. I'm not saying striving for success causes unhappiness, stress, and obesity. Obviously that's not true - it's a disease of the poor and middle class mostly. But this isn't about success, it is about stress and fulfillment and that's not an absolute relationship. To explain this paradox of why those who are busiest and most successful are often thin: it might be that those who are successful simply can handle stress better and thrive on it, whereas those of us who are more "normal" wilt. They can multitask better and are highly stress resistant.

Also, let's not forget the relationship between stress and food abuse is likewise not absolute.
The existence of stress does not necessarily mean that food abuse will be the choice way to deal with it. We all choose to relieve stress in different ways. In the lower classes it is more acceptable to use food for that purpose. The upper classes which are more image conscious are less likely to abuse food for stress relief - after all using food for this purpose is so pedestrian and common. Ironically, the upper classes are more likely to become compulsive exercisers and dieters for stress relief (there's the anorexic stereotype of the white, overachieving perfect girl for one).

Either way, that successful, very busy people often avoid obesity doesn't invalidate the idea that our stressful lifestyle is contributing to obesity collectively. Most of middle class and lower class people who are struggling to pay for the things they own and want and just working themselves to death are obese.


Fredrick I have to disagree with you on a point here.
I disagree that over eating causes obesity. I think metabolic disease causes obesity, and over eating is but one of many catalysts for metabolic disease in susceptible people. As a person predisposed to obesity I am WELL aware of how my body is different. If "normal people" eat a big meal (over eat), their bodies compensate. They felt full, they burned more energy. They didn't pile on weight. My body did. The more I ate, the hungrier and less satisfied I felt, the lower my energy and more apathetic and lethargic i become. It is such an irony that in the context of carbs, eating LESS can improve my perception of satiety and increase how efficiently my body uses energy...but it's true.

I agree that discipline affects how fat you become, or how much weight you lose when not optimally healthy.
There is probably a strong correlation between weight suppression (stifling the "symptom") and success. Both tend to imply high resistance to stress, or, a sophisticated way of channeling stress (creative thinking, or, natural ability, whatever... both help success). It also shows an ability to bare down and do what it takes (at whatever unpleasant cost) to achieve.

However, I don't think becoming obese is necessarily indicative of failings. I think suppressing obesity is indicative of exceptionally (in ability to tolerate stress, work ethic, dedication, whatever). It doesn't work in reverse, since, it is common today to become obese due to such a high preponderance of catalysts that could cause obesity (extreme stress and food). As anyone can see, obesity is natural and common. Thinness is either unnatural or uncommon depending on who we are talking about.

Thing is Frederick, I didn't do those things and neither did you, but a few exceptional humans did. Most people at the time were average and doing average things, just like today.

Obesity is NOT caused by a lack of willpower and discipline. Failure to suppress obesity ("diet") might be, but, it's ultimately not the source of the problem. It is metabolic disease that causes obesity and weight gain. I know we can suppress weight - that's not what I'm talking about.

What's causing the disease? Why is there a need to suppress weight to begin with?
Like I said earlier, it can't be food, and it can't be willpower deficiencies, because there has been plenty of food and plenty of people over eating AND staying thin over the long term of time, too.

Hi Dina

I lived in Cannes for 7 years. While I agree with some of the points you make, I disagree with the others

Linda