As I've stated before, I kind of did my weight loss backward. I lost the weight, then sought out community support and read a lot of diet books to help myself keep it off. So I've kept up reading different diet books to see what else is out there. It turns out I'm even luckier than I thought I was, and that maybe my food allergies really were my edge when it came to losing my excess weight.
Daily Kos Weight Loss is a community at Daily Kos dedicated to weight loss, maintenance, and support. As with all communities, trolls are calorie-free and will be munched should they engage with us. Please feel free to jump, jog, skip, dive, or walk in.
I'm certain that most regular DK users are aware that our cities are not, by and large, designed to be "walkable." This is not just an issue when it comes to climate change, but also for our personal health and weight maintenance. However, they aren't designed for our health in a lot of other ways, either. From spotlighting the worst foods for us in sales and end cap displays to our mass media advertising, our environment itself is designed to make us eat the worst possible foods for us. And our government isn't doing much to protect us from it. This is the argument advanced in Dr. Deborah Cohen's new book, A Big Fat Crisis, published by Nation Books (which is associated with The Nation magazine).
Dr. Cohen presents numerous studies showing we aren't as much in charge of our decisions about what, when, and how much to eat as we may think we are, from being unaware when portion sizes are increased to being cued to eat by images of food. The one quibble I have with the book is very personal, and undoubtedly not within the scope of a book written this broadly; it does not include those of us with food-related disabilities, who cannot engage in what some diet books call "mindless" and Dr. Cohen refers to as unconscious eating. While it is perfectly possible to be overweight with food allergies, that condition also helps keep us from some of the unconscious and impulsive decisions that people without our problems can make. Sudden fast-food ad? No impact. Picture of cake? I know I cannot eat it, so it might as well be poison to me.
She also presents studies showing that when we are working hard to make food choices, we have less mental capacity to make other choices. Thus she argues that the government should be working to help us make better choices society-wide, rather than letting food companies almost without limit manipulate us into making bad, "automatic" choices.
After reading her book, I was surprisingly grateful to my food allergies. I think having them has taken me out of the usual unconscious eating mode most people have, and was probably an edge in my successful experience with dieting. (Don't get me wrong; I'd gladly get rid of all of them in a heartbeat, even if it meant I'd have a harder time maintaining my weight.) I was also grateful to my employer, who permits me to do my job standing up and work out while I am at work.
I also have a question for you. How can we work to transform society into one where it's easier to make healthful food choices? Dr. Cohen says we're awash in a "swamp" of food...well, those of you without food allergies are. What could we do to make it a choice between vegetables and fruits, rather than candy and pop?
136 on the scale today. Let's brainstorm and think about how we can make weight loss and good health more available to all.