Underlying issues

One of the reasons I worry about the current anti-obesity movement is this: 25 percent of overweight Americans who have tried to lose weight suffer from binge eating disorder.

25% of overweight Americans who have tried to lose weight suffer from binge eating disorder

Whether this means that BED is triggered by dieting (I'm guessing it is, just like anorexia and bulimia), or whether a significant number of people have high weights due to a mental illness driving their behaviors (sound familiar?) is a question to ponder.

Binge eating disorder is a serious condition and not a problem to be solved by weight loss programs or public shame or amateur advice.

Comments

  1. Thank you.

    That's pretty much my life story.

    And AMEN to that last sentence!!

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  2. I have a different take on this - I think it's so common as to be arguably the norm.

    And no, dieting won't work well, but recreating the world in which this was not a problem will. This means changing work, transport, schools - hard choices. Because the alternative is to sit around waiting for evolution through selective mating to take care of this - and we don't have time.

    But it does need to be conquered, because it's no coincidence that anorexia is on the increase as obesity is. People live in fear of real dangers, and the more real the danger, the more fear.

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