Let's begin by acknowledging that you are where you are because of your choices and decisions. No one made these choices for you but you. If you are successful, it's because you made the choices that brought you success. It's important to acknowledge that we are a product of our good and bad choices. For example, if a bad choice caused you to make corrections in your life and turn things around, then your success is due in part to the bad choice as much as the good choice. We all know of someone that came upon hard times only to find themselves years later living a much better life as a result of those hard times. Bad choices don't always lead to good outcomes. 
 
Many have chosen a life of crime and will be paying for that choice for the rest of their life. We all know that choices can be good or bad, but when it comes to being unhealthy or overweight, most people don't like to acknowledge that their problem was self created. If your weight is at a place you don't want it to ! be, the real question I need to ask you is what are you willing do change about your choices and decisions to get what you say you want? For many people that have been battling the bulge for years, they feel helpless and hopeless over their ability to change. To compound matters there are those that will tell you being overweight is not your fault. It's an addiction to food and what you are suffering from is a disease. And there has been a recent movement in America to use the "addiction model" and apply it to obesity. In essence, as the theory goes, you are "sick" and therefore not responsible for your actions. The only cure for your illness is to follow the overeater's anonymous credo, go to meetings and admit that you are powerless over food.

After working in the field of nutrition for the last 23 years, I can honestly tell you that I've heard every excuse imaginable regarding a person's inability to change a pattern of behavior. I can't cook. I don't like to exercise. I don't have time. I'm addicted to chocolate. And the ever famous, I'm addicted to Coke. I'm not referring to the powdered kind, but rather the beverage. What's so interesting about all of these excuses is that to the person using them, it all seems so rational and in their mind. Causing the person to feel that their ability to change these situations is insurmountable and can't be done without outside help. As a clinician, it's my job to offer solutions to help the client find a new way of viewing the problem that will make the process of change easier. Yet, in many cases when I offer advice, it's as if I'm talking to a brick layer that starts layering the bricks on top of each other so fast that before I know it there's a wall standing between me! and the client. It's obvious that people who express a conscious desire to change, unconsciously hold on to behaviors that will stand in their way and stop them from changing. And that's their choice. In this day and age more and more people are accepting the view that their behavior is something they are not in control of, or that their situation is totally out of control. Hence, "I work long hours," "I don't have time," and so on and so on. I do respect each person's view that life is hard, and with the desire to be successful comes a lot of responsibility. But I'm not so sure that you have to exclude taking care of yourself at the expense of being successful. In fact, I contend that no matter how much money you make, if your health is eroding at the expense of becoming successful you are a failure regardless of how much money you have.

I have a very unpopular way of viewing problems and I always get flak for saying this to my clients. It has always been my contention that whatever problem you have with your weight and food is by-product of a series of choices you've made. Noting more and nothing less. Whenever I present this viewpoint in public I always hear from clients of Overeaters Anonymous that like to argue with me that addiction to food isn't any different than an addiction to drugs or alcohol. And I strongly disagree. By assuming the addiction model, people are saying that they are helpless and powerless over food. If we want to use the addiction model than it would be better to say that people are addicted to their way of doing things. Maybe we need to establish clinics that treat not cooking as an addiction to eating out. Or take the position that not exercising is an addiction to laziness. Or how about developing a treatment program for people that take on more than they should and can't say no! . We'll call it yes anonymous. 

What I have found after years of counseling people with weight issues is that in every case their problem was created from their own choices. Not a metabolic problem, not an addiction to food, and definitely not anything outside of their control. The problem is created by the choices they make and the unwillingness to make different choices. I don't mean to imply that change is always an easy choice. And I'm not denying that people don't have problems. Yet, millions of overweight people have overcome their obesity without any professional help, treatment or drugs. Amazingly, when you interview them on how they did it, they often state that they simply made a decision to do it. A choice to begin doing the things they were unwilling to do before. 

When someone chooses to have their stomach stapled, it forces them to eat such a small quantity of food that weight loss is inevitable. Eating the wrong food makes them sick and gives them unpleasant side effects. Yet, these are the same people that tried every diet known to man and were unable to lose weight. Feeling in many ways that their weight was a result of a slow metabolism, not the amount of food they ate. So if it was a metabolic problem, why did surgery work when it simply forced them to eat less? The overweight person would content that they had no willpower over food and that eating right or less was impossible. 

I see a lot of people that try various diets and weight loss plans that end up frustrated because they didn't achieve success. What they don't seem to understand is that each attempt, they should learn certain things that do work. The key is to learn what works and throw out that which doesn't. So that over time as each attempt is made you continue to accumulate information and actions that build upon each other so that you end up developing a program that works for you.

Is food an addiction? If you want to use the addictive model and assume that being overweight is beyond your control, then you have to also acknowledge that if bad addictions exist, so do good addictions. Addictions can be good or bad. So if one chooses to be addicted to exercise, eating right, not drinking or smoking, then one can choose to not exercise, not eat right and to drink or smoke. The bottom line is that the choice on what you want to become addicted to is yours to make, good or bad. Then again, I have to wonder if food addiction is real, then maybe some people are addicted to dieting? 

What I have found more pervasive that a food addiction is that the person has developed a ritual that is tied to a bad outcome. The ritual is comfortable, easy to continue and hard to break. For example, I spoke to a client that once weighed 160 pounds. Today she weighs about 100 pounds. I asked her to look back on her weight history and to tell me how her weight problem evolved. She stated that it all started because she loved to play computer games. She would connect via the internet and with her headset be able to play against several people at the same time. They could talk to each other and respond by speaking into their microphone that was attached to their headsets. She looked so forward to getting home after work that she zipped to the grocery store, bought chips, candy, sodas and whatever else she wanted to eat. She situated all the junk food around her chair, settled in and immediately started playing her games. It wasn't uncommon for her to play from 5 PM to 3 A! M and at times she told me she would stay up all night on weekends playing games. The exhilaration of playing the game, while munching on food became intertwined. And the association was slowly created between munching and playing. Since she always munched while she played, how could she separate the exhilaration of playing from eating. Her eating junk food got so out of control that she felt as though she had become a junk food addict. Consequently, her weight ballooned, leaving her constantly feeling bad about her appearance, the way her clothes fit and everything that comes along with being overweight. Yet, the ritual she developed was hard to break. She had repeated the act of playing games and eating so often that the action had become the highlight of her day.

Then I asked her to tell me how she made the shift from being 160 pounds to 100 pounds and to describe what she did that allowed her to change so drastically. The response was really simple, she said, "I quit playing computer games and replaced going home and playing my games with going to the gym and working out." Do you see what took place in her example? I don't think she was addicted to junk food, but rather she developed a ritual that gave her joy and made her feel good even though the ritual ultimately left her feeling worse. When she identified the ritual and replaced it with a different ritual, she lost her weight and overcame the problem. From this example, I think we can see that we have a choice between choosing a good ritual or a bad ritual. Yet, most people don't care to look at the rituals they created, instead they turn inward and ask questions like "what's wrong with me? Why can't I have more control? Why can't I have more willpower?" In most cases there's nothing inherently wrong with you except that you may not see the ritual you created and the unwillingness you have to change it. It feels good to go to the Italian restaurant to eat garlic bread, lasagna, wine and dessert after work. But, if you associate that with too much pleasure, and do it often, be careful because you may be on your way to creating a ritualistic pattern. Those types of patterns can be difficult to break because we associate the behavior with pleasure and relaxation. That's not an addiction; it's a ritual that can only be changed by identifying the pattern and replacing it with another pattern that reverses the problem.