It is perhaps, therefore, not all that unexpected when study after study (let alone your own experience) shows that the simplistic formula: “eat less – move more” is so disappointingly ineffective in either preventing or treating excess weight.
Yet, health professionals, decision makers and the general public continue to believe that obesity is simply a matter of “choice”, or in other words, people struggling with excess weight are simply making the wrong choices.
Let us for a minute assume that “lifestyle” truly is a major determinant of weight gain (and let us simply ignore the vast body of research on genetics, imprinting, fetal programming, environmental toxins, gut bugs, adipogenic adenoviruses, activated hypothalamic-pituitary adrenal axes, mood and anxiety disorders, addictions, attention deficit, abuse, emotional neglect, poor body image, obesogenic medications and the many other well-documented causes of obesity), then the question remains how much of lifestyle is truly simply a matter of “choice”.
How many of us simply chose sedentary jobs that keep us in front of a computer all day, simply chose to live in neighbourhoods with no sidewalks, simply chose to work in jobs where we earn so little that the only food we can afford to feed our family is crap, simply chose to live so far from work that we face daily hour-long commutes that leave little time for recreational activity (let alone enough sleep), chose to work rather than stay home so we can be around to fix a healthy meal from scratch in time for when the kids come home from school, simply chose to drive a car rather than spend our money on the 5-9 daily servings of fruits and vegetables for everyone in our family, simply chose to have a TV in the house that streams endless hours of advertising to our children, simply chose to drive our kids to school rather than let them cross those five busy intersections, simply chose to live in a country where the government subsidizes corn and meat producers rather than fruit and vegetables growers, etc, etc, etc?
We should demand new policies to fight against this obesgenic environment that we do not chose if we really want to cease the increase of the obese epidemic.
Source: Arya M. Sharma, MD
