A Treatment Program
for Chronic Dieters
and Compulsive Overeaters
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Overeating: Body, Mind, and Culture
How one metabolizes food changes as a result of significant weight gain. Many who are overweight (and many in our clinic) have gradually developed a condition called "Insulin Resistance Syndrome" (IRS), which has become epidemic in modern American society. Obesity is now the number one preventable cause of illness and death in our society, surpassing smoking for this "honor" in 2004. Medical research has shown that this condition (IRS) impedes weight loss, and in advanced cases, makes losing weight nearly impossible. IRS causes the body to down-regulate its basal metabolic rate and to store fat more easily. As if that weren't enough, this condition also causes one to crave fats, sugars, and salt, (junk food), and to crave these things IN VOLUME. IRS is real, is potent, and it underlies the physiologic struggle so many people have with "controlling" their cravings. The Behind the Mirror Program takes seriously the metabolic changes that happen as a result of chronic overeating and repeated attempts at dieting. We carefully educate people with respect to simple changes they can make in order to reverse the progression of Insulin Resistance Syndrome-- making healthy food choices and establishing effective, maintainable exercise programs.
The other problem we deal with is psychological-how participants have come to use food to provide something important for them in their day-to-day existence. We have come to know that people who "use" food most often have profoundly good reasons for doing so--for needing a consistent, reliable source of nurturance and consolation. Those needs have to be understood and addressed directly in order for any real change to occur.
Furthermore, participants in our program have told us that food holds a kind of "spell" over them. They have come to know by experience that "diets" represent only a short-term solution. They have found that no matter how successful they are at complying with a dietary regimen, they eventually find themselves reverting back to their pre-diet patterns. Some individuals are quite clearly addicted to food. They feel taken over by the "food addict" inside that says, "Go ahead, why don't you have whatever you want to eat tonight, it doesn't matter - we'll start dieting tomorrow." This is a voice that is so powerful that it seduces an individual into a habit of overeating, a habit that tends to spin out-of-control. These patients tell us that they think about food and weight all day long-an isolating, shameful kind of inner torment. The solution for such an addiction does not lie in following a prescribed diet. It lies in discovering the internal strength to fight back against the addiction and to begin to make real choices-a process that takes much work, much support, and adequate time.
Our culture tends to view overweight compulsive-overeaters as weak and undisciplined, a group of people who "just" need to eat less and exercise more. The truth is our culture creates food addiction.
The processed food industry takes the foods that nature offers us and does a "makeover." They super-infuse fats, sugars, and salts into otherwise perfectly healthful food products, transforming them from foods that satisfy into foods that entice. We as naïve consumers take regular advantage of our convenience foods, all the while transforming our metabolisms into sweet and fat-craving machines.
A visitor from Japan once innocently asked our program founder, "How do you grow them so big here?" Our media provides us with an endless stream of images and messages about weight loss programs, but it doesn't occur to us as consumers to stop and wonder how so many people came to need such weight reduction programs in the first place.
In addition, we as a culture view being overweight as a sign of characterological weakness. We say to our anorexics and bulimics, "You must have a psychological problem that requires treatment." We say to our overweight compulsive-overeaters " Just eat less and exercise more."
Through the work in our program, we seek to educate the general public as to the complexity and depth of the problems inherent to many chronic dieters and compulsive overeaters. In the dual grip of the American food and American diet industry, we see people who are stuck between the Scylla of complying to a diet and the Charybdis of asserting their own desires (going off the diet)-- effectively going absolutely nowhere. This on-again, off-again approach to the problem provides only temporary hope and long-term despair.
Our Staff
Overeating:
Body, Mind,
and
Culture
Signs and Symptoms
Recommended Reading
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