Rants and raves about burning topics that have caught my attention midweek, be it greedy corporate shenanigans, frustration or joy in regards to the Philly sports teams, a movie or DVD that has fired up my imagination, an intriguing personality, or my on-going battle to lose weight in our fast food world. — Lori Hoffman, Associate Editor, Atlantic City Weekly

In my first Hump Day Report for this blog on April 22, I talked about my lifelong struggle with obesity, about my attempt to stem the tide with a weight loss surgery, a gastric lapband procedure, and the fact that I have lately been putting on weight again. I tried the Diabetes Detour diet for six weeks. I liked the diet but I was still not losing any weight.
When you’ve been doing all the right things with diet and exercise and you are still not losing weight, you go from frustration, to anger to despair to my current state, WTF. I’m eating what I want, when I want and screw the exercise. I wish I was not spinning out of control, but I really needed a break from doing the right thing, especially since doing the right thing was getting me exactly nowhere.
Well, that’s not completely true. According to my latest blood work, my cholesterol and triglyceride levels are good and I’m controlling my diabetes without medication. My A1c is 6.6. So there’s that on the plus side.
Right now I’m trying to reverse my tailspin with a little light reading. One night while watching Bill Maher on HBO, I found a guest on the show, Dr. David Kessler, intriguing. The former FDA commissioner, who reinvented the food label and tackled the tobacco industry, he has now turned his attention to why obesity is out of control in America. His book, The End of Overeating, dives into how sugar, fat and salt are dominating our food choices and rewiring our brains to want even more.
Right now, early on in ready the book, I’m feeling sorry for all the rats and monkeys that are being forced to eat like people — bad food that makes them crave more bad food — until they are given the drugs that curb drug addicts. That slows them down. I haven’t even gotten to the chapters on how the food industry knows what we want and are making sure we get it even though it is literally killing us prematurely. For bonus info on the food industry I’m going to check out the acclaimed documentary, Food, Inc. opening Friday at the Frank Theatres Towne 16. Of course the reason I wanted to read the book were the sections  about fighting the bad food impulse. These include “The Theory of Treatment,” “Food Rehab” and “The End of Overeating.”
I’ll get back to you with a complete report, hopefully without getting any cherry cheesecake crumbs on the pages.

Tags: Bill Maher, Dr. David Kessler, gastric Lapband, The End of Overeating

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 1st, 2009 at 2:31 pm and is filed under Health Issues, Hump Day Report. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.