Weight Loss
The Worst Addiction Ever: Part 1
What is the addiction that is more difficult to manage and overcome than heroin, cocaine, speed or alcohol?
What addiction has a 95% recovery failure rate?
What highly addictive substance appears daily in the lives of every single American?
What addiction kills over 100,000 Americans every year?
What is the fastest growing addiction among American children and teenagers?
What addiction produces billions of dollars in health care costs every year?
And finally, what addiction is the most obvious and prevalent addiction in America and yet remains, like the elephant in the living room, invisible and unnamed?
The most deadly of addictions, the addiction most pervasive in American society, is food addiction. Yes, I said, food addiction. Food addiction as the central cause of obesity is killing America and tragically, almost no diet experts and/or diet programs are exploring real and meaningful solutions.
I am convinced that there are two central reasons for this difficulty.
- Most diet experts/programs appear to be more interested in profits than solutions. Yes, there are many programs that actually produce weight loss. However, all weight loss experts know an unspoken and sad truth: 95% of weight-challenged (obese) individuals fail at long-term (2 years or more) weight loss. Why are we not told this? Simple. Why look for long-term solutions when customers are continually returning, desperate for more weight loss tools and techniques?
- Most diet experts/programs actually have no clue, not the slightest idea, about the real and essential causes of either weight gain or sustainable, healthy, long-term weight loss. My experience with individuals and programs in this industry indicates that most of them don’t know and don’t care.
This combination of ignorance and profiteering leaves us weight-challenged individuals almost entirely on our own. With few exceptions (such as 12 step programs), we are left to face the difficulties of food addiction by ourselves.
If we are ever to find a path through and out of the dark forest of food addiction, we must learn to look beneath the simplistic solutions offered to us by the weight loss industry. The answers, the real answers, lie within us. They have something to do with need and pain and deprivation and loss and fear of life.
We must learn to face and embrace these dark images and explore the lessons and ultimately the hope that they bring us. Once this is done, we may begin to see the path to the light and the way to real recovery.
In my next article on Food Addiction and Obesity, I will include my 12-question checklist, HOW TO TELL IF YOU ARE A FOOD ADDICT.
[Ed. note: Dr. Matthew Anderson is an author (The Prayer Diet), counselor and national columnist/expert on weight loss, motivation, self-management and relationships. To purchase his powerful and cutting edge 1 hour CD, The Worst Addiction Ever, click here.]
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Tags: addiction, alcohol, food addiction
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