Blaming the Obese

I'm sure everyone has wondered at some point, "Why do people get fat?" I know I have many times. Once was at a baseball game. I was a teenager then, and I was eating a corn dog (a nasty habit I kicked not too long after I stopped using heroin).  I looked over and saw a fat guy who was eating a corn dog, too. His belly was enormous, spilling out of the bottom of his untucked blue polo shirt. He gnawed my corn dog's identical twin from under his baseball cap. I wondered why he was so fat. We ate the same. "He just eats more than me," I figured and went on with my skinny, attractive life. And since I was good looking and normal-sized, I eventually lost my virginity. But this is not letters to Playboy, and I realize I was lucky to not have y poor health show on the outside. I would find out years later what eating the same as that fat guy at the baseball game does to somebody on the inside. It's not pretty. But that is another story for another time.

We are told that obesity is the cause of disease. But what if disease is the cause of obesity?

I'm a fitness professional by trade. My occupation allows me to meet with hundreds of people every year, and find out where their heads are at when it comes to lifestyle, nutrition and exercise. Where is the average person's head? Up their ass, usually. It's not the person's fault, and I don't want to give the impression that it is. I just want to find out what they know. One thing I make sure of is to ask people to walk me through a day in their life, as if they ate and exercised perfectly, just for one day. That way I can see what someone thinks I want to hear. Unfortunately, it's usually not what I want to hear!

My wife shared Peter Attiya's TED video with me yesterday, and I watched it with my jaw on the floor. This video is a great example of exciting new ideas in the health care and health & fitness industries - two fields that traditionally have been separate, but should not be anymore.

Attiya's talk highlights unsuccessful attitudes toward weight loss. Attitudes I see every day from doomed-to-fail gym members who tell me why they are going to do exactly the same thing that didn't help them before. Attitudes I have heard from doctors and trainers and dietitians. No wonder Americans are fat, sick and confused! Not to be a spoiler, but his story about his own health was something that hit home for me. This video should motivate anyone working in health care, fitness, or dietetics to learn more about the obesity epidemic. It is a challenge to everyone to change the way we think, and to question everything we think we know.