a message of hope and possibility for the obese

[0rganism]

42. "how to not rely on will power but choice"

that is the most important change i felt after a few weeks on the diet

imho, you're absolutely right about "Big Food" as you call it. i feel like we've all been played for fools as our society promoted and pushed a fundamentally unhealthy - but profitable - lifestyle on us. as a result, the vast majority of us have built-in eating disorders.

i found this to be a handy thought/real experiment: suppose i'm hungry and before me there is a simple bowl of salad large enough for a full meal that i could eat. by salad, i mean just chopped up plants, perfectly ripe and wholesome, no dressings or whatnot. and i consider eating this salad for dinner. the inner dialog i have with respect to reasons why not to eat such a meal is like having a direct phone conversation with my eating disorder.

conversely, flip it around. in addition to the salad, consider a plate of your favorite food right there next to it. a cheeseburger, a pizza , a ham and cheese panino, whatever. the inner dialog pushing you to eat the non-salad rather than the salad is also the eating disorder in action.

we did not evolve to eat such dense animal-based food, yet it is presented as part of a completely normal diet by our society. bodies do not function like that. you can't just roll with "henceforth, i will eat only tree bark" and expect to maintain health. you have to eat the food we evolved to eat. would you demand that your housecat eat cabbage? no? then why require yourself to eat things that are neither filling nor nutritious? that's our cultural eating disorder in action.

i think the first step for me to overcome it was eating plants to the point of fullness. the potato is an easy starting point -- i challenge you to eat more than 2 potatoes (remember, no additives, just the cooked potato, skin and all) at a sitting. eat potatoes until your stomach is absolutely full. after you are no longer hungry you'll be in a prime position to choose what you eat. you will get beyond a point of needing will power for this, as you will no longer crave additional food to fill the gaps in your stomach.

and beyond that point lies a whole new world of choice. you'll see the food for what it is, and you can decide for yourself. i found it to be incredibly easy once i got past the hunger element -- actually, once i removed my instinctive cravings from the food selection process, the rest fell into place almost immediately. when viewing the food dispassionately, it becomes transparently obvious which food is natural for our species' consumption vs. that which is only established as a dietary norm through extensive cultural conditioning.

that said, i would also observe that for all the shortcomings of the food supply and the associated cultural norms, it has never been easier to acquire a large quantity of healthy plant-based foods. i have never felt more full for longer after a meal.