Trying to Fix the Wrong Thing

People are desperate to find a solution that will allow them to finally win their battle with obesity, and more and more are turning to weight loss surgery.  Others are looking to the pharmaceutical industry for an answer, hoping and praying for a pill that will enable them to lose weight.   Time and time again, weight loss drugs fail to win FDA approval because clinical trials reveal major health risks, but the drug companies continue their quest to develop the magic pill that will cure obesity.

The problem with both weight loss surgery and diet drugs is that these methods are trying to fix the wrong thing.  Weight loss surgery addresses the issue of obesity by reducing the size of the stomach, with the assumption that if the stomach is smaller, people will feel full with less food and less food will result in weight loss.  Drugs are developed to suppress the appetite, with the expectation that if people aren't hungry, they won't eat and will lose weight.

Both of these approaches assume that the root of overeating is hunger - that if hunger can be better managed, either surgically or chemically, people will eat less and lose weight.

I can't speak for anyone else, but physical hunger had very little to do with my morbid obesity.  In fact, when I started on this program, it had been a long time since I could remember actually being hungry.  I ate for lots of reasons, but being physically hungry was often not one of the reasons.  I was an emotional eater and would often eat until I was numb.  

When we are using food to try and meet our emotional needs, we are trying to fill a bottomless pit.  There isn't a surgery or an appetite suppressant that can fix our heart hunger, which is why a distressing number of individuals who've had weight loss surgery end up gaining much or all of their weight.  The surgery fixed their physical hunger, but it couldn't touch their heart hunger.

If we are going to be successful long term, we have to change how we emotionally relate to food.  For those of us who are long-term emotional eaters, we have to find new and healthier ways to deal with life.   As I've shared so often here, my weight loss journey resulted in unexpected emotional and spiritual growth as I learned to go to the Lord instead of food.  Only God could meet the needs of my heart, and as I gave Him my stress, my anger, my disappointment, I found a comfort and a peace that food was never able to offer.  

Changing emotional eating patterns isn't easy, and it may be one of the most difficult things that some of us ever do.  But it IS possible!  It starts with recognizing the source of our hunger, then being willing to change how we respond and make a difference choice.  Making changes happens one day, one meal, and one choice at a time.  Choose wisely :-)