Obesity is probably the most important current health  problem of our society.  It results from many factors and tends to be extremely difficult to change.

In our society it is difficult to learn to eat correctly and to not overeat.  Food is everywhere.  It is difficult to avoid passing pop machines, racks of candy bars,  snack foods, pastry shops, and so forth.  Fast food shops are everywhere selling products consisting mainly of meat, grease, bread, head “lettuce”, french fries, sugar, cheese, pastries, ”soft drinks”,  ….  Small restaurants providing somewhat balanced meals are honored more by memory than by availability.

I’m a pharmacist.  During the sixties and early seventies I was a graduate student and (eventually with a couple of courses} taught myself computer programming.  I worked as a self-styled consultant to the blossoming researchers who need someone to help with the design of experiments, data collection, and data processing to allow them to study what they meant to study without being totally swamped with the procedural aspects of the exercise.  So I became a pretty good statistician, multivariate analyst, and offered other activities related to carrying out research.  When the government found it urgent to burn down southeast Asia the money for research disappeared into support of another of the country’s worthless wars and I could no longer earn a living.  I was 37.  I considered what I could do.  I found I could become a pharmacist in two years by taking more than full time work to finish the degree in two years.  When I entered pharmacy school I had already come to consider myself a failure and was simply looking for some way to have a job.  Unlike most people going into pharmacy I had no illusions of being some kind of great contributor to a wonderful health care system.  I simply wanted a job.  I did have some illusions of learning some worthwhile things and being of help to people.  Those illusions were proven inaccurate while I did find other things to see as being helpful to people.  Doing something worthwhile in my life has actually always been of more consequence than making money.  What I have found is that I have great difficulty in finding anything to do that is worthwhile in the sense I always hoped to find.

In recent years the size of portions served in restaurants seems to me to have increased by a large factor so that even if one starts out to have a wholesome meal, it is easy to eat too much if you are a person who has trouble not eating the whole meal and knows that taking home the extra will result in it sitting around until it is thrown away.   School meals which should be models of good nutrition have become in many places just another outlet for an assortment of  junk foods.

In many — perhaps most — homes all the adults work and none of them has time to spend in the kitchen preparing “home-cooked meals”.

There is a very large BUT:  A great deal is known about food, food preparation, food contaminants, ways of selecting and preparing foods so as to reduce if not eliminate the health threats of eating and make it possible to have food and eating assume their natural role of maintaining health rather than their present role which too often is simply the creation and maintenance of disease.

The basic reality of eating is that it is apparently necessary to maintain life.  A second basic reality is that most food readily available to most of us fulfills that basic role only marginally and while doing so, and in conjunction with what is consumed for beveragtes and the effects of tobacco consumption and lack of exercise an so forth,  creates most of what we call disease  including most of the so-called diseases of aging.  The diseases of aging result from a lifetime of consuming the things that do not readily maintain health and do readily accumulate to the point of causing disease(s) which we attribute to aging.  The food, drink, and tobacco consumption cause the symptoms of aging.  Perhaps some day someone will find a path to making life eternal and eternally welcome.  That hasn’t happened but what is known is that following proper diet, not using tobacco, finding accptable ways to obtain enough exercise, and related things that do not have to condemn the person to life of misery in trying to maintain health make it possible to live a healthy life for much longer than is possible for most people today without the necessity of consuming chemicals which help one live more-or-less normally by managing the symptoms caused by the diseases resulting from lifestyle.

Lack of exercise is another factor in disease creation.  We are organisms that had to be physically active to survive but have created a society where little physical activity is required in our daily lives.  Rather than being a part of necessary daily activities, physical activity has become something that we must do on purpose.  In my case, I go to a fitness center and use the equipment.  I dislike doing so and make it more acceptable by always having things to read as I use the elliptical machine, bicycle, etc.  I have also gotten a kayak and a bicycle which I try to use when I can.  But I am pretty old.  I tend to fall of the bicycle and have skinned legs and knees and sor shoulders.  When I use the kayak I tend to fall in the water attempting to get in and out of the boat but paddling it is sort of fun.

How can one keep from becoming obese and how does one reverse the process once it occurs?  We grow up being taught to eat wrong.  Partly because of historical factors which have transformed natural apetites that served to maintain life into ones that destroy health and wellness.  And partly because of the never-ending barrage of advertising persuading us to eat what amounts to garbage.

There are many people teaching their favorite methods of maintaining or losing weight.  Some of them will work if they are followed but the structure of the lives of most people in this society make it unlikely that such routines will be followed.  But a great deal is known about what foods or food types lead to disease and which ones help to avoid disease.  It seems to me that the important things are to try to learn about foods, try new things, try to alter the notion of what tastes good , and gradually change ones diet to one tha tis more healthy.  This process is not one for which it is possible to draw a map or map a list of what to eat for every meal.  It is one that requires the effort to learn what is healthful and what is not, try new things, incorporate those new things into the diet a little at a time.

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I have been working on this a little at a time for months.  I will publish it to the blog but I will add more to it later.