New Book Finds That Obesity is Not One’s Fault

I was scanning today’s medical news on medicalnewstoday.com and came across an article posted today about a new book written by award winning health authors Mannie Barling and Ashley Brooks. According to their statistics they found that two-thirds of American adults are in fact overweight. Barling and Brooks try to create a “sane approach for better healthy” by answering the biggest question for those who have dieted and failed. The question they attempt to answer is “Are you addicted to chemical food ingredients or is the addiction just in your mind?”

Obviously knowing the credibility of the authors is important and luckily for us the writer of this article gives us just that. I don’t know about you, but I like to know the legitimacy of the information I get. I’ll start by giving you a little background on Barling.

Emanuel Barling, Jr., is a retired lawyer, a businessman, obviously an author and a colocrectal cancer survivor. Crohn’s Disease and IBD. Just like those he is reaching out to in his book he too has suffered from weight and obesity caused by prescription drugs, food allergies and having issues with chemicals that are common and constantly found in food from the grocery store, restaurants and fast food places as well. The thing that I thought was really cool was that Barling has been researching information for this book for 13 years.

Ashley F. Brooks, is a R.N., actress/model and an author now. Brooks has survived third stage liver, kidney and pancreatic disease that was caused partially because of genetically modified ingredients and addictive chemicals commonly found in packaged foods. Brooks who has spent most of her life trying to control her weight because of her acting and modeling career has obviously been exposed and tried every possible fad diet. Due to her medical background Brooks has experience and knowledge in nutritional, holistic and environmental medicines. Dr. Theron Randolph, founder of environmental medicine was who Brooks studied under so she shares his expertise in this book.

Now that we know we can trust these writers and that they should know what they’re talking about I’ll tell you a little bit about the book (well at least what this article says because in all honesty I haven’t read the book).

This is there fourth book and it is entitled “It’s Not Your Fault, Weight Gain, Obesity and Food Addiction. They describe the causes of food craving, overeating and food addiction. The authors also talk about dangerous and addictive chemicals that food manufacturers use. These chemicals cause the compulsive and even obsessive eating that is in fact the cause of today’s obesity statistics.

Overeating to the point of being obese is the leading addiction problem in the United States, that surpasses tobacco addictions and alcohol as well. America has the highest obesity rates in the entire world.

"Americans did not get fat overnight nor did some mosquito spread a deadly virus that causes obesity," said Barling and Brooks.

One person who has read this book said that they were able to lose a whopping 80 pounds and another person claims to have lost 20 pounds and they say they are still losing more.
"I'm having great fun already with the book. Fascinating read. And extremely informative. I'm appalled at the extent of my ignorance." - Barbara Paskin, BBC.

If you would like to read this article in its entirety you can do so by clicking on it here. Is this book something you would consider reading? Do you think that reading stuff like this helps you to lose weight or not? I read somewhere that when you are trying to lose weight you should read about it so that you are constantly thinking about it. In my case I’m writing a blog and researching health and weight loss everyday, so I guess I could certainly say from my POV (point of view) yes I think it helps, but I love to get your opinions on this. Let me know how you feel about it.

My family and I are doing our Christmas get together today and instead of doing a dinner or lunch they have decided to just have snack foods, which could be good because that means I can eat something healthy beforehand. The problem is that there is more than likely going to be lots of dessert around which I’ll have to try to stand firm to resist. Wish me luck lol!

Scary Scales

Today will be an interesting day. I have not been home since Tuesday which means I haven't been on a scale since then. That makes me nervous. I should make it home by around 3 today and I'm actually scared to step on the scale. I think by far, the hardest thing about dieting is not being able to be at your home. When you are staying with someone you don't seem to have as much control over what you are eating and when. At least I can say that is a problem that I am faced with. I don't want to hurt people's feelings or make them feel put out by my diet, but I also realize that this is probably one of the reason's that I have put on so much weight over the years.

Unlike many overweight people I was not always a big person. In fact when I was younger I was so thin that the doctors had my mother put me on an eat diet. Most larger people that I've spoken to say that this is something that they have dealt with since childhood, that just wasn't me. Puberty is definitely when weight became an issue for me (or so I thought). I remember freaking out because I was a size 7 (which I would kill to be now). I started getting curves and filling out in places I never had before. Funny thing people (boys particularly) liked these curves because I was getting them in the right places, but I was not happy about them. I thought boobs made me look fat and hips and a J.LO booty were not going to get me into a size 0.

This is one of the points in my life where the weight became an issue. As disscussed in a previous blog there were some things that occured in my life that were unwarented which assisted in my lead to demise, but that wasn't the only problem. I screwed my metabolism up like crazy. I wanted to be anorexic. What kind of mindset is that. Crazy right? I know now and even knew then that it is a disease, but I didn't care. I wanted to be skinny. I would go days without eating and weeks with eating a very small ammount then I would splurge and eat tons of food. Then throw it all up. It was a vicious cycle, but all of my friends were thin and beautiful and I wanted to look like them.

Then I moved and food became a reward almost to myself. I would splurge on junk food because I was alone and nobody was there to tell me otherwise. I hated the way I looked, but really and truly I hated myself. For many reasons. Middle school is when weight became a problem. I would fluctate from a size 10 to a size 14 and trust me it is no fun trying to shop at junior stores when you are a 14. I went back and forth between these sizes from 7th grade all the way until my freshmen year of college.

Something crazy happened my freshmen year and I dropped a whopping 50 pounds. Everyone else was packing on that freshmen 15 and I had found a way to lose weight. I was happy and that was probably part of the transition but for the first time in my life I had control. I controled what I ate and when I ate it and being a control freak I liked having that kind of power. I kept most of that weight off until the end of my sophmore year.

That was a crazy year. I went through a heart-wrenching break up and thought I would never live again (you know the type, very dramatic).  My best friend wasn't my best friend anymore and she didn't want to have anything to do with me (sure we had problems, but childish people who had nothing going on in their lives only further perpetuated these problems by making up stories that never happened and basically lying about everything). One of my other best friends and I really drifted apart and I felt very alone. The weight slowly started to creep back on, but by no means had I blown up to what I had been.

My junior year I started eating out more and that was not kind to my waiste line. I also had my big kid birthday....21st. Which is when I found Ned's my favorite watering hole (not just in Tahlequah, but in the world). Not that I went and got sloshed everytime I went, there were lots of water and or Dr. Pepper nights, but I did enjoy being there. That's where everyone else was and I wanted to be there with my friends and all of the cute boys...lol (at that time there was one in particular that hung out there often and I just knew that if he saw me there we would have more of a chance of talking and then he would find out that he liked me and then he would want to date me). Sad story, but a true one. I thought that this guy was "it", you know what I mean and for the first time in a long time I liked someone who I thought had a future. He was not only gorgeous he was smart, a hard worker and extremely driven. No I didn't just go to the bar to be seen by him, I also went to be social. I wasn't one of those girls who's only incentive for having a night on the town was to meet guys, mine was to be social.

In fact the summer that I interned in Tulsa, I would drive straight from my internship to Ned's just to hang out with my friends. Then I found the 57 T-bird, which I'm sure can be blamed for a few pounds that I put on my body, but really the weight gain didn't really become noticeable to me until my senior year of college, which was by far the most stressful year of my life (at that time). I was working a couple of jobs and trying to plan for my future. I drank more my senior year than before and I was drinking beer because it was cheap, I also was sleeping the bare minimum of what any one person should sleep. My newspaper job was high stress and there was mass ammounts of imbalance in my life. I started going to the gym with one of my friends and instead of gaining weight (which I would have) I lost some weight and at the very least stayed consistant instead of gaining.

Then grad school happened and this is where it all went downhill. I was alone all the time, stressed out and depressed and I woke up one day looked at my body and felt truly uncomfortable in my own skin. I had pooches where I never had before. In a very short ammount of time I had become fatter than I had ever been in my entire life. Again I hated myself. This is one of the reasons I decided I needed the change. I'm a positive person who's full of life and EXTREMELY Social. I need and love to be around people. I got to the point last year where I was so disgusted with myself that I didn't want to get out of bed because I was embarassed. I didn't want people to see what I had become. I didn't know who I was anymore. Obviously change was needed.

I am mad at myself for not speaking up and drawing some lines this week, but I didn't want to make anyone else uncomfortable. I just have to keep reminding myself that I can be thin, I can like the skin I live in and most importantly I can do this. I fear the scale, but if I step on it and don't like what I see I'm just going to have to be that much more hardcore. I also am very nervous because my surgery is in the morning and I know that I won't be able to be very active for a couple of weeks so I'm going to brainstorm about what I can do to keep on track, once I've come up with some things I will tell you...if you have any ideas please throw them my way.