Weight Limits

If you want to lose weight – and the reasons for doing so are described in detail elsewhere in today’s edition – you will hear that it is simple: Take in more calories than you burn and you gain weight; burn more than you take in and you lose. But if you have tried to diet armed only with this understanding, you have learned that it is not so simple.

No one walks into the kitchen one morning and decides to become obese. There is first a history with eating certain foods and all things associated with eating those foods. There is an emotional state of mind and a perception of self. There are cheap excuses and a few legitimate ones for not paying more attention to diet and exercise. There are rip-off diets that promise impossible results, others that require zealotry to follow and the valleys and peaks of weight. Bookstores have shelves full of diet tomes – tens of thousands of pages – urging the hopeful toward what is supposedly the simple balance of calories in vs. calories out.

Twenty-one percent of Mainers are obese, a number that has risen significantly over the last generation. The state hasn’t had a major influx of people with the genetic tendency toward weight gain: too many of its residents eat too much – too much fat and sugar – and move, either through physical labor or exercise, too little.

Portions are larger now, work is more sedentary, families are less likely to sit down to nutritious dinners and more likely to grab something on the run, the number of children with Type 2 diabetes has increased. This information has been much commented upon for the last six or eight years and doctors who follow these trends have been trying to address them for a lot longer. If there is a difference now it is that the high overall cost of health care has driven the people who pay for it – most often employers or the government – to look for savings. Obesity-related illnesses cost $357 million a year in Maine, according to one study.

Fortunately, there are small steps anyone wishing to lose weight can take. A lot of small steps. The Healthy Maine Partnerships lists a bunch of them. For instance, “Talk to your children about limiting unhealthy foods such as fast food and junk food. Put the focus on health, not on appearance, to avoid extreme dieting and an obsession with body weight.” Good advice.

Changing from unhealthy, inactive living to being healthy and active requires you to change your life not just for four or six months but permanently. But you aren’t going to remake your life because it will save someone else insurance costs, and if you try to drop weight just to please others you may be disappointed with the result. Do it for yourself. Examine carefully why you took on the excess weight, or have an expert help you examine it, and then, because you don’t want to make disliking your body a defining part of your life, skip the cookies and try a short walk instead.