Divide and Conquer

By Eileen O'Grady, PhD, RN

Eileen T. O’Grady Phd, RN, NP

More Weight Control, Nutrition & Exercise Articles

Divide and Conquer

A Pearl Of Wisdom On Being Hungry For Something

The overweight epidemic continues to skyrocket, with more than 2/3 of us overweight. Most of us are unhappy with unwanted pounds and it has a profound deleterious effect on our health and wellbeing. A recent report from the Institute of Medicine suggests that in the US, unless a clear intention is set, you will become obese simply by the food environment we are all surrounded by. So we turn to one of the more than 2,504 diet books on the market and spend more than $40 billion dollars a year on weight loss. The claims in these books are too numerous to count, and often fail us in weight loss.

What I have gleaned in working with people who want to lose weight is that each person's reason for being overweight is very different. The diet books don't work because the diet books address the authors reasons for excess weight, not ours.

What I know to be true is that if we are eating for any reason other than physical hunger, we will never be thin. We may be hungry for something else, and if this is the case, that (emotional) hunger must be addressed first and foremost.

It is never due to gluttony or lack of willpower, we are using food as a proxy for an unfulfilled or unspecified need, a hunger. Occasionally it is due to habits that support overeating such as restricting calories during the day then bingeing at night, or not eating enough protein to create lasting satiety.
If we divide and conquer any self-defeating behavior, and expose the truth of why we are engaging in it, we can begin to diagnose the problem and then develop a remedy to match it.

So, if you want to take pounds off, ask yourself why you are overweight. Finding a solution to this truth is how we apply the divide and conquer technique to banishing self-defeating patterns.