What if you found a lump on the side of your neck?  What would you do? You’d probably go to the doctor and have it checked out.  What if, like my mother, you got a diagnosis of non-Hodgkins lymphoma? Let’s say that, with treatment, you could live a normal life.  Without treatment, your quality of life would steadily decrease until you died prematurely.  What would your next step be? Would you educate yourself about your disease, seek treatment and fight for your life? Or would you do nothing and die?

Last week, I saw a report stating that, although total US obesity rates are leveling off, extreme obesity levels are rising among both adults and children.  Children.  I found it interesting that the report discussed “extreme obesity.”  We used to call that “morbid obesity” – morbid, like going to die.  Now it’s “extreme” like some kind of gravity-defying snowboard or bike sport.  I’m not going to use the new term.  As a woman who was once a frog’s hair away from the classification, I’m going to stick with morbid.  We are killing ourselves and calling it by another word doesn’t change that. Obesity is treatable.  Why do we treat terminal cancer more aggressively than we treat curable obesity?

Why do we do nothing?

I went shopping this weekend and at one time had five pedestrians in my view.  Four of them were a minimum of 60 pounds overweight.  That’s not morbidly obese; but, it’s still obese and it was four out of the five.  You can’t even get that percentage of dentists together to agree on recommending sugar-free chewing gum!  I watched those pedestrians and I thought about our society’s cavalier attitude regarding our collective suicide by dinner fork. We don’t even think about it, do we?

Until I changed my eating habits, I certainly didn’t.  Now, I cannot even go into all-you-can-eat buffet restaurants.  I see people in those places that literally cannot fit into a single chair.  They sit down with multiple plates of food and they eat it all. They feel like garbage and they believe that is just how it is.  Perhaps that’s how it is, but it’s not how it has to be.  As a society, we feel bad, we function poorly and we don’t even wonder about it.  We don’t try to find a cause and we certainly don’t make the connection that it’s what’s we’re putting in our mouths. We just pop another pill and grab another burger.

According to the CDC, 35.7% of American adults are obese (having a BMI of 30 or higher).  17% of children are. That’s 78 million adults and 12.5 million children – and that’s not considering the number of us that are just straight up overweight – these are just the obese.  By way of comparison, according to the American Cancer Society, cancer prevalence in the US is at 12.5 million.

We fear cancer. We insure against it. We raise money for research to cure it.  And we should; but, what are we doing about obesity? We don’t have to research for a cure – we have one.  Education!  So, why are we not teaching ourselves and our children about nutrition?  Why are we so unconcerned about a completely avoidable condition?

What if we were dying?  90.5 million of us are.

When I was obese, I was sick.  All the time.  Seriously, I was at the doctor’s office a minimum of twice a month.  I was tired. I was dizzy. My knees hurt. My sinuses were infected. My lungs were clogged.  I had a hangnail.  I didn’t have Münchausen Syndrome really; however, I did use my health to get attention, if only from myself. Feeling poorly gave me an excuse not to exercise.  It gave me an excuse to lay around. It gave me an excuse.  Period.

I used my ailments like a get out of jail free card to avoid doing things I didn’t want to do.  Eventually, I was imprisoned in a body that didn’t function properly because I wasn’t taking care of it.  Ironic, yes? It was a hideous and ridiculous cycle!  I have no clue how I, a reasonably intelligent human being, didn’t see it.  I didn’t make the connection – probably because I just really didn’t want to.

I am regularly amazed at the things I don’t see just because I don’t want to. I literally cringed reading He’s Just Not That Into You.  There were things in the book that were obscenely obvious to any idiot; but, this idiot managed to miss them.  He didn’t call? He’s wasn’t struggling with his feelings for me – he didn’t have any.  Same thing with food.  That greasy slug feeling every time I ate pizza?  Hello! It was the pizza. That faint feeling about 90 minutes after eating a candy bar? Hello! Sugar spike and dip from the chocolate!  It’s not rocket science here.

Um…tell me again why it took 46 years for me to make the connection between dairy and chest congestion? Industrial strength rose-colored glasses, that’s why!

This week, I was involved in a speculative discussion about the causes of fibromyalgia, ADD, and other diseases that were exotic 30 years ago; but, common as ticks on a hound now.  One participant in the conversation asserted that it was our food.  Our food is the cause of all of these issues. This same person has fibromyalgia and a pretty serious commitment to Captain Crunch.  Again, ironic, yes?

There’s a solid way to find out: the scientific method.  Hey, it worked for me on the yogurt thing!  If we eat whole foods without dyes, preservatives, additives and whatever else is in the kitchen sink, and we see decreases in diseases, then, voila! Question answered and all of us have to remove our rose colored glasses.

In that case, the solution is simultaneously elegantly simple and torturously difficult.  Stop eating the garbage.  I changed my diet two years ago and I have not been to the doctor for illness not one time since.  Not once. Even if we don’t know that our food is poisoning us, we suspect it strongly.  What would we do if we strongly suspected that a coworker was poisoning our coffee? We’d stop drinking the coffee, that’s what!

So, why are all the drive-thru lines still long at lunchtime and the doctors’ waiting rooms still packed?

Quick! How many almonds in a serving? What’s a serving of peanut butter? How big is a serving of pasta? How much wood could a woodchuck….. oh, wait.  Scratch that last one.

23 almonds are in a serving.  Two tablespoons make one serving of peanut butter.  And 1/2 cup of cooked pasta is all you get in a serving.  In those items are 160 calories for almonds, 188 calories for peanut butter and 212 calories in the pasta.

I bring all of this up as a result of a conversation the other day with a friend who said that she really doesn’t eat very much.  She’s a little puzzled as to why she weighs what she does.  To be honest, I was the same way.  I generally ate about 550 calories over the course of my work day.  Not bad except that I usually consumed them in the form of a Snickers bar.  But, still, it was all I ate all day and the count itself wasn’t that bad.  How could I have weighed so much?

Dinnertime, that’s how.

When I started keeping a food diary, I was startled, horrified and embarrassed at how much I ate in a single sitting.  My nighttime meals, often the only real one I had on any given day, were ranging up to and sometimes even over 1500 calories in a single sitting.  How in the world do you do that, you might ask.  Easily, I would answer.

A plate of spaghetti (or about 1.5 cups of noodles) is 636 calories, add another 70 for a cup of canned sauce, another 73 for an ounce of ground beef added to the sauce, another 140 for a single slice of garlic Texas toast (but you’ll probably need another half slice to sop of the rest of the sauce) and you’ve got a meal with 989 calories.  For dessert, let’s go with 1 cup of Ben & Jerry’s Phish Food.  That’s another 420.  Okay, so that’s only 1409.  I exaggerated….a little.  I could easily eat 1400 calories.  In a single sitting. RIGHT BEFORE BEDTIME.  That’s more calories that I now eat in an entire day!  Friends, nothing good will come from that.

The tools in my kitchen that get washed the most are my measuring instruments – spoons, cups and scale.  There are some foods that I can sort of “eyeball” a single serving of.  The problem with eyeballing and ballparking is that my eyeballs and ballparks both get bigger and, before I know it, that half cup of pasta is an overflowing whole cup.  I can’t control my calorie, carb, fat or whatever else intake if I don’t know what I’m eating.  And, to really know what I’m eating, I have to measure it.  In a pinch, I use the palm of my hand to guesstimate a serving size.  That works when I’m eating out or am a guest in someone’s home and I want to watch my manners in the hopes of being invited back.  I’ve found that if I get too weird or high-maintenance at the dinner table, my phone number gets lost.  Quickly.

It’s a nuisance, to be sure; however, it’s absolutely necessary if I am going to really know what I am putting in my body. If I’m not vigilant, I gain weight, lose energy and lose my way.  Having traveled this reduction road now more than once, I know how hard it is.  With this vigilance, I won’t have to do it again.

As I’ve shared with you before, dairy and my system are in a constant combative state.  Milk and soft cheeses have always produced an, um, unattractive result with my digestive tract. For whatever reason, though, hard cheeses, yogurt and fat free dairy didn’t create such a violent reaction; so, I thought I was fine to eat those.

Wrong. (Ever notice how often I say that?)

I haven’t eaten much yogurt lately – not by design, I just haven’t bought it.  Well, a couple of weeks ago, I walked to the grocery store at lunch and got a container of it.  That afternoon, I noticed that I had kind of a smokers’ cough.  (See Rick Harrison in Pawn Stars.) I thought that was a little interesting, but let it go.  A few days later, I ate another container and could feel the congestion when I breathed.  Hmmm.  Once is a fluke.  Twice is a coincidence.  Would it happen three times? Would it be established as a pattern?

I know you’re sitting on pins and needles at this point; so, I’m just going to go ahead and tell you, yes.  Yes, it did become a pattern.

I ate some fat-free, no sugar added yogurt this morning.  It was blueberry – my favorite – and very tasty.  I coughed  and had to clear my throat throughout a 9 AM training meeting.  Rats.  So, no more dairy for me.

Several years ago, I spent a huge amount of time (and money) with several doctors, including pulmonologists, because of a fourteen day cycle I was on.  Every two weeks, I would be unable to breathe.  With each cough (more of a bark, really), I felt like my bronchi were sticking together.  I felt like I was suffocating; but, I sounded like I was practicing to become the new seal act at Sea World. Breathing was exhausting.  Then, after three days, it would clear up.  Two weeks later, it would start again.  I now wonder how much my diet played into the cycle.  Just so you know, I won’t revert to that size or diet for ANY gain in scientific knowledge.  That one is just gonna have to remain a mystery.

For my aunt Judy, it’s bread that makes her cough.  For my sister, bread makes her knees hurt.  For me, dairy is the great saboteur.  What might it be for you?

My sister spoke with her orthopedist this week about food and joint inflammation.  While he could not confirm that food allergies contributed to pain (saying that the science isn’t there yet), he couldn’t refute it, either.  The anecdotal evidence is too strong.  His advice?  If it’s working for you, keep doing it.  If removing wheat from your diet makes you feel better, get your grains some other way.  If dairy is a killer, find other sources of protein and calcium.  There are other sources for those macro and micro-nutrients.  Find them.  For the sake of your body, your health and to cure yourself of the crankypants syndrome chronic pain induces – find them.

The other night, my son and I watched some show called Supermarket Superstars that, frankly, set my blood to boiling.  The idea behind the show is to take a home cook’s idea into the supermarket.  The episode we saw was in the “health food” category.  The contestants were: 1. a protein bar made with cricket flour, 2. a “healthy” alternative to apple pie called an apple bomb, and 3. gluten-free (thus “healthy”) whoopie pies.

Are. You. Kidding. Me.

The protein bar was loaded with honey and nut butter in addition to high quality protein.  The apple bomb was, in fact, a calorie bomb.  The whoopie pies were actually gluten free but LOADED with sugar.  I’d have to know more about the cricket bar to comment on it; but, as far as I could see, these last two contestants might have been healthier than, say, a spoonful of lard dipped in corn syrup.  However, they were lighter on the “healthy” part than we should accept as consumers.

I’m going to share a personal belief that you may find scandalous; so, hold on.  I believe that the food industry is lying to us. They are boxing up pre-made Frankenfood and are telling us that it is Healthy (usually in bright letters, too).  It’s a healthy choice, a smart option, low fat, low carb, low sodium, no trans-fat, no palm oil, all natural, etc., etc., etc.

It’s a lie.

Any packaged food item other than honey with shelf life of several years is unnatural.  You can bet that if your bread doesn’t mold after a few days, then it’s just like Joan Rivers – it’s got lots of parts that just ain’t found in nature. I don’t care what the package says: that is not good for us.

Milk should spoil. Vegetables should rot. Meat should go off.  These are organic substances and the natural progression of their life cycles involves an end.

Today’s chips don’t go stale. Canned vegetables last forever.  Jarred sauces can be left as a legacy.  And we have more cancer, more food sensitivity, more celiac disease, higher rates of infertility, ADD, diabetes, hypertension, obesity, etc.  Direct link?  Well, I can’t prove it; but, I’d say the circumstantial evidence is fairly overwhelming.  I’m pretty sure Perry Mason would take the case.

Here’s what I think: it’s not the front of the package that matters.  It’s the back.  All the misleading health claims in the world will be exploded when we just read the ingredient list: partially hydrogenated, corn syrup, sugar, salt, monosodium glutamate.  Watch words on any container.

What’s the back of your can look like?