So I got Eric Oliver’s Fat Politics from Amazon on Saturday. I was out quite a bit over the weekend, so only had a chance to skim it last night. Based on what I’ve read so far, I think it has many of the points covered in Paul Campos’ Obesity Myth:

• BMI is terrible as a measure of either fitness or health
• there is very little evidence showing that losing weight improves health; in fact, the
  opposite may well be true–both dieting and being very thin may be far more harmful than being overweight
• the prescription to “eat less and exercise more” is enormously difficult in our culture
• the obesity “epidemic” is a crock
• fat prejudice allows people to feel morally superior

The title I used for this post — canaries in the coal mine — is meant to suggest that we fat folks are a clear sign that something is seriously out of whack.

And I don’t mean our own personal issues. Sure, we all have our demons and our weaknesses, and we need to own our responsibility for our health.

But when more than “60 percent of Americans aged 20 years and older are overweight” (emphasis mine), you don’t just have a lot of weak-willed people. It’s more shades of Ben Franklin’s definition of insanity: doing the same thing (dieting) over and over and expecting different results.

So yes, this may be reaching epidemic proportions. The question is what kind of epidemic?

Fat Politics looks at this very issue, and makes the strong case that the obesity “epidemic” is “fueled more by social prejudice, bureaucratic politics, and industry profit than by scientific fact.” Worse, Oliver makes the same point as Campos, and suggests that the “cure” is a lot more harmful than the “disease.”

I have jumped all over the book, and so this isn’t really meant to be a coherent review. Instead, it’s really more of a collection of highlights I found particularly interesting. Such as:

Judging someone’s health by how much they weigh is like judging a camel by how much water it has in its hump–in conditions of privation, our extra weight, just like the water, may be exactly what we need to survive. … The problem arises from the interaction between these adaptive mechanisms and our current environment. In other words, we are suddenly like camels who find themselves living in a rain forest–we are in a situation for which we are ill adapted.

One very interesting theory in the book is that much of America’s obesity problem is likely related to the relatively recent phenomenon of snacking. According to Oliver, despite claims about huge portions and high-cal McMeals, in general, we aren’t eating that many more calories at meals. It’s the between-meal snacking–and what we snack on–that is a huge problem.

In fact, he suggests that driving may be less of a problem from the physical activity perspective, and more of a problem from the additional time it allow us to snack (both at home and behind the wheel).

Here’s an interesting highlight re snacking:

Herein likes the dilemma we face with regard to our diet. On one hand, free-market forces are changing the nature of food production, giving us more highly saturated snacks that have psychotropic properties. On the other hand, the very elements in the food that give them their psychological power (refined carbohydrates and fats) also wreak havoc on our bloodstream. … [Our] bodies are not well equipped to handle large amounts of refined carbohydrates, salts, and fats. Snack foods are creating a conflict between satisfying our individual desires and maintaining our health. Because many snack foods play a dual role of both nutrient and opiate, they pose a new and thorny problem. By their convenience and solitary consumption, they allow for the individualized pursuit of happiness, something we hold to be extremely important; with their refined carbohydrates and trans fats, they act like a drug and may be at the root of many health pathologies.

Re the physical activity front, Oliver notes that our lack of activity is more of a health problem. He notes that our resting metabolism accounts for the majority of our daily calorie expenditure, and the fact that food is much more calorie dense than exercise can account for. He also notes that looking to the Amish for physical activity inspiration may be less than helpful:

The fact that the Amish are thin and healthy is not simply because they exercise so much but because they have embraced a rigid, illiberal behavioral code that greatly restricts their range of behaviors. … It is the very lack of freedom that keeps them healthy, well fed, and thin.

Ah, good stuff. But it’s not all goodness for me. Here’s how the book closes:

The best way we can begin to solve the obesity epidemic is not by trying to get everyone to lose weight, but by no longer making weight a subject of official concern.

Hmmm. I grant the point that it is not our weight, per se, that is the problem: there can be heavy fit people and thin unhealthy people. But…that said, given that the real problem (from a health perspective) is a crappy diet and lack of activity, our weight (read: being fat) is a pretty darn good marker that one, as an individual, has a health problem.

In other words, yes Virginia, it’s not your weight that’s the problem, it’s your health. Alas, both authors are at a bit of a loss re next steps. My read of the above is pretty much, “we can’t change it, so let’s accept it.” Okay, maybe I’m being unfair. Maybe it’s more that we need to change the way society views obesity before we can put the attention on the real problem.

Well, sure, but.

Just ’cause I’m reasonably on track (for now) doesn’t mean I want to turn into one of those “I just quit smoking and I’ve become anal-retentive about it” kind of evangelists. But neither am I prepared to throw up my hands with a “you can’t fight city hall” kind of resignation about it either.

Here’s a thought. Maybe there is another way. Maybe we can take inspiration from the Dalai Lama. I heard him speak yesterday, and was intrigued by his idea of “internal disarmament.” He said that it was unlikely that leaders would turn away from war and toward global peace until there was a support for such a change from the grass roots. And thus, our initial efforts should be towards changing ourselves first (this is the same strategy Deepak Chopra suggests).

Perhaps it’s tacky to compare the two (the struggle to end war and the struggle against obesity), yet considering the parallels is compelling to me. If you read more about Chopra’s ideas, the underlying concept is personal transformation. To me, this suggests that to be really successful going against the flow, we need something more than a diet or a way of sitting with our feelings. We need to transform ourselves internally so that we are no longer complicit in the act of hating ourselves while we stuff ourselves with food.

Fat Politics and The Obesity Myth do a good job of pointing out why diets really and truly just don’t work. The question is, what does?

I don’t have the answer, though I believe that it has to do with a much more holistic look at what we does that considers what we eat, how we feel, and our level of faith (the “do I think the universe is friendly?” question, not a specific religious faith).

In other words, “eat less, exercise more” isn’t the answer. But what if we could get to “get right, eat right, exercise right, live right” as a plan?

I am very aware that just saying no to crappy foods seems foreign, ridiculously hard, and needlessly ascetic. Hey, American consumerism is a mighty machine.

Yet I remain optimistic that there is a way to transform oneself so that these choices aren’t hard. It’s the premise of the book Working on Yourself Doesn’t Work, which alas, pretty much just says that transformation must happen, but doesn’t give you any useful clues about how to make it happen. It’s also pretty much the theme of Eckhart Tolle’s new book, A New Earth.

I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I may have made just such a transformation. Alas, now I feel like I’m there, but if you asked me how I got here, I couldn’t tell you. And so when people say “gee, you’re doing well, how have you lost the weight?” I say I cut out junk food. Well, that’s true, but there’s so much more. I wish I could explain it better. I’ll keep trying!