Before 2013 obesity was a description. In 2013 the AMA voted to consider it a disease instead. The reason that they did it, of course, is that thirty percent of Americans are obese and doctors across the nation wanted to be able to bill your insurance for talking about it. Now that it’s a disease, it’s a new revenue stream. Why should only the Dean Ornishes of the world get to cash in on the ballooning waistline of the US?

Back in 1997 the AMA also voted to lower the cutoff for people being overweight from a BMI of 28 to 25 . This made a whole lot more people overweight. A very large number of new customers.

This would actually be good news, if the doctors of America had something new to add to the fight against fat, but, alas, they do not. They are going to get busy dreaming up better ways to make your stomach smaller, or ways to wire your mouth shut, or pills that will make your food pass through you without dissolving. Who knows what kinds of methods they will come up with to let you keep eating exactly what you are eating right now. The idea for US medicine tends towards maintaining your illness rather than curing it, especially for things like diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure and ‘cholesterol’.

The basis for the advice the average doctor is going to give you will be based on ‘energy in, energy out’, which is not really why people gain weight. It is possible to lose weight if you starve yourself, but you cannot live your whole life starving yourself. A person never really gets used to that. Once you start eating like you used to you are going to gain weight like you used to. The problem is not how much, but what.

Until the medical community regains it’s senses and starts to advise that people who gain weight when they eat carbs to stop eating carbs, like they used to, the business of dispensing treatments for obesity will be the ATM that never stops dispensing. Until science definitively  figures out why some people can eat a thing and not gain weight, while another person can eat the same thing and put on pounds, we are going to be stuck on a continuous loop of fasting and gaining. Until the medical community gets the stones to speak up against the food industry and blame processed foods for food illnesses we will just be treating and managing symptoms of the problem. The cause is the food, the solution is to stop eating it.

If we take the profit out of processed foods they will quit making them for us. If we eat real local foods they will quit shipping imitation foods. If we stop participating in the failed system, the system will change to be what we want and need. If your doctor says ‘eat less’ get a new doctor. If your doctor says ‘get surgery’, get a new doctor. If your doctor doesn’t advise you that eating sweets and starches is making you fatter then he doesn’t know as much as he should. You should look around for a more informed medical professional, or just begin treating yourself.

Stop eating processed foods–nothing from a box, bag or bottle. Drink water, unsweetened tea and coffee only. Eat real meat that comes from a real farm, nothing that was confined and just fed whatever feed was cheapest. You will cure yourself without pills, surgery, or starvation. Thank me later.