Self-Image: Self-esteem Vs Self-Compassion

This TEDx talk by Dr Kristen Neff is perhaps the best talk on the complex area of self-esteem that I have come across. I believe that self-compassion is the next big evolution in psychological interventions.

So often a lack of self-compassion sits behind problems people have with overeating as they use food to fill a void that, not surprisingly, cannot be filled with food.

Kristen Neff breaks self-compassion down to three components:

• Self kindness - we often say worst things to ourselves than we would say to people we dislike!
• Common humanity - where self-esteem asks ‘How am I better than others?’, self-compassion asks ‘How am I the same as others?’ Imperfection is the ultimate, perfectly normal shared human experience.
• Mindfulness - being aware of the moment when we become  self-critical so we can shift into a more self-compassionate mode.

Finally, she speaks on how we think being critical is a way to motivate others, as well as ourselves. In reality it increases the likelihood of not even trying, of giving up, as we want to avoid the pain of being criticised again. This is the ‘Failure Fear’ that I wrote about in Weight Loss for Food Lovers.

She has some really cool tools for increasing self-compassion on her website here.

As promised here is the link so you can download The Way of The Quest for free just over this weekend. You will need an account with Amazon and, if you do not have a Kindle, you will need to download a Kindle reader here so you can read it on your iPhone/smartphone/iPad/tablet/computer/fridgedoor

Feel free to share this email with your friends and family. All I ask in return is that anyone who reads it takes the time to put a review up on Amazon.

Here is the link – I hope you enjoy it and would love to hear your feedback.

It has been a while coming as we had to finalise the Australian publishing for the book. It is now sorted and every good bookstore should be able to order it in! To launch the book in Australia, this weekend for Mother’s Day, we are going to make it free on Amazon Kindle – just for two days. While it can only be downloaded for free over this period it can then be read anytime -not bad given that the paperback will cost you $24.95.

What’s the catch?

Okay, there is a catch. After reading the book I would like you to put an honest review up on Amazon. It doesn’t have to be all-glowing and gushing – indeed the more balanced and thoughtful the better.

Watch your inbox and I will let you know when the free period begins. If you haven’t subscribed to this site already, to get the reminder, or if you want to suggest a friend subscribes, do so now (see the box in the right hand column).

Don’t Have a Kindle?

That’s okay, you can read Kindle books on your iPhone/Smartphone, iPad/tablet or computer click here for the link to download the reader and then, if you haven’t already, open a free account with Amazon.

The Greeks, when someone died, asked one question: Did he live with passion? This week just passed, I attended the funeral of a close friend of more than 30 years who suicided last week under the influence of the most severe, treatment-resistant depression I have ever come across. This was part of a larger, complicated condition of Bipolar Disorder.

More so than other funerals, this one reminded me of the how much confronting death is about confronting living life to the fullest, living with passion. It prompts me to write about something that a number of my patients have asked me to expand on recently i.e. a values-based way of life.

Under the influence of pop psychology, married to a world focussed on material need, people often settle into to a goal-focussed way of life. In turn this leads to a highly problematic imbalance in people’s lives, that typically mean less time for health, partners, family and friends. Pursuing goals like ‘financial security’, owning your home, or ‘being successful’, create the backdrop for the imbalance.

Success to me is this: living by your values and having the wherewithal to pursue your meaning and purpose in life.

A values-based approach is mutually exclusive with an imbalanced way of life. When you live your day and your week around the value, for example, of ensuring you spend time with partners, children or other loved ones, imbalance cannot co-exist. If imbalance does persist, by definition, you are not living a values-based way of life and either you do not really value your purported values, or you need to revisit them and make adjustments accordingly.

My very young-at-heart, old friend did live life fully, in between his bouts of depression. He lived to love and to laugh, spending much time with his children, his beloved wife and friends. He loved his work and using his formidable intellect to solve complex business challenges which he approached with great integrity. This was his legacy as he inspired those around him to live a values-based life.

When his mental illness deprived him of all these things he loved – the expression of his values, the exercise of his intellect – it was too great a loss for him to bear. His devoted wife, his loving children, his brother, his parents and his many friends, remember a husband, a father, a brother, a son, and a friend who, indeed, lived with passion.

I was recently asked (again) about the research into the power of exercise when it comes to weight loss, so I dug through my research files for the single best research article I could find. These experiments can often be more meaningful than meta-studies that are contaminated by poorly designed studies. As my regular readers know, exercise and weight loss do not have the expected relationship. Don’t get me wrong exercise is important when it comes to cardiovascular fitness and for managing stress, depression and anxiety – indeed these emotional benefits, for me, are its real power. But when people exercise to lose weight they often do not realise how little benefit they are getting for so, so, sooo much work! From a psychological perspective the issue is that people exercising to lose weight drain their precious motivation, which often comes in spectacularly limited amounts in the first place.

There are not many studies that look at the effect of exercise alone in the absence of dietary change. Why is this study, The Midwest Exercise Trial by Joseph Donnelly et al, (full reference below), is the best study I have seen? First, they actually supervised the exercise in the gym so we know it happened and how it happened. Often when I present this kind of evidence Personal Trainer-types argue, ‘But they obviously didn’t keep it up’ or ‘They were doing it wrong’. Second, it runs over a long term i.e. 16 months. Third, it was goodly amount of exercise at 5 days a week, 45minutes duration and intense enough (mostly treadmill workouts) to burn at least 400Cals per session – all of this more than most people can achieve when they head to the gym. Fourth, 74 people completed the study which is a large study group for this kind of research. Of course, it was randomised with a control group.

So what happened? Well for women, pretty much nothing when it comes to weight loss. After 16 months of hard work, and I quote, ‘Women in the exercise group maintained baseline weight, body mass index, and fat mass.’ This is an optimistic way of saying they not only lost no weight at all, but no fat either – which is perhaps the bigger surprise. As I explain in Weight Loss for Food Lovers there are a number of reasons for this, but the main one is that people are hungrier and feel justified in eating afterwards. It is just so easy to eat an extra 400Cals and not even realise it.

Men lost an average of 5kg which is more than most studies – but this still works out to losing around just over 0.3kg per month. We can easily achieve a 5-fold better response with a good energy intake plan (that of course does not create any emotional deprivation). There are more good studies that show similar results, but if I had to pick just one this would be it. Exercise is important, but people need to tackle this challenge before or after they plan to lose weight, not at the same time. It is just too much to ask of most people.

I recently had a wise man graduate from group therapy. He was always wise. All I did was remind him of who he was. In his final notes (a part of the right of passage) for the group he spoke of how when he came into therapy he worked 80 to 90 hours a

week – today he works less than 50. And he now earns 2.5 times what he did when he came into therapy. Much more importantly he is a much better husband and father. His marriage has a richness and a level of intimacy that was unknown to him – he had not seen anything like it in his family of origin.

This man’s dyslexia did not stop him from becoming a quietly successful senior executive, nor did it stop him from typing five pages of eloquent notes that summarised his life-changing journey. There were many gems, but i want to share this ode to men by  Jacqueline Marie Griffiths that he gave us:

The strength of a man

The strength of a man isn’t seen in the width of his shoulders.
It’s in the width of his arms that encircle you.

The strength of a man isn’t in the deep tone of his voice.
It’s in the gentle words he whispers.

The strength of a man isn’t how many buddies he has.
It’s how good a buddy he is with his kids.

The strength of a man isn’t in how respected he is at work.
It’s in how respected he is at home.

The strength of a man isn’t in how hard he hits.
It’s in how tender he touches.

The strength of a man isn’t in the hair on his chest.
It’s in his heart, that lies within his chest.

The strength of a man isn’t how many women he’s loved.
It’s in being true to one woman.

The strength of a man isn’t in the weight he can lift.
It’s in the burdens he can carry.

Yep, that’s Yoda. Okay, not the most recognised of psychological muses in the world, but there is a wisdom here. I never really got into Star Wars. It was just not my thing, which meant I did not pay that much attention – which made it all too confusing. I was never sure who the Empire was – if they were good guys or bad guys – I think Luke was on the other side. And then the prequel arrived and we learnt that our favourite bad guy started out as a good guy. But I always had a soft spot for Yoda – the Jedi knight trainer.

George Lucas wrote Yoda’s oft quoted words of wisdom (yes, there are websites just of his quotes) and has proven he was well qualified to do so. He has become a force to be reckoned with (small pun intended) as few writers and filmmakers have equalled his success which includes the creation of the Indiana Jones franchise as well as the Star Wars … empire.

For me, psychotherapy is simply accelerated personal growth. Fixing the problem that brings people into therapy is just the beginning for me. My main job is fixing the dynamics that allowed the problem to flourish. Many problems grow in the void of meaninglessness. Like choking out weeds by watering and fertilising a lawn, pursuing one’s meaning and purpose in life will choke out many problems in life that will otherwise happily grow in their place. To do this I tap into the power of becoming who my patient was meant to be.

There is no force I can harness greater than the power of allowing one’s ‘potential person’ to come out and reign. This is the beginning of authoring one’s life. My greatest nemesis in this work with people is fear. People fear all sort of things – from change, to failure, to success. Or their fears may be more specific like, ‘If I do that he will reject me,’ or ‘If I speak up I might lose my job.’ In weight management, so often they are fears like, ‘If I lose weight, I will have a relationship – relationships are dangerous,’ or ‘If I can lose weight, people will expect more from me.’

Finding the courage to overcome our fears is, of course, the challenge. While there are many ways in therapy that I work to mobilise someone’s courage, naming their fear very specifically is the first step. Once a person knows precisely what they fear, surprisingly frequently, this is enough. It is as if people say to themselves, ‘Now I know you, I’m not going to let you hold me back from what is my right.’ This is the most healthy part of our Ego as it says, ‘You can’t beat me. I deserve more.’

Whenever something is holding you back, start by naming it. For the clinicians who read my blog, when you are stuck in your work with someone, go looking for the fear behind it. Once you find it, elaborate and tease out the fear in all its glory. Once this is done, then I will leave my patient with a thought like this: ‘Remind yourself that this is the fear that stops you from doing what you need to do. Wait for the time you find the courage to confront it – it will come.’

It is as if the courage of personal growth inevitably grows over time, once it has a target. I think it is fed by the feeling of letting ourselves down – but only for as long as this awareness lives in our consciousness.  This is the key for me – holding our fears in our consciousness – resisting the powerful drive to forget them. By not naming our fear, it remains undefined and thereby elusive and the ‘courage-growth’ process cannot even begin.

Maybe Yoda would have put it this way: Grow over time, inevitably your courage will, once focussed it is.

I recently had a fascinating session with one of my particularly capable and articulate patients last week. She has been in therapy with me for a couple of years over which time I have seen her through a diagnosis of cancer and subsequent surgery, losing her job and rebuilding her career, and several relationships. She had a problem with me. She explained how in a prior session she had come in and told me about a work plan she had and how I ‘arrogantly’ explained why it wouldn’t work and how we needed to stick to the career strategy we had already decided upon – a position I took based on my intimate understanding of her particular dynamics. ‘You were right, I could not fault what you said. I knew that you knew me and didn’t need to hear it again – but I was feeling vulnerable and wanted to be heard and I felt you were not there for me.’

I asked if she recalled that earlier in her therapy – and when she had seen me work with newer patients in group therapy – I was much more likely to do what she was looking for? Read more »

I just had a patient telling me how when it came to working out what next to do in her life to make it more fulfilling, ‘What to eat next?’ Was a much simpler question! She realised as we delved deeper, that the much bigger question of: ‘What am I here in this life to do?’ was too overwhelming. Like most people, she found this question too confronting, and wanted to be rid of it for a much simpler, easier question. What to eat next? also takes us to immediate gratification of our needs – hence its power.

From this you can see why I say that my next book The Way of The Quest (out in Australia very soon) is the sequel to Food Lovers. For people where food is the most important and meaningful part of their day, we need to wheel out the big guns to take food on. Finding what is meaningful for us, and pursuing the purpose informed by this meaning, is one of the few forces that can compete with the enormous power of food. We can’t take food away from people, in the hope of losing weight, when it ranks so highly in their life, unless we bring in the bigger power of finding our meaning and purpose in this existence.

At the risk of over-stretching the metaphor – the trick is to break the otherwise overwhelming task of finding our meaning and purpose down into bite-size chunks. In this way we can compete with the much easier question of ‘What to eat next.” More on how to do this later.

Following on from my last post on love languages let me take this subject further and introduce one of my favourite experts in this space. When it comes to having a rewarding, happy relationship there are several key ingredients – as you are about to hear, they apply to children as well as to partners. I don’t think I have heard, in the space of under an hour, all of them summarised in such an engaging way as they are delivered, in the gentle, witty, dulcet tones of Professor Wally Goddard. This is a man of true relationship wisdom and I suggest you listen to him more than once – as have I.

Can I also suggest you listen out for the following:

• Bids for Connection – and how we unintentionally bust them
• The Conspiracy of Nature – “No matter who you marry, it is a person who does not want to be loved the way you like to show love.” Same goes for your children.
• “Many of our aches and pains are an expression of our hearts not our body – it’s not a slice of pie that we need, it’s a slice of Dad or Mum.”

And then there is his definition of love – slightly different from mine – but only in emphasis: “Love is the reasoned commitment to act in the best interests of another person … we need to do homework and adjust our lives to accommodate those that we love. Something as dear as love should not be cheaply won.”

Click here to listen: Wally Goddard Part 1; Wally Goddard Part 2.

When wanting to introduce new efficiencies on his production line, Henry Ford apparently would have the ‘laziest’ man in that section brought to him to implement the new measure. When questioned, he explained, “The laziest man will work out the best way to get the desired result for the least effort – that makes him the most valuable man in the section to me.”

Often I see a partner who decides, for a variety of reasons (from relationship going well to relationship going badly) to really put in some work in to let their partner know they are loved and appreciated. Unless they understand and have worked out their partner’s language of love their efforts, sadly, often go completely wasted. Worse than this, they are less inclined to try again, ‘Why should I bother, last time he/she didn’t appreciate it.’ This is a disaster for a marriage and a very slippery slope towards the death of a relationship.

For these reasons, if we want a rewarding, happy relationship, we all must become experts in what makes our partner feel loved. It took me a few years to work out that for my wife it is the love language of language itself i.e. connecting through being alone together and discussing intimate issues. This is one of the two ‘Tell Me’ Languages of Love: ‘Quality Time’. The other Tell Me language is, ‘tell me how much you love me’ or what are called, ‘Words of Affirmation’.

‘Show Me’ and ‘Touch Me’ are the other two categories each referring to two languages. Show Me refers to ‘Acts of Service’ and ‘Receiving Gifts’. Touch Me refers to non-sexual affection e.g. hugs/cuddles’ and secondly, to sex and sexual affection.

Gary Chapman wrote the book on this subject – The Five Love Languages – and groups the sexual and non-sexual touching together. For many people there is a very big difference between the two. Many of my female patients want the non-sexual and get angry when they get the sexual instead – hence why I, and others, make the distinction. Start by clicking here to go to Chapman’s site and take the simple test to work out your top two languages. Then get your partner to do it.

Just going through this exercise helps people ‘get’ the importance of working this out. After all, we all want our efforts to make our partner feel loved to be appreciated. Take note (or not, at your peril) of your partner’s top two languages as well as the ones that do not turn them on at all. Then put your efforts to show you care just into either of these forms that you now know will be appreciated by your partner. From this day forward, get lazy!

Why exercise indeed? Did you know that 20,400,000, people, on average, around the world ask this question each month? God Google tells us so – and given that he is the one counting, it would be a tad brave to argue with him. It is a great question and I’m pleased to see it being asked because when it comes to weight loss some highly problematic assumptions are often made.

Many people with a weight problem assume that we exercise to lose weight, but few realise just how ineffective it is in causing weight loss. Fewer again appreciate how the misunderstanding contributes to the 80%+ weight loss plan failure and subsequent weight regain.

So often I hear people lament, ‘I need to lose weight,’ and in their next breath they talk about their plan to get back into exercise in one form or another. Almost as often, I will hear no mention of changing their dietary intake, no matter how hard I listen! The reason for this has become clear to me over the years – we humans are deeply emotionally attached to the food that makes us fat and we are eternally hopeful that we can lose weight without threatening our loving relationship to food.

Since 1999 the researchers in the know have realised that exercise was not an effective way to lose weight – it was a highly counter-intuitive finding that confirmed eight earlier studies dating back to 1983. Despite repeated replication studies since 1999 (I will come back to these in a moment) I suspect the majority of health professionals today are still not up to date with the research and propagate the myth that exercise is an effective weight loss strategy. Read more »

I been asked to give some background to my upcoming presentation on 28 April. here is the excerpt I have provided to the conference organiser:

Motivation & Values, Meaning & Happiness: Future directions after a decade in weight loss therapy.
This talk will briefly review the key precepts behind Dr Blair-West’s psychodietetics and the underlying restraint theory. It will then cover the issue of ‘motivational fatigue’ with a focus on the role of exercise and recent research findings. Finally, he will look at the relationship between weight loss, motivation, values and meaning and how this led to his third book The Way of The Quest. Dr Blair-West will draw upon the core learnings that have come from his psychotherapy with those grappling with obesity from the last decade.

If you are interested in attending here’s the link again. 

For those of you who have been asking when I will be speaking next in Brisbane, here is the drum. I have been invited to give the keynote at an upcoming conference in a couple of week’s time that will focus on motivating patients to lead healthier lives. I will be talking on what I have come to understand about motivation and lifestyle change and how this led to my third book, The Way of The Quest. The book is all about how to connect with one’s values and how to find meaning and purpose in life as I have come to see that these are the building blocks of personal growth and change.

The seminar wins the award for the world’s longest title: How to inspire your clients to lose kilos, exercise and quit cigarettes (or other ways to improve health). It is not an expensive event and you can attend either Saturday (12-3pm) or Sunday (9am-4pm) or both. It is at the tranquil Bardon Professional Centre. If you are interested in attending click here for more information – hope to see you there.

What is it that makes a true friend? This is a question that has been on my mind for many years. Indeed, my wife and I chose a reading at our wedding (24 years ago this year!!) that spoke of how a true friend is someone with whom you can dare to be yourself. This is no more true than it is of a life partner. There can be no real intimacy if we do not take the risk of being who we really are – warts and all. While we need to be who we are, we also need to be gentle with our partner and our friends who take the risk of being who they really are with us.

On my desk in my office are words that touch on this critical aspect of true friendship. It reminds us to be very forgiving if we call ourselves a true friend. In my research into how we choose our partners – and the importance of dating in this process – i recently discovered the author of these words that are wrongly attributed to George Eliot (thanks to a patient who pointed this out). They were in fact written by Dinah Craik in her novel A life for a life published in 1859. She was one of the most successful English female writers of her day. Thanks also to one of my patients who suggested I share these words more widely – apparently the end of my desk has limited reach amongst the greater population! Here they are:

Oh, the comfort — the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person
having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words,
but pouring them all right out, just as they are,
chaff and grain together;
certain that a faithful hand
will take and sift them,
keep what is worth keeping, and then
with the breath of kindness
blow the rest away.

I recently made Weight Loss for Food Lovers available on Kindle and then more recently on the Amazon Kindle Owners’ eBook Lending Library. Could I ask a favour of those of you who have read my book? Could I ask you to put a brief review up on Amazon – preferably favourable! – but say whatever you need to say! (Apparently it’s better to be talked about negatively than not at all.)

As I know this takes time and is not the most fun way you could spend your spare time, I am happy to send you two copies of our children’s book for your trouble. If you don’t have your own young kids, you may know some young families that do. This illustrated book is all about teaching children from a young age the critical task of learning to eat mindfully and the importance of getting them involved in food selection and preparation (and don’t forget there’s a song that goes with it on the website).

Click on this link here (Weight Loss for Food Lovers on Amazon) and scroll down to the ‘Create your own review’ button. Just email me (see the bottom of your email notification – or post a comment to this post) giving us the name you put beside the review, include your delivery address and we will pop them in the mail to you.

Thanking some of you in advance!

A key pillar of the Weight Loss Mindset is dealing with the “I deserve some nice food” script. People I work with seem to be able to cleverly come up with this rationale when things in their life are equally either going well or going badly! (And then when things are so-so, a treat seems to make an enormous amount of sense to make life more interesting!)

For people with this problem we need to come up with ‘non-caloric’ ways to treat ourselves when this script kicks in. A patient of mine and I recently came up with this list –  a great starting point for anyone who has this problem. The trick is to print it off and keep it in your purse/wallet and refer to it as needed – the human mind has a strange habit of getting us to forget these strategies at the critical points when they are most needed. Here are some thoughts – as you can see they vary from what can be done at home in a few minutes (the time it takes to prepare and eat a bowl of ice cream) to larger rewards:

• Buy your favourite trashy magazine and then read a few pages
• Buy some luscious teas from the tea speciality shop and enjoy a cup
• Buy yourself a bunch of flowers from supermarket
• Paint nails or toenails (guys are generally less keen on this one)
• Go to movies
• Call a friend (very powerful if loneliness is the emotional driver)
• Shop for costume jewellery and other inexpensive stuff
• Watch favourite recorded TV show
• Internet surfing for fun (great way to allow cravings to pass)

Everyone needs their own, personalised list, so if this is an issue for you (or the people you work with) get writing!

Ever since I published Weight Loss for Food Lovers, I have been asked, ‘When is the sequel coming out?’ Well, after four years of work I should have some rush copies next month, but I need to warn you all that it will not be what you might expect. You see the ‘sequel’ doesn’t mention the words ‘weight loss’ or ‘eating lifestyle’ or any other words around weight management at all. ‘What’s going on, how is that a sequel?’ would be a fair question. Let me try to give you a fair answer.

I don’t know how many people I have worked with on their weight management over the years – it’s been a lot – and then I have trained and supervised hundreds of other therapists with their more challenging patients. What I have come to see is that the vast majority of people who struggle with their weight are unhappy at some level. They are not necessarily clinically depressed, but they are unhappy.

Food is the self-medication. It promises that ‘being-cuddled-in-your-mother’s-arms-as-you’re-being-fed’ primal, soothing experience. It is the same for my patients who drink too much or use recreational drugs. Others are looking for more love (which often reads as ‘sex’). People make the understandable mistake of thinking that having pleasure, in any of these forms, will make them happier, will sooth their troubled soul. The paradox is that trying to make ourselves happier through pleasure will, in the long run, actually add to our unhappiness. Pleasure is fine along they way, but it does not work as a strategy to be happier. Eating to self-sooth causes most of my patients to feel guilty, angry at themselves and more unhappy.

Paradise Lost, Inadequacy found
Modern life can be tough – technology and greater opportunity creates frustration, confusion and a greater sense of not being good enough, a greater sense of missing out. I remember visiting an idyllic tribal village in Fiji ten years ago where they had just gotten TV. The schoolteacher on this gorgeous island was lamenting how these kids, who previously thought they lived in paradise and had all they wanted, now thought otherwise. Television showed them everything else that they could have, that they did not, and their paradise suddenly fell way short. They started to find that their life as they knew it, was no longer enough, it was inadequate, they were inadequate. Read more »

Those of you who have the inclination, might have noticed that I have been rather remiss in the article posting stakes over recent months. My excuse? In Weight Loss for Food Lovers I wrote about how we need to be aware of the unconscious forces that will keep us stuck in the ‘nice idea’ phase of a project for so long that we don’t get  into the ‘execution’, the ‘doing’ phase. If we don’t execute our project, whatever it may be, we don’t finish. If we don’t finish, the greatest idea in the world will be relegated to Unfinished-Idea Heaven – the place that ‘nice ideas’ go to to spend the rest of eternity lounging by a half-filled pool while listening to the first part of all the unfinished songs. Euripides, the Shakespeare of Ancient Greece who wrote over 90 plays, said it simply: ‘Do not plan for ventures before finishing what’s at hand.’

Beware the seduction of the new, exciting and fascinating

There are several reasons why we don’t finish things we start. As I wrote about in Food Lovers, sometimes it’s failure fear, sometimes it’s success stress. For me it was seduction. Let me explain. Last year while on holidays I started writing a book about how to choose a healthy partner. I was several chapters into it when I realised I was at risk of making another contribution to Unfinished-Idea Heaven. You see, four years ago I started writing another book, a sequel of sorts to Food Lovers, although very different in many ways. I had finished writing it and was in the laborious rewriting and editing phase. This is the most tedious part of book writing, unable to compete with the alluring seduction of researching, writing and falling in love with a fresh, exciting and fascinating new book. In relationship therapy I often see people make the mistake of comparing a fresh, exciting new partner with the too well known, no-longer-exciting one that they have spent the last few years with. You can guess who usually wins. A few years on the exciting new partner is looking a lot like the last one … sometimes worse!

The danger is that we can give up on equally valid, or even more valid, ideas and projects as the shiny new ones grab our attention. To combat this temptress I made a deal with myself that I would not write anything else – blog articles included – until I sent the book off for publication. This happened just last week. So over the coming weeks you can expect to see me bothering your Inbox as I catch up on a pile of articles that came to me while finishing off this last book. Oh … by the way – wishing you all a belated healthy, happy and prosperous 2012.

I have been looking over an interesting website – www.obesitymyths.com and while I cannot vouch for its accuracy, it does  make some assertions worthy of closer consideration. I was particularly interested in their comments on how the obesity epidemic was accelerated by a simple change to the definition of obesity. The site tells us that “35 million Americans went to sleep one night in 1998 at a government-approved weight and woke up ‘overweight’ the next morning, thanks to a change in the government’s definition …  ‘Overweight’ had previously been defined as a BMI of 27.8 for men and 27.3 for women; in 1998 it was lowered to a BMI of 25 for both genders.”

A recognised problem with the Body Mass Index, is that it simply measures our weight relative to our height. It does not allow for muscle. The site goes on to cite a research letter published in JAMA (the journal of the respected American Medical Association) that reported that 97% of players in the National Football League are technically overweight and more than 50% are obese. Celebrities who suddenly found themselves overweight included Will Smith and Pierce Brosnan, while Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone and Mel Gibson immediately became obese. Tom ‘the sexiest man alive’ Cruise woke up to find himself  obese as a result of his height deficiency against his broad-shouldered, muscled body. Read more »