“You cannot fat shame me if I am no ashamed of my weight.” That was what 50 Cent, the entertainer, recently said. If you watched the Super Bowl that was recently completed, you will have noticed the half time show that was quite entertaining. 50 Cent had gained some weight from his younger days. So, people have been having fun at his expense saying that he is suffering from inflation and that’s why he has gained weight. Quite funny. But he had a clever rethought and I think that was quite interesting. You shouldn’t have to be ashamed of your body weight and the problem with fat shaming is this- it assumes that the cause of weight gain or weight loss struggle is mostly behavior, and the second problem is that the effect is mostly cosmetic rather than health issues. But the truth about obesity and weight loss struggle is this, the cause is mostly biology, and the most significant effects are health not cosmetic.
If you are struggling with weight, it’s like having diabetes or blood sugar, nobody shames you because your blood sugar is high. If you have a friend or neighbor or somebody in your life whose blood sugar or blood pressure is running very high, what you do is you help them get informed and get treatment. That’s what we need when it comes to body weight instead of shame and blame, we need to inform and treat.
Understanding that fat was once a survival advantage for human beings. You know, that losing weight is against our survival interest. That’s actually how our primitive brain, especially the area called hypothalamus interprets weight loss. It is programmed to look for fat loss and to defend against it. There was once upon a time that you needed body fat to survive winters and to survive famine.
I hope understanding that the biological forces are so strong perhaps tougher than any health issue you can face is trying to gain go against human nature is a difficult thing. I hope if you understand that you have a little bit more sympathy for people who are trying to lose weight. Having said that it’s not enough to say oh it’s not your fault that you’re struggling to lose weight. You have a responsibility to understand what works and to take appropriate action. Now for instance, getting on the right meal plan will help you lose weight but to keep it off, being more active and sometimes needing medical treatment is the way to go. Just like if you are diabetic and is a mild case, you might be able to control it with just diet and exercise. If that is not enough, we’ll give you medications. And sometimes medications may not be enough that you need even injections.
The same principle follows with obesity especially if you’re young and you don’t have a lot of weight to lose, you can go on a reasonable diet and exercise to control it. But sometimes if you have 50, 60, 70 pounds to lose, it’s not as easy and may not be easy for you to do but understand that it’s effective medical treatment and it’s your responsibility to look out for those. You need somebody who is knowledgeable to help you understand how to create the appropriate meal plan.
There are some cool things we do at Kudos Medical Weight Loss Program that can help you achieve just that. For instance, our meal plan is guided by metabolic testing. What we do is put you on a machine to test your metabolism to see if your metabolism is sluggish or is it just appropriate or fast. That will help guide how many calories and what type of macronutrients you should have. We’ll monitor you progress if you start to struggle with things like craving or hunger the effective treatment so that you don’t get frustrated and struggle against human nature. Instead, you control that so that is how you can control this rather difficult issue for the long term so you can lose weight, have abundant energy to enjoy your life and you family because after all, that’s what we all deserve. For those who are struggling, I encourage you to look for options to work. We’d love to hear from you at Kudos Medical Weight Loss program. Until then, kudos.
Kudos,
Dr. Ojugbeli MD, MBA, Dipl. ABOM
