In his new book, "2030," Albert Brooks conjures what our country will be like in 19 years. In Albert's 2030, cancer has been cured and so has obesity. Since my field is weight control and eating disorders, I found this particularly fascinating. We live longer and take a pill and voila, we're no longer fat.
You know that at this very moment, researchers around the world are frantically trying to come up with this magic pill. Imagine the money and fame attached to the person(s) that would cure what 66 percent of America is dealing with on a daily basis. Sixty-six percent of Americans are overweight and of that 66 percent, 32 percent are obese. It's an epidemic!
My question to you is; what would this pill do? Albert does not specify how it works in his book. If it were up to you would you want to take something that allows you to eat whatever you want, as much as you want and still be thin? Or would you prefer a pill that causes you to only want to eat what you need to be thin and healthy?
This has been a hot topic of discussion between me and my clients lately. Most of them would prefer a pill that allows you to eat everything and be thin but not all of them. After some thought, the people who wanted the eat everything pill started to imagine that food would lose its power if you could get away with eating everything and you might start to not want to eat that much.
We now know that certain foods, namely the high fat/high salt/high sugar foods, activate the same reward pathways in the brain as do drugs of abuse. A brand new study just out determined that a high-fat meal attenuated feelings of depression for a time after it was consumed in people who were feeling blue. I wonder if this pill would also address those of us who use food as a drug. Albert?
So what do you think? Does your ideal, imaginary new pill allow you to eat everything, use food as medication and still be thin or does it cause you to not want to eat that much and become thin as a result? Which would you like to see?