I would greatly prefer it if my brain would be less preoccupied with thoughts of doughnuts but it’s running its own show up there. I’ve often mused over what more I could accomplish if I did not have to devote any energy to trying to suppress all those food thoughts that bang around the ole noggin’.<\/p>\n
I recently posted<\/span><\/strong><\/a> about famous people who endure public struggles with their weight. One of the most interesting things to come out of writing my book has been how many people have contacted me about being “Type A+” but say they have been unable to take control and lose weight. They are highly intelligent, very disciplined, often strongly driven people who have a high confidence level in their abilities\u2014except for this one thing\u2014and it brings endless frustration into their lives. Oh man, tell me about it! I lived it myself.<\/p>\n The idea of the very intelligent, very capable, highly disciplined FAT PERSON tends to throw the theory about “broken-ness” on its ear. I’m sure some nasty people would even say “intelligent and fat” makes a person some kind of human contradiction. The corollary of “Ignorance is bliss” is that knowledge can be torment. Perfectionistic people in particular are painfully aware of when something in their lives needs to be addressed, especially when it’s something that’s on-going and can’t be ignored. I can relate to all the problem-solver types like myself who spend their lives like I did\u2014struggling through years that turn into decades, trying to “figure out what’s wrong” and get it fixed before I can expect to lose weight.<\/p>\n Bias against fat people is more that just hate and disgust. It also drives ineffectual weight loss programs and diets that can send you down blind alleys again and again. I spent decades of my life feeling confounded by the insistence that I must have been fat because I had an “issue” that needed to be fixed. Either I was failing at a diet that was impossible for me to follow, struggling through a discouraging exercise regimen I couldn’t maintain, or enduring pointless psychological analysis that never uncovered my “mystery” neurosis. None of it ever worked.<\/p>\n