Weight Loss for Food Lovers

Weight Loss for Food Lovers; Understanding the Psychology & Sabotage of Weight Loss

by Dr George Blair-West LFOPATS MBBS FRANZCP

Book review by Kate Lovett

"It's all in the mind, you know," Wallace Greenslade, voice of normalcy in the lunatic asylum that was the Goon Show, would intone.

I kept hearing him as I read Dr George Blair-West's book, because George himself can be a bit off-the-wall. He's been there, done that. This is no ivory-tower treatise: it's a down-to-earth, very friendly and sympathetic journey into the psychology of weight loss.

Who'd have thought that one's own unconscious would be the arch saboteur of one's dearest and most fervent desires? So many people want to lose weight, not all to look like those poor stick-thin clothes horses of haut couture, but possibly just so bits don't jiggle so much when you're hurrying somewhere in your impossibly busy twenty-first century life. To feel better, to be lighter on your feet. I'm putting my hand up.

And, on a personal note, I can relate this text directly to my struggle to give up the demon nicotine. Observe yourself. Be aware. Set up the behaviors so they become habitual. Don't let setbacks be failure experiences: make them learning experiences. I used to tell myself I was forgiven for lighting up, but only on condition that I recognised that giving up was the goal. But now I understand a bit better what was going on during the struggle.

Would it have helped at the time? Yes, emphatically. There's gold in these here pages, great "welcome stranger" sized nuggets.

And I quote, from the Introduction:

Question: Why is it that over 80% of people who lose weight eventually regain what they lose and often more?
Answer: Because dieting is not about what we eat, it is about why we eat. Diets typically fail to recognize that food is the world's most addictive substance. Craving food is much more widespread than craving nicotine, alcohol and other substances.

George Bernard Shaw put it slightly differently but equally effectively:
Statistics show that of those who contract the habit of eating, very few survive.

From Chapter 14 - Sabotage-proofing through Setbacks:

But let me be very clear about this - your unconscious wants you to see this as a failure experience and not as a learning experience, so that you give up completely and stop making its life difficult by wanting to change things. It knows how to keep you safe in your usual world in known territory, but take it into new territory and its job becomes much more difficult.

This book recognises that prohibition (of favourite and usually sinfully fattening foods) has never worked; that it can, in fact, have the opposite effect to what it intends to achieve. Strategies to deal with the realities that overweight and obese people face are described and the practicalities of implementing them are recognised, stated (perhaps for the first time in your weight-losing campaigns) and dealt with. The processes that are going on in your unconscious, of which, by definition, you are unaware, are explained.

Just the very fact of seeing them articulated is liberating, in that you recognise yourself and understand that you're not a failure - you can do this. Ladies and gentlemen, please adjust your expectations. Extreme diets might cause you to lose weight, but the effect is short term only.

Applying the principles of Zen Buddhism to weight loss would have seemed a bit "touchy feely" to me before I read Dr Blair-West's fascinating book. How do you relate the concept of "mindfulness" to food? If you do, you have one foot on the ladder that leads to losing weight and keeping it off.

Myths are exposed, and food science, the workings of the mind, the role of exercise, and the importance of instilling healthy eating habits in children are presented in terms we can all relate to and in the context of George Blair-West's professional and family life. It's a conversation with a man who practises what he preaches - he has made the weight-loss journey, he has read and applied or actually done the research and has the evidence to back up what he writes.

George Blair-West is a doctor of medicine and psychiatry, the Director of Psychophysiology at the Obesity Rehabilitation Unit at RiverCity Private Hospital in Brisbane, a weight-loss group psychotherapist, a husband, a father and a talented and empathetic communicator. Give yourself a break - read his book.

Kate Lovett is the Editorial Manager for Steve Parish Publishing and was previously an editor with Jacaranda Press before spending a dozen years with Rigby Education where she became the Managing Editor.