The mass media is an incredible brain washing machine. Many people blindly believe what they are told by the mainstream media, or by those experts that are rolled out for their opinion in the media. The school system too is a mass brainwashing exercise, and many students now leave school with little actual knowledge, but are in sound agreement with the current opinion on the social direction of society as laid out by the selected generation of politicians. Any discussion on matters is closely restricted between two false dichotomies, to give the illusion of choice. From cradle to grave, we are told what to think, what to belive, how to act, and few ever bother to question these beliefs, and even fewer move towards alternatives. The result is a society that moves slowly, lumbering in a single uniform direction, just as the government, business interests and other elites would like. Somewhere enshrined in this belief system of the West is understanding that weight gain is caused by overeating and laziness.
Few people receive any sort of education in nutrition. Most of the nutrition knowledge people receive is from the mainstream media. Big business uses the mainstream media to pass off its propaganda as fact, and in this way many are mislead into believing a false reality with regard to the causes of weight gain. Schools are now full of soft drinks and snack machines and the quality of nutrition fed to children of school age is falling.
Few ever really stop to question the belief that it is a lack of physical activity in combination with eating too much food that is the cause of weight gain. Ask any person who wishes to lose weight how they hope to achieve this and almost 10 out of every 10 replies will be through a combination of energy restriction and physical activity. The high failure rate of mainstream weight loss diets relates directly to the fact that they encompass the misguided belief that weight gain is caused by laziness and greed. The belief that eating too much food and performing too few hours on a treadmill is some overcrowded gym in the centre of a shopping centre is so ingrained in people that it is hard to convince people of an alternative. Those people who are successful at losing weight through such systems almost always also defend them, and yet fail to acknowledge that it was the modification of their diets to include healthier foods that was the real cause of their success.
Time for a new paradigm?
Many therefore accidently fall upon the real solution to weight gain and yet are totally unaware as to what they have done. Without a paradigm shift in the understanding of what is to blame for weight gain, there can be nothing more than this accidental or unintended success. A paradigm shift must also occur in what is understood by weight loss. In this respect, weight loss should really mean fat loss. Bone, water, muscle and glycogen are important and loss of these valuable resources does not improve health. Weight loss is therefore really an improvement in body composition, such that body fat is shed, but perhaps skeletal muscle is increased. It is therefore possibly to improve body composition but lose no measurable body weight. Yet people are fixated with the scales, because this is how they have been trained to understand their condition. Abandonment of this old outdated paradigm is required before any success can be obtained. Afterall, insanity is defined as doing something over and over, but expecting a different result.
RdB
