Now being fat is bad for your brain too.
The NY Times can be relied upon like old faithful to shoot up a geyser every 10 days or so on why being fat is bad. Today we learn that being obese in middle age significantly increases the risk of dementia.
Olivia Judson who is a terrific writer and researcher issued the stark warnings based on seemingly solid research complete with theories about how a particular gene or combination of genes will negatively react to the twin terrors of 21st century American life: hi-fat diet and inactivity.
Don't get me wrong, being obese is bad. And as our population ages, it is an enormous concern that those in their 30s 40s and 50s today will become incapacitated in their 70s. This could strain the health care system and create untold social problems.
Yet we tend to deal with problems that are manageably bad, such as climate change, drinking, addictions, under-earning, by putting them off and somehow "hoping that things will turn out okay."
The strategy of hoping that things will turn out okay is not a strategy that is suited to life. In fact, it is not a strategy at all and will result in a dangerous depletion of our own and the world's resources.
Still, few are willing to cut back for the sake of a far-off future. People are known to do what makes them feel good now.
The issue seems to be that the way we make choices is strongly rooted in childhood. Many children find it difficult to plan because it means making choices. To a child every choice may seem to be a "phony" or unfair choice: Ice cream now or possibly pizza and ice cream later in the week? How about day camp in July or a possible family trip to a hotel at the end of August?
Young people cannot comprehend choice. Children are filled with id and the id knows only now. It is no wonder most of us are charmed by children - they are so filled with appetite for life! They don't see the world in terms of compromise and tradeoffs.The adult's role is to help the child feel the different choices: what would it be like to stay at home in the month of July? What would it be like to go to camp? Which camp? What is the vacation she would really like to have? How will things feel? They, children, and most of us for that matter, feel first and then think. Many are incapable of thinking properly until they feel.
A good therapist will understand that destructive behavior may be a way for people to ward off how they truly feel and an inefficient and dangerous attempt to get in touch with how they feel at the same time. Smoking, or overeating, or even polluting the environment, even as it is being done, is a struggle between a crippled ability to think and a hobbled ability to feel -- converged.
It is a complex task suited to psychotherapy to help people to feel in order so that they can think, and to help people think in order to find out how they feel.
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