“This is more addictive than crack!”

It’s a phrase I’ve heard most girl friends and every guy I’ve dated say at least once before, as they shoveled some kind of food into their respective pie holes.

In the nineties, I remember seeing jokes everywhere about “How chocolate is better than men/sex”. And women – older and younger alike – would gather around, giggling at the idea that they “weren’t the only one” who hung up their sexy for a sack of See’s.

And it wasn’t just for women. Plenty of ads (did and even do now) cater to men, reinforcing how the idea that “real men” don’t count calories.

You see, some jokes are funny because they are true, comical portrayals and/or parodies of real life. Others take it a step further, and induce laughter because it provides positive reinforcement for a negative behavior that a group of people aren’t willing (or motivated enough) to change.

Whether it’s “I was going to go to the gym, but I didn’t feel like it” or “I almost did crunches, but then I decided to eat a burger instead”, it’s a concept that lives on and continues to generate at least a courtesy laugh from those who hear it. I mean, it’s almost like you’re a judgmental asshole if you don’t laugh when someone jokes about how their laziness won in the fight to lose weight by either working out or just the lesser task of simply not forcing food through their oral orifice.

Think I’m wrong? The next time someone laughs and says, “OMG! I am so bad, I just ate a bunch and I haven’t worked out in two months…” let me know if your response of, “Wow. That is really bad. You need to work on that!” ends with anything but an uncomfortable silence.

In any case, cue to twenty years later, and you see more posters now about “obesity as an epidemic” versus “sugar as a shoe-in for a lover”. And those women and men who once were forty (maybe going through a mid life crisis, a divorce, etc.), spent that two decades using calories to cope. With the ubiquitous jokes in the malls, cartoons, bumper stickers, and eventually email forwards, condoning “food as a drug”, the positive reinforcement was ever present.

Today, those people are now in their late 50’s to mid 60’s. Most of them are probably on a Medicare health insurance plan. Where “I’m not fat, I’m fluffy” was once a cute excuse to eat whatever they wanted and not work out, it’s now not so helpful against the backdrop of deteriorating joints, a nonexistent metabolism, and other afflictions that plague us in older age.

But old habits die hard, and it can be as hard to kick as any other addiction.

Some people do indeed compare over-eating to being “like crack”; It has been argued that those dangerously addicted to food, genuinely have a different psychological process going on than those of us who realize “Wow, I can see the cheeks of my own fat face in my peripheral vision; I really need to cut back” or “My god, my thighs are rubbing together even when I arch my back; I need to work out”, and subsequently do either or both.

Others believe it’s simply a failure of willpower.

Studies rage on about how much the obsession with overeating can be controlled or not. Regardless, one current question arising with respect to this older crowd battling obesity is – if they want to really change now, and are seeking out help, should their insurance help cover their treatment?

A new Medicare decision being proposed may alter coverage so that those struggling with obesity would no longer have coverage provisions for registered dietitians or other specialists. They would simply go to their family doctor, only to hear them give the same generic advice that everyone else has already been telling them to their face, and in whispers and snickering as they waddle past.

You may read this, and think, “Yeah! All they need is a doctor to tell them to eat healthy and walk or swim!”. In some respects, I don’t disagree. However, when a behavior has been practiced for years to the point where it is habitual, it must evolve into a psychological disorder at some point.

Because “too skinny” is more aesthetically accepted than “too fat”, we are quick to assume that will power is the key element missing in the latter case, when really (if you think about it), it’s all the same: Every eating disorder is no more than an obsession with food that manifests in various unhealthy habits and practices with respect to meals and snacking. Since each disorder has a psychological element to it, each probably requires the aid of a specialist beyond that of a primary care doctor. Should insurance cover it? Sure; but it should cover all eating disorders.

After all, obesity is just bulimia… without the throwing up part.
<3~A