Party party party 3 What has the medical profession been thinking ?! For years the medical profession has told people they would be better off if they stopped eating unhealthy foods and exercised more . What so many of my clients tell me is that they need to hear something they don ’ t know ! As if you didn ’ t know that you should exercise more and eat fewer bad foods ! What have we doctors been thinking ?! When I practiced general medicine before I started specializing in psychiatry , I have no doubt I handed out the same idiotic advice . Now when I work with people either individually or in groups , I cringe when they tell me about doctors and dietitians who told them they should stop eating unhealthy food as if this was news to them . We doctors can be a patronizing bunch . I have never met an overweight person who didn ’ t know that they should eat fewer unhealthy foods and exercise more . I have also never met an overweight individual who did not know that they should cut back on fat and calories in their diet ! So if we all know what we should do , why don ’ t we do it ? Why don ’ t we change our behavior ? Research going back more than half a century repeatedly shows that around 80 % of dieters ultimately regained the weight that they lost and , worse still , they often regained more than they lost ! If this has been your experience you can be reassured that you are perfectly normal . When you think about this problem from the perspective of a psychiatrist , it becomes crystal clear why attempts to lose weight usually fail – the doctors seem not to appreciate that food is highly addictive . Some of the telltale signs of addiction are cravings , needing more of the substance than one did previously and changing plans in order to gain access to the substance . But unlike other addictive substances , we grow up , as previously discussed , with food having an ever-increasing emotional meaning for us throughout our formative years . Surprisingly , given the sophisticated advancements in other areas , the medical approach to losing weight has completely failed to deal with our