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