Party party party 4 deep emotional attachment to food and has not evolved since the practice of medicine began. Instead of approaching the overweight individual in a holistic way, the traditional approach has seen us using mind – body separation at its worst! Begin as you wish to continue The medical profession is only just beginning to realize that simply telling somebody to give up smoking because it is bad for you, is an exercise in abject futility. I think we’ ve realized that you would have to be living in a cave in the Tundra not to know that smoking is bad for you.( Mind you, if you lived in a cave in the Tundra with no access to cigarettes it would not be an issue for you!) I would argue that giving up unhealthy food is a much more complicated ask. The big difference is that, unlike nicotine or alcohol, we need food for our very survival! Moreover, as we have seen already, we develop a much greater attachment to food in our formative years than we ever do to nicotine or alcohol( although some teenagers do try to make up the difference!). Food addiction is the only addiction where we get hooked before we can walk! Imagine the problem that a heroin addict would have wandering through their day with heroin available in lots of different forms everywhere they went! They would get out of bed, open the fridge door and there it would be – taunting them. Opening the pantry door – more. Then they would go out only to be confronted by coffee shops with beautifully presented syringes, all ready to inject – with a nice clean needle and a small bow to make it look pretty! How far would a heroin addict get through the day without using? I believe that food is the most addictive substance on the planet – way more addictive than heroin. And we doctors expect you to go through your day – constantly confronted by this addictive substance that you need to survive – and only eat as much as you need to survive! While the medical profession may have set the standard, the greater diet industry is equally to blame. The vast majority of diet plans out