The End of Overeating and me

Reading  The End of Overeating: Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite by Dr. David Kessler changed my life.  David Kessler, best known as the former head of the Food and Drug Administration (appointed by Bush the first but serving largely under Clinton) who took on regulating tobacco as a drug that was being deliberately manipulated to produce addiction has served as the chief science of officer of the White House COVID-19 response team since Biden took office.

This book, written in 2009, is really three books:

Part 1 – how the food industry, particularly the fast food industry, has deliberately manipulated its products to produce addiction.  Kessler gets into great detail on how and what parts of the industry have systematically tested and added ingredients to their products to create that “bet you can’t eat just one” result that they want.  That old Frito-Lay advertising tag line takes on sinister implications as the reader begins to think about the implications of an industry (I forget if he even focuses on Frito-lay, there are many) deliberately creating addiction in its customers.

Part 2 – defines and explains scientifically the term “conditioned hyper-eater.”   Kessler explains that there are people who are just not normal eaters.  They may have started out normal but they have become, perhaps because of foods created by the industry (perhaps not), “conditioned hyper-eaters” and now they cannot stop even where other people might be able to stop.  Kessler outs himself as a “conditioned hyper-eater” as well, so this book is personal to him.  He is writing it as a scientist, as the former head of the federal agency responsible for regulating food who took on the tobacco industry for similar behavior, and as someone who has been a victim of the food industry’s manipulation.

Part 3 – walks through the science behind what works to stop hyper-eating.  One part that made a big impression on me for life is the science behind “focus on what you want, not what you don’t want.”  He walks through studies that show why saying to myself “don’t eat chocolate chip cookies, don’t eat chocolate chip cookies” just makes me more likely to eat, guess what, chocolate chip cookies.  I have to focus on “eat a delicious bowl of kale with Bitchin’ sauce and grilled tofu” (which I actually do find entirely delicious by the way the sauce really is Bitchin’) 

He also explains why and how support groups help to recover from conditioned hyper-eating, how and why examining the conditions, emotional and physical, that brought us to this habit help us recover.  And more.

I was very affected by this book because I too am a “conditioned hyper-eater.”  From the earliest time I can remember, I had been unable to stop eating when other people could.  When I was a child I ate bowl of cereal after bowl of cereal until I was bursting, mostly I hid that.  I spent years on every diet I could find that didn’t make me count calories or weigh and measure: The Atkins Diet, the Liquid Protein fad, the South Beach Diet, the Carbohydrate Addicts Diet, those were the biggies for me.  

I could write a post on literally every single one of those diets alone but I couldn’t recommend any of them (On each of them I lost weight quickly–usually 40-50 pounds–and then gained the weight back almost as quickly and with interest).   By the time I gave birth to our son in 1995 at the age of 34 I had dieted my way up to 250 pounds.

It was only when I came to realize that I was a different sort of eater, the kind Kessler is describing, and used the kinds of tools Kessler examines, with the support of other people like me, that I was able to lose and maintain weight loss over the course of years.