An Ounce of Prevention, Part 3

As always, it is helpful to look at the various attempts that have been made to turn back the tide of childhood obesity, or at the very least, to prevent the surpassing of its current level. This series highlights why many parents so fervently hope that their children will not become obese, and how some parents want to do everything possible to keep this from happening. Sadly, circumstance has placed in the way of that worthy ambition a major stumbling block, i.e., the very fact that we are human.

If Earthlings are being surveilled and discussed by intelligent observers from somewhere else, our attitude toward food must leave them deeply puzzled. One extraterrestrial scientist says, “You know, I comprehend the ones who never have enough to eat. Their goal is basic survival, to sustain life itself. If they think about food and eating all the time, this is perfectly understandable.”

They just don’t get it

And the Extraterrestrial colleague says, “Sure. But look at the others, the ones who have so much food, they drown in it. They too think about consumption all the time! Build their day around it. Count up their energy units. All kinds of crazy nonsense that wastes the very essence of life they are so avid to preserve.”

The first ET scientist shakes one of its heads and says, “Check out this human specimen I’ve been observing. It does not want its body to increase in size. This could be prevented by causing some energy to be expended. So — and you won’t believe this — it goes out and activates its personal automated vehicle, in order to travel to the gym and — wait, what do they call it? — ‘Do some exercise’.”

It comes with the cream

Those researchers write a paper about how a little thing called “human nature” will always get in the way, warp our perceptions, pervert our best impulses, and waste our time and precious energy as we quarrel over details and side issues. Meanwhile, we are all in the same metaphorical sinking ship, and because of that, the best we can do, here on the Titanic, is to rearrange the deck chairs and play a tune, which explains the importance of Art in our relationship with the Universe.

Human nature has very much the appearance of being a package deal, where we must take the bitter with the better, and where we spend enormous energy to sabotage our own best interests. In the course of trying to solve our huge problems, we are capable of ideas and actions that turn out to be outrageously counterproductive. Often, enormous damage has been done before we figure this out, if we ever do. We humans are such contrarians, we are almost never able to totally stop working against our own best interests.

Parents are in a great position to understand how obesity works because they have gone through the experiences of being a child, an adolescent, and a young adult. Women are especially aware, because they are going to gain a certain amount of weight as expectant mothers, and of course, the fathers will notice the size increase too.

At any rate, it is to be hoped (though rarely achieved) that, once we understand what a drag it is to get out of obesity, we parents will be deeply inspired to instead prevent obesity. It is very easy to say that families should seek help from therapists. The next steps, finding a good therapist and affording the care, are quite a lot more difficult — and the hard part has not even started yet. Even with the aid of a professional, family conflicts and traumas can be incredibly difficult to cope with. Also, now in particular, the societal sources of help are drying up.

At any rate, after taking the long way round, we circle back to the main subject of this sequence, which is the type of therapy called IFS, or Internal Family Systems, about which there are two very important things to know. First, IFS has been widely utilized to address eating disorders and seems to have been promoted as particularly adaptable to this specific spectrum of problems.

Also, “Some patients say it’s destroyed their lives.”

(To be continued…)

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “The Therapy That Can Break You,” TheCut.com, 10/30/25
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An Ounce of Prevention, Part 2

Yes, according to one of the most familiar platitudes in English, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” Probably every other human language on earth has an equivalent old saying, because it is just so ridiculously, platitudinously true.

In this context, the meaning is obvious. We try to tell kids: Please make every effort to not be an obese child, because as you grow up and inevitably grow older, something unpleasant is programmed to occur. Most likely, you will wake up and realize it is time to shed those extra pounds, because you’re not a kid anymore. In addition, the effort to lose those pounds will make your life much more difficult than it would have been, if you had never added them in the first place.

Of course, kids never listen anyhow. Maybe some grownups listen, and if they have kids, they might take that warning to heart — especially because they probably know the truth firsthand. It behooves every parent to try to figure out how to get this message across in a way that might penetrate the juvenile mindset.

The oldsters do not say “You’ll be sorry” out of love for the lilting rhythm of the phrase. Hey kids, we know for a certainty that you will be sorry, because we made the same stupid mistakes, and we are now sorry, and we don’t care who knows it.

Monkey see, monkey do

This cannot be said too often: Children are much more likely to imitate what they see at home every day, than to follow precepts that are taught in any other way. A childhood that features unmonitored eating habits is awfully hard to overcome. Not to become a fat kid is a very difficult life challenge. Careless and excessive consumption makes it almost impossible to ever stop being a fat kid.

The great majority of grownups probably have a profound personal understanding of how difficult it is not to remain a fat kid. In other words, most adults grasp, from their own experience, how hard it is to retreat from the categories of “overweight” and “obese.”

But as Werner Erhard has said, “Understanding is the booby prize.” An adult can realize how difficult it is to lose body weight, and grasp the meaning of the sentence all day long, but none of that can help much. It is probably already too late for them, and their awareness and experience do not seem to go very far toward helping the next generation.

Plenty of words out there

There are a lot of words we can use in trying to convey to a child the importance of eating only worthwhile foods, and even then, not too much of them. Here’s the catch. By the time a child can understand the words, she or he has already logged several years of much more convincing communication. Mr. or Ms. Grownup, that kid has had an eye on you from Day 1, clocking your every move. Every single treat, snack, and third helping. It’s all there, on the shelves of their brain libraries.

Why must so much emphasis be placed on the prevention of childhood obesity? Because of a fact that becomes increasingly difficult to ignore with each passing day. We cannot avoid noticing that childhood obesity almost inevitably leads to adult obesity.

Okay, admittedly, there is another possibility, one that is equally damaging. A person can spend an entire lifetime tirelessly, devotedly taking measures to fend off adult obesity; every minute of every day being acutely conscious of the weight-related consequences behind every bite of food. That sounds like zero fun.

A grownup can be in therapy, able to recall and comprehend in exquisite detail every single factor in three decades of life that led to being a 30-year-old who weighs 350 pounds. But… Understanding is the booby prize.

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

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An Ounce of Prevention, Part 1

In the realm of wisdom passed down through the generations, one of the most tried-and-true (and trite) sayings is, “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” The maxim includes two terms that measure weight, which is very appropriate because weight is the subject here.

In the USA and the world, the emphasis on childhood obesity is a vital part of the overall health picture. Why? Because “As the twig is bent, so grows the tree,” and also because other corny old sayings with the same meaning are found all over the globe and in a variety of languages. They are all truthful descriptions of a real phenomenon.

“Give Me the Child Until He is Seven, and I Will Show You the Man” is a saying whose attribution is contested, but whose veracity is rarely questioned. Adjusting for traditional sexism, of course, it means that anyone who is entrusted with the upbringing of a child, male or female, during those first six years, is pretty much guaranteed to produce a kid trained to their satisfaction.

An even deeper truth is at work here, which is the rule known as “Monkey See, Monkey Do.” In other words: Granted, it is very likely that a child can be trained by deliberate and purposeful instruction. Still, it is even more likely that the kid will pick up the habits and ways that are consistently demonstrated by adults and observed by the child, rather than the ones being programatically instilled. Because, to roll out yet another ancient proverb, “Actions speak louder than words.”

Digression: an impactful best-seller

In 1973, Flora Rheta Schreiber published the hefty (almost 500-page) non-fiction book titled Sybil. Consequently, most people heard about multiple personalities for the first time, as the patient in the book had 16 of them. This is mentioned only to establish that prior to the publication of Sibyl, most Americans had never heard of any of this stuff. Suddenly, the multiple personality concept achieved wide awareness. People — especially parents — were primed and ready to hear more.

Now, granted, the odds of any one particular child developing such a serious problem are slim. Still, it is one of many possibilities. Given the choice, most parents would rather not have a situation like this to deal with, for the sake of the child and of themselves and their other children, and indeed for the well-being of the general public.

In the intervening decades, various branches of the psychological arts have taken on the challenge of rationalizing and working with multiple personalities. Some people are comfortable explaining them as visitors from the past, who previously had bodies and all the other accoutrements of standard human life. These tourists can be accepted as perfectly legitimate echoes of a person’s own previous incarnations, who have returned to work out their karma.

Or maybe…

Another narrative requires absorbing some information about the theories of Richard C. Schwartz, who may be thought of in shorthand as the father of IFS, the initials that must become intimately familiar if the rest of this is to make any kind of sense. IFS stands for Internal Family Systems, the operating assumption and principle connected with Schwartz’s controversial Castlewood Treatment Center. In a very recent article, journalist Rachel Corbett announced right up front and up top,

Internal Family Systems is a widely popular trauma treatment. Some patients say it’s destroyed their lives.

Corbett backed this up by presenting a case study, that of teenager Elizabeth Lerz, who in 2011 convinced her parents that her eating disorder necessitated a stay at Castlewood. They were relieved that she was amenable to treatment and that they were able to afford the hefty fee. What could go wrong?

All too soon, the answer became apparent. Mr. and Mrs. Lerz discovered that after four months of inpatient therapy, their daughter had become a hostile stranger who made horrendous accusations against them. This is not the place to cover those aspects in detail. Suffice it to say that, after enormous legal expenses, followed by 14 years (and counting) of hostile alienation, the family never recovered.

(To be continued… )

Your responses and feedback are welcome!

Source: “The Therapy That Can Break You,” TheCut.com, 10/30/25″
Image by geralt/Pixabay