Gross Obesity Recovery, Sustained Recovery

Setting out limits of our topic area is quite important, to set a frame of reference, our context of discussion, to limit disagreement, and cut through the misleads, the box cannons as it were in old time. That is risk management, in one form. Defining the topic, and the limits, yet bringing in outside information to provide background and methodology for advancement.

Obesity was rare in old times. It did exist, but rare. High wheat eating Egyptians, The grain eaters of the Mediterranean, and sugar eaters of Old England, oat eaters of Scotland, the meat, potatoes and bread of Ireland after the famine. All we need do is to live actively the life style of those before industrial development, heat, refrigeration, transportation, and the like, eat the foods they ate, and the problem should go away. Ah, but can we? Do we need to go that far?

I have lost something greater than 50 Kg, and sustained that loss for most of three years now. It has been interesting. I am not where I think I should be but then, it is longer at this level that in any of my weight loss cycles before. I never before realized  how damaging some foods and ideas really are.

I am a disaggregate thinker, linking two concepts, one thinking and second, disaggregate modelling that I learned about all those many years ago at university. This is not an actively learned skill, that is just the way I am.  I have a engineering degree, and a few (understatement) courses beyond that and in semi-retirement. I do not write well, and spelling/ proof reading/ word usage is less than perfect but we can not be perfect. ADD, dyslectic, bad memory, or lazy, I do not know. Weight loss/ diet/ obesity recovery lends itself to disaggregation quite well as it is sorting spaghetti type of analysis. Take one string and pull it out, lay it out straight as far as it will go, and go on to the next. Once in a great while, the whole string is revealed, and it all makes scene.

Concepts that Matter is a lovely book by AC Grayling. It is like reading an  encyclopaedia, alphabetic,  to organize a disjointed lifetime collection of ideas that the author thinks are important. Perhaps that is the way to organize obesity recovery, on small topic at a time.