Your Mouth, Your Body, Your Choice

At the end of the day, is this the best way we have of motivating people to manage their weight? After all, when you are standing in the kitchen at the end of the day eating a toast and butter sandwich, no-one else but you is putting it into your mouth.

But are you really just one person? Inside your head, different "yous" compete for dominance over what you will do, feel and say at any one moment in the day. One moment you are the responsible adult and the next you are letting loose your inner child.

To say that what you eat is "your choice" assumes that you have options. Many fat people consider in their rational mind that there are options for eating, drinking, managing celebrations and socialising with others with regard to food. After all, who is the grown up here?

But the emotional mind may believe something entirely different - that you have no options at all for what you put into your mouth, and how you manage your weight. Inside this part of your mind reside all the memories, the longings, the old messages about food and deep secret beliefs of your heart which may undermine your options one by one. Remember the old saying..."The heart has its reasons that the mind knows nothing of."

So where does this leave the notion that we all have choice and that we are all capable of exercising it? Is fat really "an optional issue?"